half-opened door, displaying their forms, and
struggling with the gloom around. At our
feet lay the ornamented, tinselled crown,
which they appeared to look upon with
awe, and peering through the half-open door
were the glowing eyes of our coolies, their
heads in close proximity to each other, all
straining to catch a glance at the sacred
object.

We were now only twelve miles from the
summit; yet here I was obliged to part
with my companion. His feet were so
much blistered, and he had been so
ferociously assailed by the leeches, that he
resolved upon allowing me the honour of
visiting the Peak alone—the unexpected
comforts of the Rest-house at Pallabatula perhaps
conducing to this determination.

The following morning we parted, I taking
with me four coolies and our guide. Our
road lay directly up the steep side of a
black-looking hill that towered above the
puny village, directly behind the Rest-
house where my friend was located. Two
days before, it had been the bed of a
mountain torrent that had swept away every
particle of earth, and left nothing but the
huge- rocks, bleak and grim-looking, jutting
forth from the side. The climbing this "road"
was laborious in the extreme. After two
hours of the most severe fatigue—during
which, we had only got over four miles of
our way—we came to a bungalow, situated
on a small moist plain, where a herd of
wild elephants were amusing themselves, and
feeding.

About four o'clock in the afternoon, I
resumed my toilsome journey. Steep after
steep of rocky acclivities were to be
surmounted. To our right, bleak and stern, rose
the mountain itself; whilst on its summit
could now be fully discerned the wooden
temple which Buddhistic piety had long ago
erected over the fabulous foot-mark. At a
distance, it seemed somewhat like those
sweet fabrics with which confectioners
sometimes ornament bridal cakes—a bower, with
the strangest jutting forth of the eaves,
and the most extraordinary sloping of roof.
Behind us, spread out a large jungly valley,
over which the shadows of the clouds chased
each other, as gleams of the sun
occasionally pierced the gloom around. We were
in the clouds themselves, and could mark
others rolling heavily into each other all
around us, occasionally split up into long thin
shreds by a more than ordinarily severe blast
of wind, and stretching in long lines far away
towards the neighbouring hills. Here all was
nature, in its rudest, wildest condition; no
trace of man, or of his works, was within our
range; even the very road on which we
travelled had been washed out of the side of the
eternal hills by a mountain torrent. Wild
animals howled around us in the jungle;
disporting, or quarrelling, or eagerly searching
for food.

Three miles more of laborious travelling,
undiversified by any extraordinary
incident or adventure, brought us to a station,
called Deabetine, where a stone bungalow,
of a very substantial character, is to be met
with; the erection of an old Kandian king.
As there was no chance of reaching the summit
the same evening, I determined on putting up
for the night in this carcase of a bungalow;
greatly to the annoyance of my guides, who
regarded the station as unlucky. The bungalow
was situated in the centre of a small
piece of cleared land, accompanied by a jungle
which ascended steeply on three sides, and, on
the fourth, spread out into the small irregular
plain we were occupying. Through this plain
our road lay to an adjoining ravine. When
we reached this station, heavy masses of black
clouds were forming round the hill on all sides
of us. Everything around us was damp,
cold, and uncomfortable. Altogether, a more
dismal place to pass a night could scarcely
be found; and often did I anxiously turn
to the cone-summit of the Peak, thinking
whether it would not be better to make
a violent effort to reach it that night;
but prudence forbade. Now and then, an
opening in the envious cloud that hemmed us
in, would disclose a scene of wondrous beauty,
in the distant plains of the lowlands, skirted
by their zone of cocoa-nut trees, that appeared
to mingle with the ocean, the outline of the
shore being faintly visible. It would be a
mistake to suppose, however, that on account
of the wildness of the scene and situation,
quiet and repose reigned here. The monkeys,
jackals, and birds kept up an incessant round
of screaming and barking, amidst which the
growl of the disturbed cheetah, or the call of
the distant elephant, boomed ever and anon,
like the sound of cannon heard amidst regular
platoon-firing.

So dense was the watery vapour, that
all our efforts to kindle a fire were unavailing.
The wood around was completely
saturated with moisture; and, as fast as we
succeeded in obtaining, after great difficulty,
a partial flame, was that flame extinguished
by the fuel we heaped upon it. Two hours
were thus spent in prolonged but vain
attempts to get up a flame; nor was it merely
that we might luxuriate in a hot supper,
or obtain its cheerful warmth, in that cold
damp, prison-like bungalow, that we so
eagerly desired success; there was another
and a much more powerful reason why we
should use our utmost exertions to insure a
fire throughout the night, inasmuch as there
were numerous evidences that our bungalow
was often used by the wild animals of the
jungle around, and the only security we had
against their visiting us during the night
consisted in the cheerful blaze of a well-kept
fire.

The journey of the ensuing morning did
not greatly differ from that of the preceding
day; it was somewhat more steep, however, in