Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/266

228 The Police Ameen, an aged and crafty Brahmin, in compliance with the directions of Mr. B., called upon us to give us information as to the towns. He came with several attendants, and after answering our queries as to statistics, engaged in a long discussion on religion with Mr. S. The old man was evidently a worldling, caring little for heaven or hell, and probably received but little good. But many persons who had come to us for medicine, books, or instruction, listened with great earnestness and, we may trust, with profit.

At Arnee we found the bandy, which had been despatched before our start from Madras, with our tent and boxes of books and tracts. We now dismissed half of our bearers, as we were to go by easy stages from village to village; and on Saturday evening left the fort for Coonatoor, a small town four miles distant. Our road lay directly toward the hills in the west, which were sharp, craggy masses of granite, running up into pointed or conical peaks, and quite uninhabited. These hills stand amid level plains, entirely devoted to the culture of grain. Our road lay through a succession of rice-fields, from which the poor half-clad ryot