ableland, but this is rather a misleading description if we adopt the
dictionary definition of the word tableland as being "a tract of country
at once elevated and level," for, though there are in the interior of the
province considerable stretches of rolling plains, the so-called tableland
presents to the view a country intersected at intervals, more or less
remote, with mountain chains, while scattered here and there in the
interior of the plateau are isolated rocky hills, or rather hills of rock,
termed droogs (Sanscrit, durga, or difficult of access) which sometimes
rise to a total height of 5,000 feet above sea level. The surface of the
country, too, is often broken by groups, or clusters of rocks, either low
or of moderate elevation, composed of immense boulders, the topmost ones
of which are often so finely poised as to seem ready to topple over at the
slightest touch. The highest point of the plateau is about 3,500 feet, and
is crowned as it were by the fine bold range of the Bababuden mountains,
which have an average elevation of about 6,000 feet. There are three
mountains in Mysore which exceed this elevation, and the highest of them,
Mulainagiri, is 6,317 feet above the level of the sea. The province,
which is completely surrounded by British territory, is flanked on the
west and east by the Ghauts, or ranges of hills up the passes through
which the traveller ascends on to the tableland, and on the south it is,
as it were, pointed off by the Nilgiri hills. The greatest breadth of
Mysore from north to south is about 230 miles, and its greatest length
from east to west is 290 miles. On the western side one part of the
province runs to within ten miles of the sea, though the average distance
from it is from thirty to fifty miles. The nearest point to the sea on the
eastern side is about 120 miles, and the most southerly extremity of the
tableland is 250 miles from the most southerly point of India.

As regards climate, cultivation, and the general appearance of the
country, Mysore may be divided into two very distinctly marked tracts--the
forest and woodland region which stretches from the foot of the Western
Ghauts to distances varying from about twenty to as much as forty-five
miles, and the rolling and comparatively speaking treeless plains of the
central and eastern parts of the province, which are only occasionally
broken by tracts which have some of the characteristics of both. In the
western tract are numer