the place, as there was not much else to interest even a
traveller fresh from England.

"I have as yet seen little of the idolatry of India; and that little,
though excessively absurd, is not characterised by atrocity or
indecency. There is nothing of the sort at Ootacamund. I have not,
during the last six weeks, witnessed a single circumstance from which
you would have inferred that this was a heathen country. The bulk of the
natives here are a colony from the plains below, who have come up hither
to wait on the European visitors, and who seem to trouble themselves
very little about caste or religion. The Todas, the aboriginal
population of these hills, are a very curious race. They had a grand
funeral a little while ago. I should have gone if it had not been a
Council day; but I found afterwards that I had lost nothing. The whole
ceremony consisted in sacrificing bullocks to the manes of the defunct.
The roaring of the poor victims was horrible. The people stood talking
and laughing till a particular signal was made, and immediately all
the ladies lifted up their voices and wept. I have not lived three and
thirty years in this world without learning that a bullock roars when he
is knocked down, and that a woman can cry whenever she chooses.

"By all that I can learn, the Catholics are the most respectable portion
of the native Christians. As to Swartz's people in the Tanjore, they are
a perfect scandal to the religion which they profess. It would have been
thought something little short of blasphemy to say this a year ago; but
now it is considered impious to say otherwise, for they have got into a
violent quarrel with the missionaries and the Bishop. The missionaries
refused to recognise the distinctions of caste in the administration of
the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and the Bishop supported them in
the refusal. I do not pretend to judge whether this was right or wrong.
Swartz and Bishop Heber conceived that the distinction of caste, however
objectionable politically, was still only a distinction of rank;
and that, as in English churches the gentlefolks generally take the
Sacrament apart from the poor of the parish, so the high-caste natives
might be allowed to communicate apart from the Pariahs.

"But, whoever was first in the wrong, the Christians of Tanjore took
care to be most so. They called in the interposition of Government, and
sent up such petitions and memorials as I never saw before or since;
made u