These are the Todars, a race numbering less than a thousand souls, who now claim to be the original "Lords of the hills." In times so remote that no record of them remains there are still indications that the Indian peninsula was peopled by races of Scythic origin: and, when the Aryan warriors came forth with their Vedic hymns and grand old civilization from the fastnesses of Sind, they swept irresistibly over Hindostan, and formed as it were an upper stratum of the population. The Scythic element either mixed with, or became subservient to the Aryan in the plains, as the Sudra caste, while in the hill and forest fastnesses a few tribes remained isolated and independent. Such, possibly, may have been the origin of the Todars on the Neilgherries. The Brahmins, characteristically dovetailing every tradition and every race into one or other of their historical myths, declare that the Todars came from the north in the army of Rama, when he marched against the wicked Ravana; and that, deserting their chief, they fled to these hills. They themselves have no tradition of their origin, but believe that they were created on the hills. They are certainly a very remarkable and interesting people, tall, well-proportioned, and athletic, and utterly unlike all other natives of India. They have Jewish features, with aquiline noses, hazel eyes, thick lips, bushy black beards, and immensely thick clusters of glossy hair cut so as to stand in dense masses round the sides of the head, a very necessary protection from the sun, as they never wear any other head-covering. The old men are very handsome, with long white beards and upright gait, looking like the patriarchs of the Old Testament, with their strongly marked Jewish features: but the expressions of the younger men are less agreeable to look upon. The women are very careful of their hair, which hangs down in long glossy ringlets; and both sexes wear nothing but a long piece of coarse cotton cloth, with two broad red stripes round the edges, worn by the men like a Roman toga, which sets off their well-shaped limbs to advantage, and exposes one leg entirely, up to the hip; and by the women so as to form a short petticoat and mantle. They never wash either their persons or their clothes from the day of their birth to the day of their death. They live in small encampments called _munds_, which are scattered over the hills, and consist of five or six huts, and a larger one used as a dairy. The families are in the habit of migrating from one _mund_ to another, at certain seasons of the year; so that we often came upon a _mund_ apparently abandoned. A Todar's hut is exactly like the tilt of a waggon, very neatly roofed, with the ends boarded in, and a single low entrance. They are generally surrounded by a stone wall, and the dairy, a larger and more important building, is always a little apart. The only occupation of this singular people is to tend their large