We were met by Mr. McIvor at Eddiwanna, and started for the village of Wundoor, six miles distant, in _munsheels_ or hammocks, slung to bamboos with a shade over them, and carried by six men, who kept up unearthly yells the whole time. The road leads through rice-cultivation and groves of betel-nut palms, jacks, and mangos. Wundoor is a pretty village, with an avenue of sumach-trees[398] leading up to the post-house or travellers' bungalow. These post-houses, which are erected by the Government at easy stages along all the roads in India, for the convenience of travellers, are exceedingly comfortable, and render travelling in India as easy and commodious as it is the reverse in Peru and other parts of South America. At Wundoor the first bungalow we had seen put an end to all idea of having to rough it while travelling in India. The building contained several clean rooms, with cane-bottom sofas, arm-chairs, and tables; and outside there was a pleasant verandah, with a glorious view of the Koondah mountains, which it was necessary to ascend on our road to the Neilgherries. A clump of trees, consisting of jacks, mangos, and peepuls, formed a huge arch, through which there was an enchanting landscape of smiling hill and dale, with the dense forest beyond, crowned by the broken outline of the distant mountains. We set out from Wundoor at daybreak, and passed a house just outside the village, where, a few days before, a tiger had carried off a child before the eyes of its parents. Next day the brute had the temerity to come again and try to force open the door, when a man shot it from the window. For some hours we rode through a country where the jungle alternated with cultivation in open glades, which in their natural state are covered with _Pandanus_, but the people here, as in other parts of Malabar, are fast encroaching on the forest, and converting these glades into paddy-fields. As we approached the foot of the mountains cultivation at last entirely ceased, and the road led through a dense forest of enormous bamboos, teak-trees with their large coarse leaves, black-wood, and other fine timber. At noon we reached the post-house of Sholacul, at the foot of the Sispara ghaut, which leads up to the summit of the Koondahs, a western continuation of the Neilgherries.