84 



MANUAL OF THE NILAGIRI DISTRICT. 



Geological 

 Survey. 



General 

 desci'iption. 



CHAP. V. In the year 1867, in accordance with measures, proposed by 

 Geology and ^^® Government of India and approved by the Honorable Court 

 Mineralogy, of Directors^ for the investigation of the geological structure and 

 mineral character of the country comprised within the Presidency 

 of Madras, Mr, Henry F. Blandford, of the Geological Survey of 

 India, was deputed to carry out a systematic survey of the 

 Presidency. Mr. Blandford began operations on the Nilagiris 

 and the table-land of Mysore in the month of June of that year. 

 The results of his inquiries, as respects the Nilagiris, which form 

 the basis of the following monograph, will be found in the 

 Memoirs of the Geological Survey, Vol. I, Part II, published in 

 1858. Mr. Blandford was accompanied by three assistants, 

 Messrs. Oldham, King, and Geoghegan. 



Of the Nilagiris Mr. Blandford observes that they, like 

 most of the hill-tracts of the peninsula, e.g., the Shevaroys, 

 Pulnis, and Anemales, rise abruptly from the lower country 

 round them, and are bounded on all sides by short precipitous 

 spurs, the remains of a great former escarpment, which, in 

 the course of long ages, has been broken up by the unceasing 

 action of the numerous streams pouring down from their surface. 



After describing the drainage system already explained in 

 Chapter I, Mr. Blandford goes on to point out that the gorges 

 which break into the lateral faces of the hills are the result of 

 the attrital action of the water flowing down from the plateau. 

 In his own words : 



" They have, therefore, the precipitous sides, and are separated by 

 the steep ridges which ahvays result from extensive fresh water 

 denudation in a mountainous country. The surface of the Neelgher- 

 ries, on the other hand, is undulating in the extreme, and the streams 

 which carry off its drainage meander with a comparatively gentle fall 

 through rounded grassy hills, but rarely forming anything like a 

 large rocky bluff; while the valleys never present the slightest 

 approach to the character of a gorge, except in some of the deeper 

 valleys of the Kundas, where * * * the i-ainfall is far greater than on 

 the surface of Neelgherries proper, and the denudation produced 

 thereby consequently greater. It might be inferred, therefore, even 

 from a casual glance at the Neelgherries, that the hills on the plateau 

 owe their form to marine action, it being a well established fact that 

 rounded hills and an undulating country are invariably the result of 

 such action. But on the Neelgherries we have a further proof that 

 the sea has formerly washed over what is now the highest portion of 

 the table-land, in the existence of a series of escarpments, imperfect 

 indeed in many cases and much cut up by the subsequent action of 

 surface water, but still distinctly recognisable to the practised eye, 

 and sometimes traceable for a distance of many miles contiiuiously. 



Action of 

 water — 

 fresh. 



Sea. 



