174 KIIASI HILLS. 



gradation and removal, which atmospheric forces may exert under pecu- 

 liar and favorable circumstances. I have already noticed the causes which 

 seem to have influenced the direction in which those forces have acted. 

 It will not be easy for those who have been accustomed to inves- 

 tigate countries where the average annual fall 



Enormous fall of rain. . , . . 



of rain amounts to thirty or forty mches, distri- 

 buted with tolerable equality over the whole twelve months, to form a 

 fair estimate of the immense forces brought into play in these hills, where 

 the fall of rain in 24 hours is not unfrequently two feet six inches, or 

 equal to the whole year's fall in most places in Europe, and where the 

 annual fall, not distributed over the twelve months but concentrated 

 into four or five, amounts to some fifty feet, or six hundred inches ! 



I took an opportunity of visiting one of the streams in these hills 

 after a heavy and sudden fall of rain. The water had then risen only 

 about thirteen feet above the level at which it stood a few days previous- 

 ly ; the rush was tremendous — huge blocks of rock, measuring some feet 

 across, were rolled along with an awful crashing, almost as easily as 

 pebbles in an ordinary stream. In one night a block of granite, which 

 I calculated to weigh upwards of 350 tons, was moved for more than 

 100 yards; while the torrent was actually turbid with pebbles of some 

 inches in size, suspended almost like mud in a rushing stream. 



To the denuding foree of these heavy and sudden falls of rain is 

 also due the almost total absence of any soil in 



Eemoval of soil. 



the flats of the hills near the Southern escarp- 

 ment. All has, in fact, been washed away, and a thin crop of coarse 

 grass alone finds sustenance on the rocky surface. The marked absence 

 of trees, the growth of which is cut off as with the axe along the edges 

 of every flat, is largely due to the same causes, but afio largely to the 

 blighting storms which sweep over these hills. On the sloping sides of 

 the valleys trees grow abundantly, and at many places luxuriantly : there 

 they are sheltered, and abundantly supplied with moisture. 



