INTRODUCTION. ix 
to the northward is of a hilly nature, including much table-land in Malwa, Rajast’han 
and Bundlecund, where the soil is rich and the climate mild. The country declines 
generally towards the north, and also towards the east, so that the rivers descending 
from the crests of the Vindhya range take at first a northerly course, and winding round 
the different elevations, or taking advantage of chasms in the table-land, proceed 
subsequently in an easterly direction to fall into the Jumna. The Aravalli range, for a 
knowledge of which we are indebted to the zealous researches of Colonel Tod, the 
able author of the Annals of Rajast’han, has sometimes been considered a prolongation 
of the Eastern Ghauts, and at others a ramification of the Vindhya range, with which it 
is connected towards Champanair. From the latitude of 24°, or near the insulated 
Mount Aboo, elevated five thousand feet, and which overtops them by fifteen hundred 
feet, the Aravalli Mountains run in a north-easterly direction, gradually diminishing in 
height, until reduced to low rocky hills in lat. 284°; in the neighbourhood of Delhi 
they reach the Jumna, and cause it to deflect from the south-westerly course, with 
which, like the Ganges, it had descended from the Himalayas, and take a south-easterly 
direction to reach the Bay of Bengal, instead of, as its original course would have carried 
it, to the Gulf of Cutch. 
Westward of the Jumna and the Aravalli range the country is flat, with but few hills, 
and gradually declining towards the valley of the Indus. - The soil is sandy, and 
covered with saline efflorescence; the water brackish, and far below the surface, so 
that the wells are from one to three hundred feet in depth. The ‘‘ Sand-hills of the 
desert” are soon reached, but the most interesting object in this arid region, as observed 
by Colonel Tod, ‘‘ is the salt river, the Looni, with its many arms falling from the Aravalli 
to enrich the best portion of the principality of Jodpoor, and distinctly marking that 
line of ever-shifting sand, termed, in Hindu geography, MJaroosthuli, corrupted to 
Marwar. The Looni, after a course of more than three hundred miles, terminates 
in the great salt marsh called the Rin, which is one hundred and fifty miles in length 
and about seventy in breadth.” This Colonel Tod considers as having been formed by the 
deposits of the Looni, and the equally-saturated saline deposits from the southern desert 
of Dhat. By Dr. Govan, it is described as a dead flat, hardly elevated above the level 
of the sea, and compared to an arm of the ocean from which the water had receded, as 
it is covered with saline incrustations and marine exuvie. | 
Besides this saline efflorescence and brackish water, this tract of country is remarkable 
_ for containing many salt lakes, which, by evaporation during the heats of summer, yield 
a tolerably pure muriate of soda, which is much used in the upper provinces. Many 
alkaline plants are also produced, which, when burnt, yield an impure carbonate of 
soda, exported in large quantities into the more populous districts of Hindoosthan. 
~ Small oases and large towns are found in many parts of this desert, which is traversed in 
every direction, as we learn from Mr. Elphinstone and Colonel Tod. The northern parts 
of the tract westward of the Jumna must be excepted from the character of barrenness, 
as 
