vants are outside with breakfast. The robes of the natives coming
towards the station in the twilight under said shaft of light are
greenish in contrast; they are wrapped up in their white mantles to keep
off what they appear to think dangerous morning air. Only a few of them
are astir, and the dew runs steadily from the roof of our carriage and
makes a hole in the sandy track, and an early crow is round for anything
that may be going. The cook comes past with a comforting glow from
charcoal in a frying pan, so we know our _chota hazri_ will be before
us in no time, after which we intend to trolly back on the line to
Seringapatam.

We came here yesterday afternoon from Bangalore, R. and D. with their
carriage, and self and G. in one the Railway Co. let us have--for a
consideration! A very good plan this--you pay for three fares and have
your carriage overnight, so at places where there are no hotels you are
more comfortable than if there were!

Coming here from Bangalore to Mysore, the line is interesting all the
way, the scenes change constantly--I have very distinct recollections of
at first "garden scenery," then jungle and bushy woods running into
rocky gorges, barren sand wastes and rich rolling corn lands alternating
in the few hours run, yet in my journal I have not a line of pen or
scrape of pencil of these scenes; I daresay the reader has noticed this,
that scenes taken unconsciously on the tablets of memory--unconscious
impressions--are more lasting than those taken down consciously and
deliberately.

Mysore town is a place of wide roads and trees, fields intended to be
parks some day, and light and air. Many houses of European origin,
somewhat suggestive of Italian or Spanish villas, are shuttered and
closed in, so as to give a sense of their being deserted. You drive past
these silent houses and their gardens and come to the native town, which
is anything but silent or deserted, and then to the new palace; the
modern sight of southern India. It is brimming with life; it looks like
a Gothic cathedral in course of construction. Two towers, each at a
guess, 150 feet high, with a wing between them, bristle with bamboo
scaffolding so warped and twisted out of the perpendicular that the
uprights are like old fishing rods. The extraordinary intricacy is quite
fascinating, but at present it partially prevents one seeing the general
proportions and effect of the building. As we see it, in the afternoon,
the great