vi INTRODUCTION. 
conveniently done, by taking them as they naturally form four separate ranges: first, 
the Western and secondly the Eastern Ghauts, which run parallel to the Malabar and 
Coromandel coasts; thirdly, the Vindyha range, which runs east and west across the 
central part of India; and, fourthly, the Himalayas, which form its north-eastern 
boundary. 
The Western or Malabar Ghauts extend nearly north and south from Candeish to 
Cape Comorin, or from 21° to 8°, and form a nearly unbroken chain, except at the 
chasm, nearly sixteen miles in breadth, which opens into the valley of Coimbatore, 
and through which the river Poonyani escapes into the sea. 
_ The western face of this range is much more abrupt than its eastern, and its northern 
parts less elevated than the southern, as the former seldom exceeds three thousand feet 
in height. Between 17° and 18°, the Mahabuleshwur Hills, giving origin to the different 
sources of the Krishna, and resorted to by invalids from Bombay, form a table-land of 
nearly five thousand feet; but between 10° and 15° N. there are peaks of granite 
which rise to five and six thousand feet. Mr. Babington, indeed, describes Bonasson 
Hill as being seven thousand feet above the sea; and Dr. Young, in his recent description 
of the Neelgherries, assigns eight thousand seven hundred feet as the height of the peak of 
Dodapet, situated between 11° and 12° N. latitude. It is at these hills, as Mr. Calder 
remarks, that the junction of the Malabar and Coromandel ranges takes place; for 
here the Neelgherries or Blue Mountains “ rise into the loftiest summits of the Penin- 
*“‘sula, and form the southern boundary of the great table-land, and the northern 
“* boundary of the remarkable valley of Coimbatore :” from the opposite side of which, 
the continuation of the united chains proceeds in one central = to the southern 
extremity of the Peninsula, with a gradually diminishing elevation.” : 
The astern or Coromandel ‘Ghauts, less elevated and less continuous than the 
Western, from which all the rivers flow” towards and through them, are at the same 
time more rugged and barren. « They may be said to diverge into a’separate chain from 
the Neelgherries, and to proceed northwards and eastwards, “ breaking into a succession 
‘« of parallel ranges, and, after branching off into subordinate hilly ranges, occupying a 
‘* wide tract of unexplored country, and affording vallies for the passage of great rivers: 
** this eastern range may be said to terminate at the same latitude as that of the com- 
** mencement of the western.” ‘Their elevation — the — of —— = is 
the highest part, is estimated at three thousand feet. ’ : : a 
These two ranges support between them a great extent of elevated table-land, of which 
the climate and productions differ from the belts of low land which intervene between 
the sea and the bases of these mountains. The rise of this table-land is on the west very 
abrupt, but its declension to the eastward is so gradual by a succession of distant 
terraces, so as not to appear remarkable. Like the mountains by which it is supported, 
the elevation of this table-land increases from north to south, being in Aurungabad and 
the Dukhun about eighteen hundred feet above the level of the sea, while many parts 
of Mysore attain an elevation of from two thousand ‘five hundred to three thousand feet, 
and 
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