Chap. II.] general description of country. 17 



country, such as the Cauvery, the Punniar, the Palar, and the Panar, which 

 drain the central plateau from within a few miles of the Western Ghdfcs, 

 and, except in the case of the first named river, debouch into the plains 

 through broad depressions in the general surface of the country, rather than 

 through gorges cut by their own attrition in the rocks of the plateau. 

 Again the country below the Ghats is by no means an unbroken plain : 

 Coimtiy below the several hill groups, more or less isolated, and some 

 ^^^' of them of great elevation, occupy the country to 



the South-east, and carry on the line of the uplands parallel with the 

 Coast as far South as the Cauvery Valley, which, together with the gap of 

 Palghat to the South of the Nilgiris, constitutes a narrow strip of low coun- 

 try stretching across the entire Peninsula and separating the Nilgiris and 

 the outlying hill country of Trichinopoly and Salem on the North, from 

 the AnamuUies and similar hill clusters of Madura and Tinevelly on the 

 South. The low country proper, or Payen Ghat, is thus restricted to a 

 tract from GO to 80 miles in width, which stretches along the Coast from 

 Cape Comorin to the united deltas of the Kistna and the Godavery, 

 beyond which the hills of the Northern Circars advance to the Coast, and 

 range northward to the Chilka Lake and the delta of the Mahanuddy. 

 We shall see in the course of the following pages, that there is 



strong reason to believe that the main features of 

 No disturbance of coun- 

 try in later Geologic this physical configuration have existed unaltered 

 times. 



through a long geological period : that, since the 



commencement of the Cretaceous epoch, (the earliest of which in the 

 country hitherto surveyed we have met with any undoubted Geological 

 records) no disturbance of any magnitude or extent has remodelled or 

 effaced the main orographical features.* While the oldest rocks of 



* Mr. Adolphe Schlagintweit in the paper previously referred to enunciated a similar 

 opinion. The note to my report on the Nilghiris {Memoirs Geological Survey of India, 

 Vol. I., p. 233) was founded on erroneous and premature conclusions as to the distiu'bances 

 affecting the older Cretaceous rocks of Trichinopoly. 



C 



