which is mostly contained in the talook or county of Manjarabad which stretches for about twenty-five miles along the western frontier of Mysore, a tract of country so beautiful that the laconic Colonel Wellesley (afterwards the great Duke of Wellington), who rarely put a superfluous word into his dispatches, could not refrain from remarking in one of them on the beautiful appearance of the country.[5] There are two things especially remarkable about this tract.  The one is that throughout the best of it there is nothing distinctively Indian in the scenery.  Bamboos are rare, and in much of the tract entirely absent, and as the palm trees are always concealed in the woods there is nothing to connect the country with the usual feature of Indian woodland scenery.  Another point most worthy of notice is that the scenery which appears to one seeing it for the first time to be entirely natural, is in reality very largely the creation of man.  And it has been much improved by his action for, as you leave Manjarabad to go northwards the jungle becomes too continuous, and it is the same if you go southwards into the adjacent district of Coorg, and when you compare the last mentioned tracts with Manjarabad you then begin to realize the fact that nature, if left to herself, is apt to become a trifle monotonous.  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.  And yet from the absence of fences, and of cultivation on the uplands, the whole scene appears to be one of Nature’s creations, and all the more so because no houses nor farm-buildings are visible, as these are hidden amongst the trees on the margins of the forest lands.  Then this long tract of beautifully wooded and watered country is fringed on its western border by the varied mountain crests of the Western Ghauts, while on the east it is traversed by the Hemavati river which is fed by the numerous streams, and brawling burns which descend from the frontier hills.  But though Manjarabad has combinations of charms unrivalled in their kind, we must not forget that an examination of of them by no means exhausts the scenery of the Ghauts, for, on the north-western border of Mysore are the falls of Gairsoppa.  Often had I read descriptions of them which I once thought must have been too highly coloured, but when I visited the falls some years ago I found that the accounts I had read were not only far below the reality, but that the most important parts of the wonderful combinations of the scenes had either never been noted, or been quite inadequately recorded.  I do not now profess to give anything approaching an adequate account of them.  Nor indeed do I think it would be possible to do so.  But what follows will I think at least be of advantage in directing the attention of the traveller to the best way of observing the varied scenes, and noting the wonderful musical combinations, which are to be heard at these marvellously beautiful falls.