plained by Major Crewe, the officer command- ing on the Hills, to any person who may apply to him ; and there is now no more difficulty in travelling through the country by Coonoor to Kotagherry or Oatacamund, than there is in going from Madras to Pondicherry in the dry season. The discovery, as it may be called, of the Neilgherry Hills, is one of the remarkable cir- 4 ^ & " x I & I 4 AND NEILGHERRY HILLS. 33 cum stances connected with them ; and adds to those instances of apathy and ignorance of the resources of India, noticed by the late Bishop of Calcutta, in one of his letters. From the year 1799 up to 1819, these moun- tains were in the daily view of all the authorities from the plains of the Coimbatoor province, and a revenue was collected from them for the Com- pany by a renter (a Chitty) and paid into the Cutchery of the collector of that province. But of the country nothing was then known.