Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/454

396 unguarded gates of the fort, and cut down, without mercy, the mutineers, who were so much engrossed with their deeds of blood and rapine, that they had neglected all means of defence. Six hundred men were slain on the spot, and two hundred more dragged from the concealments to which they had fled, and shot. The sons of Tippoo were soon after removed to Calcutta, far from the scenes and friends of their father's rule.

We now were drawing near the foot of the Eastern Ghauts, a range of highlands running up into craggy granite peaks, which stretches along the eastern side of India, parallel to the sea. The road grew hilly and rough, and our horse was replaced by a pair of bullocks, more able to draw us up the mountain passes leading to the elevated table-land of the Mysore. Up hill and down we went, and up and down, but more up than down, until, on the second day, we had left the ascent behind us, and entered upon the plateau reaching from the Eastern to the Western Ghauts, and varying from eighteen hundred to three thousand feet in its elevation above the sea. This journey, through steep passes, with granite hills on the right and left, and masses of rock rolled into ravines, trans-