Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/546

480 ness of the depths of heathenism! Oh, when shall the Sun of Righteousness arise upon their darkness, chasing it as the natural sun chases the darkness and gloom from the jungly ravines in which they dwell!

The sun was high in the heavens when we reached the plain, and we had yet some miles of travel before us. Accustomed to the cooler air of the mountains, the glare seemed almost intolerable. The sun's rays poured with an intense, unmitigated fierceness, that pierced to the brain, making it throb and boil. Beautiful and desirable as the plains seemed when viewed from the cool mountain-top, a breath of that mountain air would have been gladly hailed by the travellers toiling slowly over the barren sandy waste at the foot of the mountain under the blaze of an August sun. Towards noon, we reached the poor bungalow at Mettapollium, and renewed our acquaintance with the ants, mosquitos, and eye-flies—friends from whom we had been separated while at Ootacamund, where they are quite unknown.

Our journey from Mettapollium to Coimbatoor, a distance of twenty-four miles, was made by night. The way was solitary; and as I rode on my little poney utterly alone, I could not but