Nilgiri Hills

“ F. Metz, The Tribes inhabiting the Neilgherry Hills, Second Edition (Mangalore, 1864) , p. 78; Jagor, “Ueber die Badagas im Nilgiri-Gebirge,” Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie (1876) , pp. 196 sq. At the Badaga funerals witnessed by Mr. E. Thurston “no calf was brought near the corpse, and the celebrants of the rites were satisfied with the mere mention by name of a calf, which is male or female according to the sex of the deceased.” 119. H. Harkness, l.c. 120. J. W. Breeks, An Account of the Primitive Tribes and Monuments of the Nīlagiris (London, 1873) , pp. 23 sq. ”

“ The banks of the stream are here hemmed in by ranges of hills from 100 to 250 feet high; these are entirely destitute of soil, being composed of enormous masses of red granite, piled block upon block, the rude masonry of Nature that has walled in the river. The hollows between the hills are choked with a yellow sand, which, drifted by the wind, has, in many instances, completely filled the narrow valleys. Upon either side of the Nile are vestiges of ancient forts. The land appears as though it bore the curse of Heaven; misery, barrenness, and the heat of a furnace are its features. ”

“ They sit in a twilight that is only-brightened by rays that find their way in at the distant door; but at morning they can see, from the depth of their mountain cavern, the rising sun.
We climbed, up the yielding sand-drifts, to the top of the precipice in which the temple is excavated, and walked back to a higher ridge. The view from there is perhaps the best desert view on the Nile, more extensive and varied than that of Aboosir. It is a wide sweep of desolation. Up and down the river we see vast plains of sand and groups of black hills ”

“ The name is in common use among all classes of natives in S. India, but when it may have become specific I cannot say. Possibly the solution may be that the Nilgiris being the first large mountain range to become familiar to the English, that name was by them caught hold of, but not coined, and stuck to them by mere priority. It is on the face of it improbable that the Englishmen who early in the last century discovered these Hills, that is, explored and shot over them, would call them by a long Skt. ”

“ The Nilgiri mountains, in the south of the Madras Presidency, near the Western or Malabar Coast, have long been interesting to the antiquary and anthropologist as abounding in cairns and megalithic remains, and the abode of that remarkable picturesque race, the Todas, and other peculiar hill-tribes. ”

“ The height on which Old Dongola is built, falls off on all sides, inland as well as towards the river, so that to the east one overlooks a wide extent of desert—low hills of red sand, stretching away to a dim, hot horizon. To the north, the hill slopes gradually to the Nile, covered with the ruins of old buildings. North-east, hardly visible through the sandy haze, rose a high, isolated peak, with something like a tower on its summit. ”

“ Beyond the belt of green which marked the limits of the irrigated land round the town, the desert stretched on the east and south as far as the eye could see. To the west was a range of rugged hills, their nearer spurs within rifle-shot of the fort, and to the north, at a much greater distance, the peaks, at this season covered with snow, of a considerable mass of mountains.
“That is Nalapur,” said Georgia, pointing to the mountains, “and beyond it to the eastward is Ethiopia. Our house is the last on British soil. The corner of the compound exactly touches the frontier line.” ”

“ On the 30th of September we proceeded north-east from Joowye to Nurtiung, crossing the watershed of the Jyntea range, which is granitic, and scarcely raised above the mean level of the hills; it is about 4,500 feet elevation. To the north the descent is at first rather abrupt for 500 feet, to a considerable stream, beyond which is the village of Nurtiung. The country gradually declines hence to the north-east, in grassy hills; which to the east become higher and more wooded: to the west the Khasia are seen, and several Himalayan peaks to the north. ”

“ The Kohara river ran between steep cliffs through the bed of the valley, and, as usual, above the cliffs on each side there were cultivated maidans or plateaus. Over the right-hand maidan, the road—our road—ran to a fortified village. Behind the village, a deep gorge, or nullah, as we call them in these parts, descending from a side glacier high up at the back of the hills on our right, cut clean across the valley, like a great gash. The sides of the nullah were extraordinarily precipitous, and on the edge furthest from us stone sangars were already built as a second line of defence. ”

