[Sidenote: 36. The Drug in the Nilgiri Hills.] There are magnificent landscapes at the edge of the Nilgiris, where the mountains descend abruptly to the plains. This view was taken from a point called Lady Canning’s seat. It shows the Drug, from the top of which prisoners of war used to be thrown, in the days of the tyranny of Hyder Ali and Tippu Sultan, the Mohammedan sovereigns of Mysore, of whom we shall hear more presently.
[Sidenote: 37. Tea Plantation, Nilgiri Hills.] [Sidenote: 38. The Same.] [Sidenote: 39. Hill Tribe, Nilgiri Hills.] [Sidenote: 40. Toda People, near Ootacamund.] The vegetation of the heights is naturally different from that of the lowlands, and the cultivation of the Nilgiris is chiefly tea and cinchona, from the latter of which crops quinine is prepared. Amid the great forests of the slopes large game is numerous, such as sambur, or Indian elk, and tiger. Here also tribes of savage peoples have survived through all the centuries of history practically untouched by the civilization of the plains. One of these tribes, the smallest but the most interesting, are the Todas, who number less than a thousand, but have their own strange, unwritten language.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 3.] [Sidenote: 41. Madras from the Sea.] [Sidenote: 42. The High Court, Madras.] [Sidenote: 43. St. Mary’s Church, Madras.] [Sidenote: 44. The Law College, Madras.] [Sidenote: 45. Y.M.C.A. Building, Madras.] Northward of the group of temple cities, and eastward of the Nilgiris and of the plateau country of Mysore, on the low coastal plain is the great city of Madras, four hundred miles from our landing place at Tuticorin. Like the other seaports of modern India, Madras has grown from the smallest beginning within the European period. Its nucleus was Fort St. George, built to shelter the office and warehouse of the East India Company, in the time when Charles I. was king of England. To-day Madras has half a million people, and magnificent buildings in the European style. We have here a view looking northeastward over a corner of Fort St. George, and across the public grounds, to the High Court of Justice, whose lofty tower serves the purpose of a lighthouse for ships approaching the port. To the right of the High Court in the distance are the buildings round the harbour. Next we have St. Mary’s Church, standing within Fort St. George, the oldest British church in India, though the present structure was erected to replace an earlier church. And here we have the Law College, which stands beside the High Court, and close to it the building of the Young Men’s Christian Association. There are many Christians in southern India among the natives, indeed more than in any other part of the Indian Empire, although even here they are but a small minority. One Christian community on the Malabar coast is of the Nestorian sect, who came to India many centuries before the sea route was opened round the Cape.