710 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL 1U8T. SOCIETY, Vol. XXI. 



Now reverse things. Approach the Belteram ridge from the Bhuj side. 

 You go across a fairly level plain, with a few insignificant ridges, dipping 

 slightly south and scarped north. The main substance of the ground, as 

 shown by nuUas, is a friable coarse white sandstone, but the surface is 

 mostly of yellow or of red, being littered with small smooth stones (not 

 water worn) or levelled by rain and cultivation. On ahead of you is the 

 belt of the Oharwar range (Kir-giri the Outchis used to call it in this part 

 of its length), rising to 400 or 500 feet over the plain. Lines of dunes and 

 ridges fringe its northern base. The Charwar range is mainly of yellowish 

 shale ; but in parts masses of whitish and purplish and blackened 

 sandstone form its upper main strata. The foothills too are mainly of 

 shale ; but the first big ridge you come to (ignore the broken belt of black 

 and white sandstone for the present) is of a warm old-gold colour — a 

 soft golden yellow, here and there blackened by exposure. This is our 

 Belteram. 



Blanford suggested a fault all along this line, and Wynne and Fedden 

 verified it. The white sandstone of the plain is believed to belong to an 

 Upper Jurrassic age : the Belteram and its backing hills to a Lower Juras- 

 sic. That is to say, if the theory is correct, the white sandstone rocks of 

 the plain were at one time much higher than the tops of the 400 feet high 

 hills beyond, but by reason of the Titanic motions of the earth's crust iu 

 prehistoric days, either the upper strata have here sunk or the lower 

 strata have been raised. That this change should have been effected by a 

 convulsion I think is hardly probable, for the level of the plain is so smooth, 

 its exposed reefs so regular, and the strata of the hills and ridges to the 

 ■ south of the fault are so even that there is no sign of a great convul- 

 sion. I see that the survey reports the rocks to the south of the fault to 

 be much contorted ; but the contortions have mainly assumed the regular 

 form which I am going to describe. To my untrained mind the subsidence 

 or elevation was probably gradual. But it was not a matter of 400 feet 

 only. 



The plain as mentioned above shows ridges, each riding on the back 

 of its northern forerunner. Going north you pass ridge after ridge, each 

 sloping up from the south and scarped on the north side. 



Cnaruuar 



Fault 



