id not dare to rival the
sculpture of nature. Having chosen, for instance, a pyramidal rock, or
a cupola shaped hillock like Elephanta, Or Karli, they scraped away
inside, according to the Puranas, for centuries, planning on so grand a
style that no modern architecture has been able to conceive anything
to equal it. Fables (?) about the Cyclops seem truer in India than in
Egypt.

The marvellous railroad from Narel to Khandala reminds one of a similar
line from Genoa up the Apenines. One may be said to travel in the air,
not on land. The railway traverses a region 1,400 feet above Konkan,
and, in some places, while one rail is laid on the sharp edge of the
rock, the other is supported on vaults and arches. The Mali Khindi
viaduct is 163 feet high. For two hours we hastened on between sky and
earth, with abysses on both sides thickly covered with mango trees and
bananas. Truly English engineers are wonderful builders.

The pass of Bhor-Ghat is safely accomplished and we are in Khandala.
Our bungalow here is built on the very edge of a ravine, which nature
herself has carefully concealed under a cover of the most luxuriant
vegetation. Everything is in blossom, and, in this unfathomed recess,
a botanist might find sufficient material to occupy him for a lifetime.
Palms have disappeared; for the most part they grow only near the
sea. Here they are replaced by bananas, mango trees, pipals (ficus
religiosa), fig trees, and thousands of other trees and shrubs, unknown
to such outsiders as ourselves. The Indian flora is too often slandered
and misrepresented as being full of beautiful, but scentless, flowers.
At some seasons this may be true enough, but, as long as jasmines,
the various balsams, white tuberoses, and golden champa (champaka or
frangipani) are in blossom, this statement is far from being true. The
aroma of champa alone is so powerful as to make one almost giddy. For
size, it is the king of flowering trees, and hundreds of them were in
full bloom, just at this time of year, on Mataran and Khandala.

We sat on the verandah, talking and enjoying the surrounding views,
until well-nigh midnight. Everything slept around us.

Khandala is nothing but a big village, situated on the flat top of one
of the mountains of the Sahiadra range, about 2,200 feet above the sea
level. It is surrounded by isolated peaks, as strange in shape as any we
have seen.

One of them, straight before us, on the opposite side of the abyss,