I conclude the extracts from Lord Lytton’s diary with this description of Coonoor and Ooty.

by Bourne & Shepherd, albumen cabinet card, 1876. from good gentlewoman.wordpress.com

To Lady Lytton

Sept 11, 1877

We reached this place yesterday just at nightfall, after a rather fatiguing journey, and the inspection of several relief camps on the way. I was conveyed up the ghat in a thing very much like the buck-basket in which Falstaff, was concealed by Dame Quickly. It-corresponds to the Simla jonpon, and is here called a tonjon. The rest of our party were mounted on animals which the Commissioner was pleased to call ponies, but they look more like what the beasts in the Apocalypse might have been after several months of famine diet. Colley’s animal-under the pangs of starvation, I suppose-insist on devouring the hinder parts of the animal immediately in front of him; and poor little Thornton, who happen to be mounted on it, being much alarmed for the safety of the same part of his own person, which was certainly the plumpest of the two, descended in panic to the ground from ” that bad eminence.” It was so cold here last night that fires were lighted when we reached the little inn -where we are now lodging, and very welcome they were. I slept well, and had a pleasant stroll this morning before breakfast with Burne and Villiers. All I have yet seen of Coonoor (which; of course, is but little) pleases me greatly. No grand scenery, but amiable, lazy undulations, pretty gardens, hedges of rose and ‘verbena, a soft, sweet, cloudy air, and excellent roads.

Duke drove me in his pony carriage this morning to the first stage. The morning was fine, and for the first time I have seen Ootacamund. Having seen it, I affirm it to be a paradise, and declare without hesitation that in every particular it far surpasses all that its enthusiastic admirers and devoted lovers have about it. The afternoon was rainy and the road muddy, but such beautiful English rain, such English mud. Imagine a combination of

Hertfordshire lanes,
Devonshire downs,
Westmoreland lakes,
Scotch trout-streams,
Lusitanian views

This is the last of a four-part series on Viceroy Lord Lytton’s letters to his wife from Madras. The earlier parts can be read as per links below:

The Viceroy in Madras
The Viceroy visits a famine camp
The Viceroy gets fan mail