Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/455

397 ported us in thought to the granite hills of New England; but the similarity stopped here. In place of neat villages and towns, with the white spire of the Christian church peeping out from among the trees, the school-house beside it, and the pastor's dwelling just beyond, we found jungly deserts, with intervals of cultivation, towns of close-clustering huts, temples to Siva, Vishnu, Ganesha, and other false gods; while the hill-tops were crowned with idolatrous shrines or ancient forts, the scenes of many a bloody strife, now falling to ruins.

After reaching the level of the table-land, our journey was over a beautiful rolling country, dotted with villages and cultivated fields, to the city of Bangalore, where we tarried for three weeks, preparatory to entering the cooler air of the Blue Mountains of Coimbatoor.

all the stations occupied by the English in Southern India, Bangalore is certainly the most charming. Having an elevation of three thousand feet above the level of the sea, it Rh