On landing at Calicut, a carriage drawn by two white bullocks was, through the hospitality of Mr. Patrick Grant, the Collector of Malabar, waiting for us on the sandy beach, to convey us to his house; a drive of about two miles. The excellent road, of a bright red colour from the soil being composed of laterite, passes through groves of cocoanut-trees, interspersed with many houses, each surrounded by its garden of mangos, nux vomica trees, jacks with pepper-vines creeping over them, and palm-trees. The houses are all substantial and comfortable-looking, built of square blocks of laterite joined with _chunam_, or lime made from calcined sea-shells, and roofed with tiles. The laterite or iron-clay is a rock full of cavities and pores like coral, overlying the granite which forms the basis of Malabar. When excluded from the air it is so soft that any iron instrument can readily cut it, and is dug up in square masses with a pickaxe, and afterwards shaped into blocks with a knife or trowel. After exposure it soon becomes as hard, and is as durable as bricks. Each house has a cocoanut safe or store-room on one side, of open wood-work. Many people were walking along the road, naked men with huge tallipot-palm hats, and women with nothing on but bright-coloured petticoats, looking picturesque in the foreground and middle distance of the palm-shaded vistas. At intervals the cocoanut groves were broken by fields of vivid green paddy, and tanks filled with red lotus-flowers. From Mr. Grant's house, on the top of a rounded grassy hill, there is an extensive and very beautiful view of the undulating hills and dales of Malabar, generally covered with forest; with the ocean on one side, and the Wynaad mountains on the other. Malabar is 188 miles long, 25 miles broad in the northern, and 70 in the southern half, and contains 6262 square miles. It is divided into 17 _Talooks_ or districts, and has a population of 1,602,914 souls; of whom 1,165,174 are Hindus, 414,126 Moplahs, and 23,614 Christians.