The Sispara ghaut takes the traveller from the tropical plains to the temperate climate of the hills, where the face of nature is entirely changed. Here the hills are covered with grass, and the ravines only are filled with trees, forming thickets called _sholas_. In the rear of the bungalow there is an almost unrivalled view of the Malabar plains, from the edge of a precipice. The Koondah hills sweep round until they join the Wynaads, half encircling the Nellamboor valley, which was thousands of feet below us, and is covered with forest, intersected in all directions by open glades of a rich light green. The Koondahs rise up from Malabar like perpendicular walls, so steep that even a cat could not scale them in any part, for a distance of forty miles; and the grandeur of the view from this point, with these sublime cliffs, and the vast expanse of forest-covered plain below, is very striking. At daylight next morning we left the Sispara bungalow, and rode for several miles through a valley interspersed with _sholas_ of rhododendron-trees. Eighteen miles from Sispara is the Avalanche bungalow, 6720 feet above the sea, whence there is a good carriage-road to Ootacamund, the chief European station on the Neilgherry hills. At Avalanche the Koondah range is considered to cease, and the Neilgherry hills to commence, but the nature of the country is the same. Between Avalanche and Ootacamund, a distance of 15 miles, the country consists of grassy undulating rounded hills, divided from each other by wooded _sholas_. Herds of fine buffaloes were grazing by the roadside, and here and there we saw patches of millet (_Setaria Italica_) near the huts of the natives of these hills. As we rode round the artificial lake, and, passing several pretty little houses surrounded by shrubberies, stopped at the door of Dawson's hotel at Ootacamund, it was difficult to persuade ourselves that we were not again in England. The garden in front of the house was stocked with mignonette, wallflowers, and fuchsias, but the immense bushes of heliotrope covered with flowers, ten feet high and at least twenty in circumference, could not have attained such dimensions in an English climate. Ootacamund is nearly in the centre of the table-land of the Neilgherries, at the foot of the western face of the peak of Dodabetta, and, except to the N.W., the station is completely surrounded by grass-covered hills. Houses are scattered about under the shelter of the hills, with gardens and plantations of _Eucalyptus_ and _Acacia heterophylla_, trees introduced from Australia, around them; and the broad excellent roads are bordered by _Cassia glauca_ bushes with a bright orange flower, honeysuckles, fox-gloves, geraniums, roses, and masses of the tall _Lobelia excelsa_. A graceful white iris is also common.