On the Indian Hills

I SPENT some spare hours in decorating the interior of my new hut, as much as circumstances would permit, with pictures, pipe-racks, guns, and all the paraphernalia of a sportsman. When this aesthetic effort suddenly burst upon the view of a new native servant whom I had engaged, he stood spell-bound; he clearly thought it was the most beautiful abode ever built, for he was only a "country servant," hailing from Wallenghay. The coolies too, when they were mustered in front of my open door in the morning, were silent with astonishment, and seemed to fancy it a sort of international exhibition. The pictures attracted the Tamils very much -- they like anything colored; so I at once gave them some vividly tinted English advertisements, with blue and white bills bearing the inscription "Daily Telegraph, Largest Circulation in the World," and these they forthwith hung up in their "lines." I also showed some of the maistries one or two of the full-page engravings in numbers of the Graphic and Illustrated London News, representing fights between Turks and Russians on the Danube, They were immensely interested, crowding round each picture in a dense circle of black faces, and nodding their heads and pointing to each incident in the picture with their dusky fingers. Only one of them, however, Jowra, the headman of the estate, had any idea of who the combatants really were; the others recognized some as "Inglish" by their pale faces, and the Turks were supposed to be outer barbarians of a distant country with whom the sahibs had some unknown quarrel. I put them on the straight track with, the help of my new "boy," who spoke English well, besides his native Tamil, and they seemed to be much impressed.

My luggage and new furniture for the hut also now came up. It is usual for a company to supply the assistant superintendent with furniture and bedding, of which he has the free use, but such things are considered fixtures of the estate, and pass from successor to successor. It was a very welcome sight when the long string of coolies came winding down the jungle path with chairs, bedsteads, washing-stands, tables, etc., slung on poles, and upon their arrival there was a grand unpacking forthwith. Everything was made of the bright yellow jackwood, which is abundant, works well, and does not shrink; but the article which pleased me most was a silk-cotton mattress, which I thought a bed fit for an emperor, and thoroughly appreciated that night, after two months of sleeping on bare planks.

On the 12th of December we commenced a road to be carried from the southern slope of Bungalow Hill right away, without pause or turn, to the head of the ghaut. It had already been "traced" for some distance, and half formed through the jungle separating our estate from the next one to the northward. This bit, which follows the winding of the Manalora stream, was about the most picturesque spot in the neighborhood, and best satisfied my idea of what a glade in the tropics ought to look like. Hitherto, I must confess, I had been considerably disappointed with the "gorgeous East," which had never seemed to me quite up to the mark: but this road presented a much richer variety of ferns and vegetation than almost any other spot yet visited. The way wound along the steep side of a "hanger," as Gilbert White would call it -- a high ridge, on the crest of which, but completely hidden by the forest, is the old "Top Entrance Road," this new path being designated by the name of the "Lower Entrance Road." On the other side, a few feet below, our mountain river, like a Scotch torrent, went dashing and tumbling, now plunging into dense thickets of tangled herbage and feathery bamboos, where it was quite invisible, though it could be heard murmuring along, and then again sparkling out into the sunshine and breaking into twenty little streamlets among the rocks, only to reunite again and continue its progress among beds of waving reeds and tall grasses, beneath shady banks, where it ran more slowly under the graceful tree-ferns that swung their fronds over the water and, Narcissus-like, spent their existence in watching their own reflections. In one place a great tree had fallen across, dragging down to ruin with it three smaller ones, and together their leafless branches choked up the stream with a barrier impassable to anything larger than water-snakes; but the kingfishers found this a very convenient watch-tower, so that there were always a pair of