94 THE 111GHLA.XDS OF CEXTRAL INDIA. 



in it occasioned by the Miihadeo group. On this side, 

 the forest that clothes the valley and the nearer slopes 

 presents a very dark green and yet brilliant colouring, 

 which will be noted as difierino- from the veo-etation in 

 any other direction. This is the Sal forest, wdiich I 

 have mentioned before (p. 27), as forming so singular 

 an outlier far to the west of the line which otherwise 

 limits the rauQ-e of that tree in Central India. It fills 

 this valley of the Denwa, almost to the exclusion of 

 other vegetation, and, creeping up the ravines, has 

 occupied also the south-eastern portion of the plateau 

 itself. 



A remarkable feature in the configuration of the 

 plateau is the vast and unexpected ravines or rather 

 clefts in the solid rock, which seam the edges of the 

 scarp, some of them reaching in sheer descent almost to 

 the level of the plains. You come on them during a 

 ramble in almost any direction, opening suddenly at your 

 feet in the middle of some grassy glade. The most 

 remarkable is the Andeh-K6h, which begins about a 

 mile to the east of the villao-e, and runs risjht down 

 into the Denwa valley. Looking over its edge, the 

 vision loses itself in the vast profundity. A few dark 

 indigo-coloured specks at the bottom represent wild 

 mango trees of sixty or eighty feet in height. A faint 

 sound of running water rises on the sough of the wind 

 from the abyss. The only sign of life is an occasional 

 llight of blue pigeons swinging out from the face of 

 cither cliff, and circling round on suspended pinion, 

 again to disappear under the crags. If a gun is fired, 

 the echoes roll round the hollow in continually 

 increasing confusion, till the accumulated volume seems 

 to bellow forth at the mouth of the ravine into the plain 



