Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/289

 be raised about six feet, the present arch-ways through them should be contracted or closed, with a safety sluice at one end, as in the lowest bund, and thus admit of a sheet of water as high as the Botanic Gardens. It is a subject of universal regret that the banks of the lake should to this late day be as bare as a mill-pond,instead of being, as they might be, ornamented with trees. The trees of Australia grow splendidly in these hills, and require only two or three years protection from cattle to become independent. The scenery around Ooty, though tame and wanting in sublimity, is pretty, and the approach to it by the Segoor Ghaut, with its numerous white houses glistening in the sun, and the highest mountain, Dodabetta, forming the background,makes a very pleasing landscape.

4. ROUTES TO OOTY.—The best route from Madras to Ootacamund is via Arcot, Pulmanair, Bangalore, Seringapatam, Goondlepet, Segoor, and Kulhutty; distance about 300 miles. From Madras to Bangalore, the distance 208 miles, is performed by horse-transit in a comfortable spring carriage in three nights, resting during the day at Arcot and Pulmanair, where there are staging bungalows and the means of getting rice and a curry. At Bangalore there is a good hotel.

From Bangalore to Ootacamund the journey is made by relays of bullocks in three nights, halting