Excerpt from Letters From Malabar: And on the Way The Administration of this favoured land is as good as the country is beautiful, and, for my part, I greatly regret that ministers from without are inclined to regard reform as synonymous with destruction of individuality. The individuality of the states of Travancore and Cochin is a most precious possession, which, once lost, will never be replaced in any other part of the world, or in India itself Nor is it apparent why people, who are happy and lightly taxed, should be reformed whether they will or not, while in many respects these two states are ahead of British India in civilisation. N ow that the railway has pierced these two principalities and scarred their sacred soil with iron bands, the traveller can, if he wishes, see for himself, and he will go away with a feeling that he has left behind him the most beautiful part of India. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.