CHAPTER IX
OLD MADRAS AND ITS WORTHIES
A mirror is of no use to a blind man ; in the same way knowledge is of no use to a man without discernment.-SLOKA.
We shared a house with the archdeacon for a few months and then settled in a smaller one on the Nungumbaukum High Road. Nungumbaukum is a small native village with only a few of its original rice-fields and cocoanut- palm topes left. It is all part of the extensive Choultry Plain. The River Cooum divides Nungumbaukum from Chetput and Egmore, and is here a broad, shallow, inland stream broken by stretches of pale sand, shining pools of water, and belts of emerald green herbage. There are trees everywhere, always green, and at certain seasons covered with luxuriant blossom. Many of the houses are of historical interest and connected with names that may be found in the annals of science and commerce.
It was in the very heart of Nungumbaukum that James Anderson, M.D., lived, the first Physician-General of the Madras Medical Service. He occupied a house, afterwards owned by Sir Thomas Pycroft, and now known as Pycroft's Gardens.
The Service merits more than a few words of mention, since it is ornamented with a long line of botanists and naturalists from Edward Bulkley, the compiler of the first list of Madras birds, to Ronald Ross, the discoverer of the malarial germ in the mosquito. Like the Civil
