he province, but the most marked difference of
course between the forest and woodland country of the west, and the
country to the east, lies in the scenery of the two tracts, for, though in
the latter case there are occasional bits of attractive landscape, and
partially wooded hills, there is nothing at all to compare with the grand
forest scenery of the Western Ghauts, or the charming park-like woodlands
which stretch into the tableland at varying distances from the crests of
the frontier mountains. Everyone who has seen the latter has been struck
by their extraordinary and diversified beauty, and last year a friend of
mine, who had for a considerable time been travelling all round the world,
said to me, as he rode up to my house, "After all I have seen I have seen
nothing to equal this." But this, I must add, was the very best of our
Western Ghaut park scenery which is mostly contained in the talook or
county of Manjarabad which stretches for about twenty-five miles along the
western frontier of Mysore, a tract of country so beautiful that the
laconic Colonel Wellesley (afterwards the great Duke of Wellington), who
rarely put a superfluous word into his dispatches, could not refrain from
remarking in one of them on the beautiful appearance of the country.[5]
There are two things especially remarkable about this tract. The one is
that throughout the best of it there is nothing distinctively Indian in
the scenery. Bamboos are rare, and in much of the tract entirely absent,
and as the palm trees are always concealed in the woods there is nothing
to connect the country with the usual feature of Indian woodland scenery.
Another point most worthy of notice is that the scenery which appears to
one seeing it for the first time to be entirely natural, is in reality
very largely the creation of man. And it has been much improved by his
action for, as you leave Manjarabad to go northwards the jungle becomes
too continuous, and it is the same if you go southwards into the adjacent
district of Coorg, and when you compare the last mentioned tracts with
Manjarabad you then begin to realize the fact that nature, if left to
herself, is apt to become a trifle monotonous. But in Manjarabad man has
invaded nature to beautify her and bring her to perfection--cutting down
and turning eventually into stretches of grass much of the original
forest--leaving blocks of from 50 to 200 acres of wood on the margin of
each group of houses, clearing ou