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The tradition that Col Arthur Wellesley, later to be the Duke of Wellington, leading a British detachment from Vandiperiyar to Bodinayakanur, then over the High Range and into the Coimbatore plains to cut off Tippu Sultan's retreat from Travancore, was the first Englishman in the High Range appears to be belied by the dates involved. If the story is a dozen years too early for Wellesley, it is quite possible that some other officer in General Meadow's Army may have had that distinction. Unfortunately, no record of that pioneering mountain crossing has been traced. What is available is a record of the surveying of this terrain in 1816-17 by Lt Benjamin Swayne Ward, son of Col Francis Swayne Ward to whom we owe many of the early views of Madras and South India Now available in lithprints.
Ward and his assistant Lt Eyre Connor were on orders to map the unexplored country between Cochin and Madurai and so they followed the Periyar into the mountains and then headed north into what at that time was described as "the dark impenetrable forests of the High Range". They lost men to at least one elephant charge, suffered agony from leech bites and once ran so short of food that a deer run down and being feasted on by wild dogs was manna for the party and their jungle guides. The subsequent report by Ward and Connor was to lead to the Periyar Dam project, completed only in the 1890s,but for the present they were more pre occupied getting into the mountains that they could see towering in the distance from Bodi. Then, on 14 October 1817, "the weather having improved the ascent into the High Range began".
Their first major camp was at a flat promontory at 6000 feet. And this was ever afterwards to be known as Top Station. Moving north, they saw to their south the Cardamom Hills, a slope 45 miles long and 30 wide from the heights above Bodi stretching into Travancore. To their north there appeared to be grasslands on high rock peaks. And in front of them, "an outstanding mountain, shaped like an elephant’s head". On 8 November, they established camp at the confluence of three rivers, which they judged to be the centre of the district, and from Munnar ("Moonar – three rivers), as it came to be known, they surveyed the area, discovered the ancient village of Neramangalam in ruins but surmised that it might well have been from here that ivory and peacock feathers, pepper and cardamom, sandalwood and other timber went to the lands to the West across the Arabian Sea".
It was to be nearly 50 years later that Sir Charles Trevelyan, Governor of Madras, instructed Col Douglas Hamilton to explore the hill country in the western part of the Madras Presidency, requesting special advice on the feasibility of establishing sanatoria for the British in the South and of developing revenue- earning projects without endangering the environment, as had happened in Ceylon where coffee had destroyed not only the rain forest but also paddy cultivation in the north – central rice bowl of ancient Ceylon.
Marching south along the Anamallai, Hamilton saw "the grandest and most extensive (view) I have ever beheld; some of the precipices are of stupendous magnitude and the charming variety of scenery comprising undulating grassy hills, wooded valleys, rocky crags, overhanging precipices, the green rice fields far below in the valley of the Anchanad, the grand mass of the Pulunies (beyond) and the blue ranges in the far distance, present a view far beyond my power to describe…"
On 7 May 1862, Hamilton set out to climb Anaimudi, following a "well worn elephant path, ascending the opposite slope by a series of short zigzags that were so perfect and regular that we could scarcely Eravikulam plateau (later Hamilton’s Plateau), watered by two streams, one of which bordered the Eravikulam swamp before cascading down 1000 feet in a beautiful waterfall. Separating the plateau from Anaimudi was a deep, thickly forested ravine – later called Inaccessible Valley and, detouring it, they began the climb from the east to the peak. On our return, we followed an elephant path for several miles, the gradient of this path was truly wonderful, these sagacious animals avoiding every steep or difficult ascent, except at one hill which was cleverly zigzagged, owing to masses of sheer rock preventing a regular incline being taken."
It was to be 15 years later before another report came in. But this was more significant from the viewpoint of this history, for though it came as a result of the shikar expeditions of the ever-exploring John Daniel Munro, he was an opener – up of land and a pioneering planter first and a shikari second. Reporting on the High Range in 1877, he wrote, "Exclusive of the low Unjenaad valley which is not above 3100 feet, the area within these boundaries may be roughly estimated at 200 square miles with an elevation over 5000 ft … Much of this is worthless land, but there is a good deal fit for cultivation … Coffee … would succeed well at a somewhat lower elevation, and Tea and Cinchona would grow miles available for these purposes, and there being the great inducement of a good climate, it will doubtless not be many years before these fine hills get occupied".
