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NARRATIVE,

&c.

Coimbatore, November 10, 1840.

On the afternoon of the 9th of November I left

my

Indian mountain home, where, thanks be to God, I have enjoyed six months of genuine home happiness, such as I had scarcely dared to hope could have been mine in this country; and accompanied by my eldest boy, who, though only eleven years old, has already a very quick and true eye for the beauties of nature, scrambled and slid down the steep and lovely pass of Jackanary, which connects Kotagherry with the rich plains of Coimbatore. Oxford and Cambridge would indeed have been frighted from

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their propriety into expressions of most unbecoming amazement, could they have seen the bishop of this vast diocese setting forth on his visitation, muffled in mackintosh cloak and hood, which in a few minutes proved to be any thing but water-proof against an Indian monsoon, and floundering in the deep slippery mud of an Indian mountain-ghaut. My heavy baggage had been sent forward, and nothing could be more independent of appearances than our travelling equipage, which consisted of two stout ponies of the noble Pegue breed, and two bare-legged horse-keepers, as springy and wiry as antelopes.

I know not how far the movements of a bishop in India, or his manner of moving, may be amusing to the world; but as I do know that this little volume, should it ever attain to that dignity, will be read with interest by those for whom it is more especially written, I will try to give some idea of the latter.

Certainly his mode of travelling partakes more of the "barbaric" than of the "gorgeous East;" and although as far removed as possible from that dignified simplicity which best

becomes a bishop, is equally removed from the pomp and circumstance of glorious procession, usually associated, by those who know nothing

of the country, with every thing Oriental.— Groceries of all kinds, and medicines of many kinds, beer, and wine, and brandy, and sodawater, and fever-drops, and ready prepared cholera-mixture, coffee-mill and washing-tub, curry-powder and raspberry-jam, and butter, not "in a lordly dish," but in a chatty covered with a plantain leaf, a "cowrie" box of books, and a still larger one of stationery, a compact canteen from the Strand, and two large sacks of potatoes from the Neilgherries: all carried on the heads and backs of coolies, bullocks, and camels, with tents and bullock "bandies," and Lascars and Sepoys to guard them,—two dressing boys, that one may be always a march in advance, a cook, a "maty," and grass-cutters, that neither we nor our horses may be half starved or half poisoned by the way, present to the mind a very different picture from the plain, quietly handsome travelling carriage and pair of my mitred brethren in England. It is wonderful how this heterogeneous mass is held together

in any thing like comfortable order, which indeed can only be maintained by enforcing a kind of semi-military discipline; and even when there is not partial confusion, there is always a noise and bustle, far from agreeable to one whose duties and tastes alike lead him to be engaged by other thoughts than the means of subsisting in tolerable comfort in a land offering to the unprovided wayfaring man little beyond the tender mercies of a public bungalow. With patience, however, and good humour, joined to that precious compagne de voyage, experience, travelling in India is really neither difficult nor unpleasant; and the feeling of triumphing over obstacles, although it does not amount to the romance of a pilgrimage, gives it a zest peculiarly its own.

The Jackanary pass, although partaking less of the character of that scenery "which savage Rosa dashed," than of that more subdued dale and woodland country which "learned Poussin drew," is very beautiful. By-the-bye, and literally by the way, there is a tree about half down the ghaut, so vast and solemn, that it may well be called one of nature's temples, and the poet