a, may be allowed, I hope, the
expression of a humble opinion. The Caucasian Mountains, I do not deny,
are more majestic than Ghats of India, and their splendour cannot be
dimmed by comparison with these; but their beauty is of a type, if I may
use this expression. At their sight one experiences true delight, but
at the same time a sensation of awe. One feels like a pigmy before
these Titans of nature. But in India, the Himalayas excepted, mountains
produce quite a different impression. The highest summits of the Deccan,
as well as of the triangular ridge that fringes Northern Hindostan, and
of the Eastern Ghats, do not exceed 3,000 feet. Only in the Ghats of the
Malabar coast, from Cape Comorin to the river Surat, are there heights
of 7,000 feet above the surface of the sea. So that no comparison can
be dawn between these and the hoary headed patriarch Elbruz, or Kasbek,
which exceeds 18,000 feet. The chief and original charm of Indian
mountains wonderfully consists in their capricious shapes. Sometimes
these mountains, or, rather, separate volcanic peaks standing in a row,
form chains; but it is more common to find them scattered, to the great
perplexity of geologists, without visible cause, in places where the
formation seems quite unsuitable. Spacious valleys, surrounded by high
walls of rock, over the very ridge of which passes the railway, are
common. Look below, and it will seem to you that you are gazing upon
the studio of some whimsical Titanic sculptor, filled with half finished
groups, statues, and monuments. Here is a dream-land bird, seated upon
the head of a monster six hundred feet high, spreading its wings
and widely gaping its dragon's mouth; by its side the bust of a man,
surmounted by a helmet, battlemented like the walls of a feudal castle;
there, again, new monsters devouring each other, statues with broken
limbs, disorderly heaps of huge balls, lonely fortresses with loopholes,
ruined towers and bridges. All this scattered and intermixed with
shapes changing incessantly like the dreams of delirium. And the chief
attraction is that nothing here is the result of art, everything is the
pure sport of Nature, which, however, has occasionally been turned to
account by ancient builders. The art of man in India is to be sought
in the interior of the earth, not on its surface. Ancient Hindus seldom
built their temples otherwise than in the bosom of the earth, as
though they were ashamed of their efforts, or d