And Munro, who always had a long – range view of things, indeed proved right again. Mention has already been made of the journey into these hills by Henry Turner and his half – brother ‘Thambi’ A W Turner, the concessions that Munro, then Superintendent of the Cardamom Hills for the Raja of Travancore, got them from the Raja, and the Society the three of them formed in 1879 with Rs 450,000 capital. The agreement they entered into with the Rajah read in part: "The annual sum of one half British rupee on every acre of land other than grassland comprised in such deed which has already been or shall hereafter from time to time be opened up for the purpose of cultivation or otherwise".
While Thambi Turner began in 1879 clearing the forest round the Devikulam camp, later to become the taluk headquarters, Henry returned to Madras and began looking for others willing to take up land here. The first to do so was Baron George Otto Von Rosenberg of Dresden and his sister who were kin of the Turners by marriage. The Baron opened up Manalle, later a part of the family's Lockhart Estate, and it was developed by his son Baron John Michael in the 1890s, the first tennis court in the hills being added. It was property that was to remain for years in the family. Then came A H Sharp, who opened up Parvathi in the wilds and planted the first tea, to be followed by C Donovan. In1881 came E J Fowler to open up Aneimudi Estate and in 1882, C O Master and G W Claridge, C W W Martin, a fellow of Henry Turner's in the Madras Civil Service, sent his 18 – year – old nephew Aylmer Ffoulke Martin (Toby) to open Sothuparai near Chittavurrai in 1883 and Toby Martin ever seemed to be clearing new land for others after that. Other estates of this era were H M Knight's Surianalle, Panniar belonging to J A Hunter and K E Nicoll and the Turners’ Talliar where the last coffee in the High Range flourished on 700 acres. Every one of them benefited from the experience of Ceylon planter John Payne, whom Henry Turner ‘imported’ in 1881. Payne not only opened up Talliar with coffee for the Turners, but he taught his fellow planters in the High Range road tracing, draining and general thottam work. He also cut a riding road, Payne's Ghat, from Devikulam to Periakanal and opened the district up to ‘civilisation’.
In the Eighties, it was only their indomitable will that kept the planters going in this wilderness. They lived in grass – thatched huts with mud and wattle walls and surrounded their homes with elephant trenches. The only medical aid each planter had was "his own medicine chest and he had to doctor himself and his coolies with only Doctor Short’s old book on Medicine in India to help him". It was 1889 before the pioneers saw the first European woman in the hills. That was when Baron Otto brought up his wife, the daughter of Henry Gribble of the Madras Civil Service; another Gribble girl married one of the Turner brothers. And in 1890 Toby Martin brought his bride – and they were to live decades in these hills.
An event which helped considerably to improve the lives of the early planters was when Claridge and Toby Martin descended from Top Station to Bottom Station (Koranganie at the head of the Bodi Pass) and went on to Bodinayakanur. There they met Suppan Chetty, who appeared to be the village leader, and negotiated him to send up rice and other provisions by headload and bring down cinchona bark and other products for onward transport. Soon bullocks, donkeys and ponies were brought in to help. This link with Suppan Chetty and his adopted son Alaganan Chetty, later an M L A, was to continue into recent times with their successors, M/s A S Alaganan Chetty & Sons.
Another event of significance was the arrival of John Ajoo, A Chinese, at Talliar Estate. One of six Chinese brought out by the East India Company to advice on tea planting and manufacture in the Nilgiris, he was recruited by Henry Turner and sent to the High Range. A small field of tea around the Munnar Estate Manager's bungalow was once 13 acres in extent and used to be called ‘Chinaman’s Field’. John Ajoo's son Antony later owned a small estate called Vialkadavu next to Talliar in which the Turner family long retained an interest.
By 1894, 26 estates, all of them small – holdings, were functioning on the Society's lands but none was doing well as the cinchona boom began to go bust. The Society, by now, was in financial difficulties and it advertised its land widely in British and Indian newspapers. One of the first to respond was the North and South Sylhet Company, a subsidiary of Finlay Muir, arrived in India in December 1894 to finalise the transaction, then decided to visit the High Range with his son James and P R Buchanan and W Milne (from Ceylon). Accompanying them was H M Knight, a pioneer in the Anamallais and at the time a prominent proprietary planter. James Muir's record of that journey from 17 December 1894 till 5 January 1895 is not without interest, revealing as it does the conditions of the times. It reads in excerpts:
