The Monticellonian., 1916-08-17

yet the terminus of four rail way lines and the third largest city of India It's importance is less due to its position as trading center than to its being the capital of presidency con siderably larger than Great Britain and Ireland. It Is the seat of uni- versity and its observatory keeps the time for the whole of India.
 Many of the modern public and off cial buildings in Madras are handsome and imposing. but ever since Queen Elizabeth granted q charter to the original East IndiG company, the building most rich in historic memo ries is St. Mary's church, within the i precincts of the Madras fort, St. George, writes A. Hugh Fisher in the Illustrated London News. Standing one Sunday morning in the welcome cool ness of the Secretariat buildings, l was upon the site of the earliest inner fort, where divine service was held until St. Mary's church was built in 167S. to re- main-Subject to various additions and alteratiOns-the oldest British build ing now existing in India, Among the numerous old grayestones now placed along the north and part of the east and west sides of the church is one of Aaron Baker the first president and governor of Fort St. George, with the oldest British inscription in India dated 1652. The interior contains the colors of numerous regiments, and so many monuments and tablets to men famous in the history of the British occupation that the church is some times called the Westminster abbey of India. Nor are it's records associated only with death and burial. In the font of black granite in 16S7 were bap- tized the three daughters of Job Char mock, whom he had by the Hindu widow he had rescued from the funeral pyre of her husband Robert Give was married here in 1753, not far from the Writers Buildings" where. some years previously, he had twice snapped a pistol at his own head; the name of Arthur Wellesley appears in the regis ter as a witness to another marriage in 179S. It is unfortunate that the edifce was not designed in nobler style than was understood by it's archi- tect the master gunner of the time, whose chief, and very reasonable, care was to make the walls thick and the roof rounded to resist artillery.
 The Madras museum is especially rich in remains from the Buddhist tope at Amaravati, many of the sculp- lures from which are familiar to Lon case in Bloomsbury
 Through the NiIeiri Hills.
 From Madras I went via Erode Junction to Mettupalaiyam, the ter minus of the broad-gauge railway, and there changed to the narrow gauge which climbs up the Nilgiri hills. The engine was at the rear, and from q seat on the extreme front of the train l was able to watch the scenery to ad- vantage while the lookout man kept his eyes on the metals for any signs of landslip, such as We met In one deer cutting, where a piece of fallen rock lay across the line.
 We crossed over clefts and gorges by bridges, through the sleepers or which l could see foaming torrents fal below my feet-and crept along mar row lodges with precipitous depths or one side and rocky height soaring or the other.
 .Ooty" itself (7,200 feet above sef IeveD is not unlike Nuwara Eliya il Ceylon. in it's natural scenery as wei as from the social point of view. Sim liar arum lilies were growing near , similar lake. and both places arr crowded during the hot weather b. jaded British seeking health and recre alton. At the time of my visit, how ever OOtacamund was empty. Ther' were no happy bachelors under eanva on the golf links, there was no one a the hotels, and St. Stephens churcl was almost as deserted as the cricke ground In small huts on the hillsid l saw some Todas. the men wearing mantle called the 'putkuli' throwl round the shoulders without any fas tening They are distinctly lighte