South of the high, sun-scorched plateau of the Deccan, from the mouth of the Kistna to the Indian Ocean, the great Indian peninsula rapidly narrows.

Tempered by more frequent rains and the moist breezes which sweep across it from both the Malabar and the Coromandel coasts, the climate is more equable and the heat, though more continuous, is less fierce.

The whole character of the country is luxuriantly tropical, and though the lowlands are not more fertile than the matchless delta of the Ganges, the more varied prodigality of nature shows itself alike in the waving forests of cocoanut, which are common all along the coast, in the rich tobacco-fields of Madura and Coimbatore, in the plantations of cinchona, pepper, cardamoms, and other spices on the slopes of the Nilgiri highlands, and in the splendid growths of teak, ebony, and sandalwood that clothe the Western Ghats.
The population, which in some parts attains extraordinary density and lives almost exclusively on the fruits of the soil, is of the old Dravidian stock, industrious and frugal as in other parts of India, and of a placid and gentle temper.

Nowhere else in India does one come into such close contact with its original non-Aryan peoples; and nowhere else has the earliest type of religious and social institutions evolved by the superior civilization of the Aryans been so completely preserved from the disturbing influences of later ages.

And yet--such are the curious contrasts which abound in this strange country--nowhere else does one find so many living survivals of the intercourse which occurred from time to time between India and the West, many centuries before Europe turned her eyes towards that Terra Incognita.