As we are now hearing so much of cholera in Europe, it may not be uninteresting to mention that, though the province was under British administration from 1831 to 1881, and there have since been a considerable number of European officials in the employ of the now native government of Mysore, only one European official has died of cholera during that period, and that, though there are a considerable number of planters, only one has been reported to have died of the disease, though his, I am told, was a doubtful case.
I have said that there are marked differences between the western tracts and the remainder of the province, but the most marked difference of course between the forest and woodland country of the west, and the country to the east, lies in the scenery of the two tracts, for, though in the latter case there are occasional bits of attractive landscape, and partially wooded hills, there is nothing at all to compare with the grand forest scenery of the Western Ghauts, or the charming park-like woodlands which stretch into the tableland at varying distances from the crests of the frontier mountains.

Everyone who has seen the latter has been struck by their extraordinary and diversified beauty, and last year a friend of mine, who had for a considerable time been travelling all round the world, said to me, as he rode up to my house, "After all I have seen I have seen nothing to equal this." But this, I must add, was the very best of our Western Ghaut park scenery which is mostly contained in the talook or county of Manjarabad which stretches for about twenty-five miles along the western frontier of Mysore, a tract of country so beautiful that the laconic Colonel Wellesley (afterwards the great Duke of Wellington), who rarely put a superfluous word into his dispatches, could not refrain from remarking in one of them on the beautiful appearance of the country.[5] There are two things especially remarkable about this tract.

The one is that throughout the best of it there is nothing distinctively Indian in the scenery.

Bamboos are rare, and in much of the tract entirely absent, and as the palm trees are always concealed in the woods there is nothing to connect the country with the usual feature of Indian woodland scenery.
Another point most worthy of notice is that the scenery which appears to one seeing it for the first time to be entirely natural, is in reality very largely the creation of man.

And it has been much improved by his action for, as you leave Manjarabad to go northwards the jungle becomes too continuous, and it is the same if you go southwards into the adjacent district of Coorg, and when you compare the last mentioned tracts with Manjarabad you then begin to realize the fact that nature, if left to herself, is apt to become a trifle monotonous.