Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/509

Rh you find hill-sides dotted all over with anemonies and buttercups; and gather violets, honey-suckles, and dog-roses under the shade of homelike forest-trees.

Ootacamund, the chief English station on the hills, lies in a hilly basin near the centre of this mountain-land, and has about two hundred houses for English residents. Some families remain here permanently; the greater part are sojourners, in search of health and invigoration. A few good roads furnish drives, while a multitude of bridle-paths cross the hills, and permit you to ride to many points of interest; but the change of climate allows you once more to use your limbs freely, and to walk for miles at a time among scenes beautiful, novel, and often grand.

Neilgherries, though till lately unoccupied by the English, have not been uninhabited. They were found to be the home of several quite distinct races, numbering in all some thirteen or fourteen thousand souls. Of these Rh