l&i Contributions to Physical Geography. 



aslant the hollow channel it has formed, and gradually enlarg- 

 ing its surface in its descent, is buried in the boiling depth in 

 union with the other. A more gentle rill, passing immediately 

 over the second fall, makes a striking variety to the rush of its 

 noisy neighbours. The fourth cascade is more distinctly ob- 

 served, without the same exertion, in its southern direction, 

 skirting the rocky steep of this enormous basin, and being ex- 

 panded by the obstruction it meets from some projecting irre- 

 gularities of stone. Hundreds of pigeons, about the size of 

 butterflies, were sporting over the spray. We had to move 

 round to a rising mound at the south-west corner, where the 

 precipitated floods flow off^, to be enabled to have a full view of 

 the fifth fall, whose rolling foam, like soap-suds, edging from 

 the summit to the termination of a solid mass of laterite, of se- 

 veral hundred feet in altitude, flashes through scattered frag- 

 ments that lie rounded at its agitated base, and seek their re- 

 pose in the general outlet. On the right rise the stupendous 

 bulwarks of the western Ghauts, towering in the pride of their 

 primeval magnificence. Several attempts were made to ascer- 

 tain the depth of this wonderful reservoir : one by letting out 

 strong twine, to which a weight was suspended, but this plan 

 did not succeed after 300 or 400 feet ; so another experiment 

 was resorted to, and frequently repeated, of throwing down a 

 coco-nut, and timing it as long as it continued visible, which 

 always give the same result of eight seconds ; and by my cal- 

 culation, computing the centripetal force of the falling body to 

 be at the rate of 15^^^ Paris feet in a second of time, and in- 

 creasing in proportion as the square of the distance, I make to 

 be, from my product, 965 J, or about 1030 English feet, as far 

 as I think it possible to ascertain it with any degree of accu- 

 racy. 



** The falls of Niagara, of the Montmorency, the Missouri, 

 and Tuccoa, are remarkable for the vast expanse of the falling 

 sheets that are precipitated down them ; but their height, in 

 proportion, is very insignificant, with the exception of the first : 

 neither do the celebrated falls of Gocauk, in Beejapoor, or that 

 of Courtallum, in the district of Madura, exceed 200 feet in 

 their descent ; from which comparison it may be seen that those 