“ Portions of the Nile Valley itself could be made to store the water by forming one or several masonry dams across the Nile, and the Wadi Raiân could also be made to serve the same purpose by putting it into communication with the Nile by means of a channel cut in the range of hills which divides the depression from the Nile Valley. ”

“ It is the largest of the world’s remaining areas [275] of mystery; it is the greatest of all the regions still to be explored; for the sterile and waterless desert holds its secrets secure by the fear of hunger and the terror of thirst. The inhabitants of the Nile Valley declare to a man that somewhere in this wilderness there stands a city of gold, whose shining cupolas and domes are as dazzling as the sun itself, and whose streets are paved with precious stones. ”

“ Mountain scenery is always, to my mind, affected by the character of its inhabitants and the buildings they live in. The flat-roofed houses of the western Himalaya, with their squalor and dirt, are seldom, however well situated, an assistance to the scenery, whereas the neat villages of the Kangra Valley, with their slate and thatched roofs, are most picturesque, whether in the actual valley itself or in the hill villages. The villages of the hill folk are often very strikingly placed, and have frequently quite the appearance of Swiss chalets. Anywhere in the world mountain villages are dirty. ”

“ About a mile north-west of us is Hambily, a rock not considerable in size, but, from the plain country in which it is situated, has the appearance of a great tower or castle, and south of it two hillocks or little hills. These are all land-marks of the utmost consequence to caravans in their journey, because they are too considerable in size to be covered at any time by the moving sands. At Assa Nagga, Assiro-baybe is square with us, and with the turn which the Nile takes eastward to Korti and Dongola. The Takaki are the people nearest us, west of Assa Nagga, and Assero-baybe upon the Nile. ”

“ Out of this fissure the Nile has created a narrow strip of fruitful soil—the valley is not more than three or four hours in breadth on an average—which is secured by the heights on the west from the moving sand and the storms of the great desert, and is separated by the mountain on the east from the rocky crags, the desolate flats, and sandy dunes which fill up the space between the valley of the river and the Red Sea. To this valley the mighty river not only gives a refreshing coolness and moisture by the mass of its waters, it fertilises and manures it from year to year by its overflow. ”

“ Someone has described the Nile valley as appearing, if seen from above, like a strip of green carpet on a floor of gold, so yellow are the sands that hem it in. No one who has not visited an arid country and noted the influence of water upon the thirsty soil can imagine how distinctly the line is drawn between the verdant field and the barren desert that adjoins it. Where the waters of the Nile can be brought upon the land, a farm will rent for $30 per acre, while a few feet away the land can not be given away. ”

“ Enjoying a delightful climate, well supplied with water, and with its gentle undulations of hill and dale in some places clothed with rich pasture, in others presenting woods of fine timber and beautiful flowering shrubs, the Neilgherry hills are eminently fitted for the abode of a thriving and civilized people. Yet for many centuries it would appear that their sole inhabitants were a strange race of cowherds, a people differing in all respects from their neighbours in the plains, and indeed from all the other natives of Hindostan. ”

“ The iron-like sterility of the granite rocks, naked except in spots where the wind has sheeted them with sand; the groves of palms springing unexpectedly into view in this desert wilderness, as a sudden bend of the river discovers a village; the ever blue and never clouded sky above, and, the only blessing of this blighted land, the Nile, silently flowing between its stern walls of rocks towards the distant land of Lower Egypt, form a total that produces a scene to be met with nowhere but upon the Nile. ”

“ The Cape to Cairo railway will have brought the various sources of the Nile within a few days' travel of England; the endless fields of barren ice that surround the poles will have yielded up their secrets; whilst the vast and trackless fastnesses of that stupendous range of mountains which eclipses all others, and which from time immemorial has served as a barrier to roll back the waves of barbaric invasion from the fertile plains of Hindustan—these Himalaya will have been mapped, and the highest points in the world above sea-level will have been visited by man. ”

“ Beyond this place the Niger separated into large branches, and the travellers went on by the eastward one; after they had passed an island, these again united.
After passing a high hill of curious granite rock, they came to a double range of rocky mountains, near which was a small village, where the canoe-men were exchanged. The hills are gloomy and romantic, fringed in some parts with stunted shrubs, which overhang deep precipices; they are haunted by wild beasts and birds of prey. ”

“ The long stalk of the lily is the Nile valley itself, which is a ravine scooped in the rocky soil for seven hundred miles from the First Cataract to the apex of the Delta, sometimes not more than a mile broad, never more than eight or ten miles. No other country in the world is so strangely shaped, so long compared to its width, so straggling, so hard to govern from a single centre. ”

“ The purely European reader will consider it extraordinary that this beautiful range of lofty hills should not have suggested to all men at first sight the idea of a cool, healthy summer abode. But we demi-Orientals, who know by experience the dangers of mountain air in India, only wonder at the daring of the man who first planted a roof-tree upon the Neilgherries.
From the year 1799 to 1819 these mountains were in the daily view of all the authorities from the plains of Coimbatore; revenue was collected from them for the company by a native renter ”

“ I had now personally examined the Neilgherry hills, the Koondahs, the Pulneys, Coorg, and the Mahabaleshwurs; and collected information respecting the hills near Courtallum, the Anamallays, the Shervaroys, Wynaad, the Baba-Bodeens, and Nuggur. After a careful consideration of the conditions which each of these districts offer, and a comparison of their elevations, climate, soil, and the character of their vegetation, with those of the South American chinchona forests ”

“ From Kurseong we ascend through a magnificent forest of chestnut, walnut, oaks, and laurels. Hooker, when he subsequently visited the Khasia Hills in Assam, said that though the subtropical scenery on the outer Himalaya was on a much more gigantic scale, it was not comparable in beauty and luxuriance with the really tropical vegetation induced by the hot, damp, and insular climate of those perennially humid Khasia Hills. The forest of gigantic trees on the Himalaya, many of them deciduous, appear from a distance as masses of dark grey foliage, clothing mountains 10,000 feet high. ”

“ The Nimla valley is, however, an oasis in the desert. In it there is a very beautiful garden enclosed within a high wall. It was made by Shah Jehangir about 1610 A.D., and has been repaired by the present Amîr. One can see the garden a great way off, the deep green of its cypress trees being a striking piece of colour among the blue greys and reds of the mountainous barren landscape. ”

“ In the north-west corner of Bissamkatak taluk is a curious group of larger hills, called the Nímgiris, which rise abruptly from the upper valley of the Vamsadhára (here 1,100 feet above the sea) to close on 5,000 feet.
As a rule (the appearance of the various taluks is referred to in more detail in Chapter XV) CHAP. I. Hills. the hills in this part of the district are covered with stunted forests ruined by constant felling and burning, while the valleys are open expanses of park-like land cultivated with a little paddy and much dry crop. ”

“ Some day the lower ranges leading up to the great snow-covered mountains will be opened to the English. Sanatoria will be established, tea plantations will appear on the slopes of the Nepaulese hills, as is now the case at Darjeeling, and then only will the exploration of the mountains really begin, for which, at the present day, as far as Tibet and Nepaul are concerned, we have even less facilities than the Schlagintweits and Hooker had forty to fifty years ago. ”

“ From the place of junction the Vagmati runs south, and goes to the Tariyani, after having forced a passage through the mountains. Taken in the largest sense, therefore, the valley of Nepal comprehends all the grounds watered by these branches of the Vagmati, and, according to this definition, it is about twenty-two miles from east to west, and twenty miles from north to south. This extent is every where bounded by a chain of hills, all of which are steep, and some of them rise into high mountains. ”