KHASt HILLS, ] 73 



examination of India seems to confirm, that there have been in most 

 parts, of the country long continued intervals of time during which the 

 denuding and degrading action of oceanic forces has continued to act ; 

 and has produced in places great table lands, or expanses of flat country, 

 or, where these do not exist, a remarkable uniformity in the general 

 elevation of the country, however broken up that general elevation 

 may be by isolated peaks, or separate but minor ranges, or by river 

 valleys and other depressions. 



Another very peculiar feature in the Khasi Hills are the curiously 

 deep and narrow gorges or valleys in which all 



River valleys or gorges. 



the rivers, in the Southern portion of the hills, 

 find their course to the plains. The level of the stream under Cherra 

 Poonjee is some 3,000 feet below that of the station : into the Mawsmai 

 valley the streams which drain the flat of Cherra are precipitated iu 

 one unbroken leap over the sandstone scarp for about 1,800 feet, and 

 then fall rapidly over the steep talus for about a thousand feet more. 

 The same facts may be seen in the Maw'mluh valley, and may be 

 traced in all the valleys of drainage along the Southern face of the 

 hills. Further inland also, for a certdin distance, the same character 

 of all the river valleys continues, and the streams of the Kala Pani and 

 Boga Pani both flow in deep and narrow gorges with very steep sides. 

 (See Plates IV., V., VI., and Fig. 1.) 



Now, although believing that marine denudation has exerted its 

 powerful influence in modifying the features of these hills in former 

 times and at different levels, as I have just stated, it is not possible 

 to see how any littoral action, or any such ordinary marine action, 

 could have produced those long, deep, and sinuous gorges here seen. 

 On the contrary*these river gorges appear to me to have been excavated 

 almost entirely by the force of the streams which have flowed, and 

 still continue to flow through them. And they appear to me to 

 offer a magnificent instance of the almost incredible power of de- 



