e native States of Mysore,
Cochin, and Travancore, differs, indeed, almost immeasurably from
Central and Northern India. South of the high, sun-scorched plateau of
the Deccan, from the mouth of the Kistna to the Indian Ocean, the great
Indian peninsula rapidly narrows. Tempered by more frequent rains and
the moist breezes which sweep across it from both the Malabar and the
Coromandel coasts, the climate is more equable and the heat, though more
continuous, is less fierce. The whole character of the country is
luxuriantly tropical, and though the lowlands are not more fertile than
the matchless delta of the Ganges, the more varied prodigality of nature
shows itself alike in the waving forests of cocoanut, which are common
all along the coast, in the rich tobacco-fields of Madura and
Coimbatore, in the plantations of cinchona, pepper, cardamoms, and other
spices on the slopes of the Nilgiri highlands, and in the splendid
growths of teak, ebony, and sandalwood that clothe the Western Ghats.
The population, which in some parts attains extraordinary density and
lives almost exclusively on the fruits of the soil, is of the old
Dravidian stock, industrious and frugal as in other parts of India, and
of a placid and gentle temper. Nowhere else in India does one come into
such close contact with its original non-Aryan peoples; and nowhere else
has the earliest type of religious and social institutions evolved by
the superior civilization of the Aryans been so completely preserved
from the disturbing influences of later ages. And yet--such are the
curious contrasts which abound in this strange country--nowhere else
does one find so many living survivals of the intercourse which occurred
from time to time between India and the West, many centuries before
Europe turned her eyes towards that Terra Incognita. Nowhere, for
instance, has Christianity made more converts of recent years, perhaps
because in Southern India there may still be found indigenous Christian
communities which trace their origin back to the first centuries of the
Christian era. Even if there be no historical foundation for the
tradition that it was St. Thomas the Apostle who himself first
evangelized Southern India, and was ultimately martyred at St. Thomas's
Mount near Madras, there is good authority for believing that
Christianity was imported not many centuries later into Southern India
by the Nestorian or Chaldaean missionaries from Persia and Mesopotamia,
whose