Matepoliem is twenty-three miles from the town of Coimbatore, and I rode this distance on a Neilgherry pony in the early morning. The road is perfectly straight, with an avenue of shady trees along the whole length, and good bridges over the dry sandy water-courses. The soil appeared to be poor, partly waste, and partly cultivated with _cholum_ (_Sorghum Vulgare_[425]), _lablab_,[426] and sesame. _Cholum_, or great millet, is much cultivated in the peninsula, and used as food in the shape of cakes and porridge, where rice is scarce or too expensive. It grows to a height of five or six feet, and cattle are very fond of the straw, which contains sugar, but it soon exhausts the soil, and two crops are never taken off the same land in succession. There are two villages on the road between Matepoliem and Coimbatore, called Karamuddy and Goodaloor, in both of which there is a _choultry_ or native bungalow, and in the latter an English post-house. At Karamuddy there is a very picturesque temple, and on the roadside I passed several horses of earthenware, votive offerings by the potters to their god. Under many of the trees there are images of the elephant-headed, pot-bellied god of wisdom, Ganesa, anointed with ghee, and adorned with garlands of flowers. The streets of Coimbatore consist of long rows of red-tiled, mud-walled buildings, with no windows, and overhanging eaves supported by wooden pillars, under which there are raised platforms where the people sit and talk. In peeping in at the doors, I could never discern any article of furniture in the dark obscurity of the interiors, but they generally looked clean and well swept. The houses of the English officials are about a mile from the town, generally surrounded by park-like compounds, but the trees and grass thrive badly in the shallow sandy soil. Outside the town there are two very large tanks, one nearly a mile long, which irrigate some rice-fields. The view is very pretty, with these extensive sheets of water in the foreground, the cupolas of temples rising above the trees beyond, and Lambton's Peak with the blue line of the Neilgherries in the distance.