106
CHOLERA IN THE COIMBATORE DISTRICT.
Influence of the phy-
sical geography of the
district, as contrasted
with Malabar.
121. The position of the Coimbatore District, in regard to the phenomena of
cholera distribution, is one of considerable interest. In
common with the Salem District, it rarely suffers during the
years of primary invasion (as in 1859, 1864, and 1869). The
western portion of the district includes the high mountain ranges of the
Neilgherry and Annamally Hills, and these, except in the narrow, funnel-shaped,
pass at Palghaut, through which the high road and south-west line of Railway
now run, completely cut off the district from the Malabar country below the western
Ghauts. There is a wonderful difference in the climate, and the fauna and flora
of Malabar and Coimbatore. Even the people of the western side of the ghauts
are a different order of beings, in race, customs, and habits, to those of the eastern
side. The former live habitually in a moist atmosphere, in which vegetation
attains a luxuriance unknown in any other portion of Southern India. They
Malabar.
do not group together in towns and villages (except in a
few 'places on the coast), but each house is usually distinct,
and overshadowed by the graceful foliage of the cocoa or areca palm, the jack-
fruit, or plaintain. In every hedge-row and shady nook, ferns, lichens, and
orchids abound, testifying to the humid nature of the atmosphere. The rainfall
on the western side of the ghauts is contributed chiefly by the south-west
monsoon, and the average fall is rarely below 100 inches, and in many places
exceeds 150 inches in the year. The soil, a red laterite with sand and alluvium,
is naturally fertile, and the careful cultivation of every nook of garden land
with palms, pepper, coffee, and plantains, and the terracing and irrigation of
rice fields on the hill sides and valleys, is a most pleasant sight to the eye,
after the dry and barren-looking plains of Coimbatore on the eastern side of the
ghauts. Yet, with all its natural wealth and profusion of vegetation, the
Malabar Province is inimical to many forms of animal life. The horned cattle
of the district are stunted, so that a Malabar cow is hardly bigger than a
Leicester sheep. It is the fact that sheep do not thrive at all in this region of
perennial moisture, and the human race is in many parts of the district held
in check by the terrible malaria engendered in so much moisture and excess of
vegetation. Epidemic small-pox pursues its ravages with a virulence unknown
in the dryer regions of the Carnatic, and cholera, when it does invade the tract
of the Western Coast, becomes a dire pestilence in the land. Happily for the
people, these invasions do not occur oftener than once in four or five years,
and when they do come, the outbreaks are not usually prolonged beyond the
year, or the season, following that in which the invasion takes place.
Explanation of the
arid character of the
Coimbatore District.
122. The mountain barrier between Malabar and Coimbatore intercepts the
rain clouds of the south-west monsoon, causing precipitation on
the western side, while the districts to the eastward get scarcely
any of this monsoon rainfall. Coimbatore immediately under
the ghauts, on the east, is particularly deficient in rain during the south-west
monsoon. The little it gets is in the form of stray showers, when the winds are
variable. The chief rainfall of the district occurs during the north-east monsoon,
when the rain clouds are kept back by the mountain barrier to the westward.
Owing to its geographical position immediately to the eastward of the ghauts, it
is for the most part a dry and barren district. The cultivation consists mainly