After leaving Dharapurum the road becomes very sandy, and passes over a bleak open country covered with low bushes, on the frontier between the Coimbatore and Madura collectorates. A range of mountains bounded the view to the south. A slow jolting journey of thirty miles brought me to the village of Pulkanooth in Madura. _Cholum_ and _lablab_ were cultivated in the surrounding fields, and from the top of a ridge of rocks overhanging the village there is an extensive view of open country covered with waving _cholum_, and bounded by the broken outline of the Pulney hills. Near the village there is the ruin of a square brick fort, with bastions at the angles, entirely overgrown with bushes. One of the happiest signs of English rule is to be found in the number of ruined forts scattered over the country, once the lurking-places of brutal robbers who extorted half the crops from a wretched peasantry, whose descendants now reap the fruits of their labour in peace. In taking a walk near Pulkanooth I encountered a marriage procession. First came a man with a drum, then two more with a gong of skin stretched on wooden hoops, then a man with a large game-cock under his arm, then a bullock led by a woman, then four women covered with bracelets and anklets, then a pony ridden by a boy about twelve, with nothing on but a red turban and gold necklace and bracelets, with a little girl about five in front, whom he clasped round the waist; then more men and women, another drum, and lastly a small boy mounted on a large cow. They appeared to have come from a distance, as they stopped to rest under a peepul-tree, by the road-side. Another night journey took me to the town of Dindigul, a pretty little place at the foot of an isolated mass of primitive rock, whose perpendicular sides are crowned by a dismantled fort, said to have been erected in the days of Dupleix and French ambition, and to have been occupied and long held by Hyder Ali of Mysore. Here the plains are chiefly covered with _cholum_ and _cumboo_; and between the town and the rock there is a grassy esplanade, a grove of cocoanut and betel-palms, and a neat little temple to Ganesa. Troops of young girls were drawing water from a tank near the esplanade. Their slight graceful figures, supporting chatties on their heads, were perfect models of beauty; but they had black ugly faces, flabby ear-lobes, and large studs stuck in their noses. To be admired their backs must be turned.