28 KING: KADAPAH AND KARNUL FORMATIONS. [PART ۰ 
river is highly polished, the surfaces of the rock having a black metallic 
lustre, and it is scored with short shallow grooves like wood which has 
been rapidly and shortly tooled with a broad gouge.* 
The side streams are all deeply filled with fine alluvial mud,—a con- 
sequence of the slack water at their embouchure during the flood time.t+ 
After clearing the above distance, or getting well past Irlaconda, 
this great river begins to flow in a much grander 
E aia course, zigzageing across or through the plateau on 
which the famous Sreeshalum or Parrawuttom pagoda stands, in a wide 
and steep sided trench of nearly a thousand feet in depth. Still, even 
here, the cliffs do not rise up direct from the river. There is a steep 
slope of alluvium and debris rising a good height from even the flood 
mark of the river, where there is a tolerably high cliff of 200 or 300 
feet, and, over this, is a second tolerably abrupt but decided slope 
leading up to a second run of cliffs which are the scarp of the high 
plateau land of Sreeshalum. The descent is, however, altogether so 
steep in this part of the course that there are only a few paths made 
down to the river in addition to two regularly built ones, which were 
constructed in old times for the convenience of the numerous pilgrims 
who annually frequent this sacred region. 
This part of the river course is truly wild, solemn, and grand. 
The hills and trenches are tolerably well covered with low jungle, and 
the view from any high point is so extensive as to fade away on every 
side in monotonous lines of blue, purple, and grey jungle-covered ground. 
There is not a sign of man around,—such life is centred at the pagoda, 
or at certain points on the few roads to it; any sign of life there is 
* More like the result of rolling shingle than of sand or small gravel. 
T These side ravines are overgrown with long grass, so distinctive in popular pictures 
of tiger ground, which is regularly infested by these animals. Their marks are most 
numerous on the banks of the rivers. The grass isa variety used for making pens. 
۵ 
