4 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTKAL INDIA. 



about 1,000 feet above the plain, that is of about 2,000 above 

 the sea, the hills have a tendency to spread out in the form of 

 plateaux ; some comprising the top of only one hill and a 

 small area ; others like a group of many hills, which support, 

 like buttresses, on their summits, large level or undulating 

 plains. From these again he will find shooting up still higher, 

 a good many other solitary flat-topped hills, reaching the 

 height of nearly 3,500 feet; some of which in like manner 

 unite into plateaux at about the same elevation. Yet higher 

 than these, but never assuming the character of a plateau, he 

 will see here and there a peak rising to nearly 5,000 feet above 

 the sea. 



As is usual, the inhabitants of the hills themselves have no 

 general name for the whole chain ; each individual hill or 

 minor range being called by a local name derived from the 

 nearest village, or the species of tree it bears, or a god, or a 

 river, or some* other accidental circumstance. The Hindus of 

 the plains have several terms for its different sections, calling 

 the most easterly the Mykal, the centre the Mahddeo, and the 

 western the Satpiira hills. Geographers have applied the 

 name Satpiira to the entire range ; and the name is perhaps as 

 appropriate as any which could be selected. 



The watershed of these mountains varies in direction in 

 their several sections. In the extreme east the range termi- 

 nates in a bluff promontory with a precipitous face to the 

 south, throwing the whole of the drainage of a vast area 

 towards the north. This is the cradle of the Narbada river, 

 which soon leaves its parent hills, and flows through a wide 

 valley of its own along the northern face of the range. In the 

 centre the range culminates in the bold group of the MdM- 

 deos, crowned by the Puchmurree peaks, throwing the drain- 

 age almost equally to the north and south, the former into the 



