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After spending some pleasant days at Mangalore I set out for Manjarabad, the talook or county which borders on the South Kanara district in what is called a manshiel a kind of open-sided cot slung to a bamboo pole which projects far enough in front and rear to be placed with ease on the shoulders of the bearers.
Graham Anderson presented to the Durbar, at the meeting of the Representative Assembly in 1892, an interesting memorandum on rainfall in Mysore, and the influence of trees on the condition of climate, and in this he has given a return of the rainfall for a section of the Manjarabad Talook, stretching inland from the crest of the Ghauts to about the termination of the forest tract a parallelogram of fifteen miles in length from west to east, and about four miles from north to south.
Their temptations, though, as regards the Pariahs, who were, when I entered Manjarabad, merely hereditary serfs, were considerable; and there it was that the value of caste law came in. Caste said, "You shall not touch these women;" and so strong was this law, that I never knew of but one instance of one of the better classes offending with a Pariah woman.
So much do coffee districts vary in India, that the party was to me a startling surprise, which the reader may easily understand when I mention that, after leaving the most northerly plantation in Coorg and entering my district of Manjarabad, there is only one resident lady to be found there, and it is not till you reach the northern district of Mysore, some sixty miles further, that ladies, in the plural, again commence, though even there they do not exist to a very serious extent.
But in Manjarabad man has invaded nature to beautify her and bring her to perfection cutting down and turning eventually into stretches of grass much of the original forest leaving blocks of from 50 to 200 acres of wood on the margin of each group of houses, clearing out the jungle in the bottoms for rice cultivation and thus forming what at some seasons appear to be bright green rivers winding through the forest-clad or wooded slopes, and here and there planting on the knolls trees of various wide-spreading kinds.
Before closing this branch of the subject, I may allude briefly to what has been so often attacked by the opponents of caste: I mean the prohibition of the marriage of widows. This rule exists in Manjarabad, but I am not aware that any great moral evil arises from it, as a widow can always contract to live with a man, the difference being that the ceremonies performed are of an inferior kind.
Early this year a preliminary survey of the route from a point on the line in the interior of Mysore, viâ the Manjarabad Ghaut, to Mangalore was made, and I am in a position to state that the completion of this much and long-wanted line may be regarded as a thing of the near future.
On both of these points we have compared an Indian county with any county in Great Britain, and saw reason to think that morality, as regards the points under consideration, is better in Manjarabad than in any British county.
The northernmost part of Coorg consists of a long tongue of land which projects into Mysore, and the scenery, in its beautiful, open, and park-like character, naturally resembles that of Manjarabad. On my visit to Coorg I look back with pleasure.
At about half past four the carriage was brought round, and we drove to our temporary home to dinner, and on the following day reached Bangalore at two o'clock, the whole trip having thus occupied about sixty hours. After the fall of Seringapatam some further military operations were necessary in Manjarabad, and some of Colonel Wellesley's letters were written within a few miles of my bungalow.
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