KHASI HILLS. 177 



cast-iron standards which had supported the chains, could be seen about 

 250 yards down the stream, jammed between huge blocks of stone 

 in the river bed. In some of the little re-entering angles of the road, 

 where a projecting rock had diverted the force of the stream and caused 

 an eddy to form in which the water had been comparatively still, fine sand 

 was heaped up to a thickness of from five to six feet. A thick range 

 of trees which formed a shady covering to the road for nearly a mile, 

 and between it and the river, was entirely and cleanly swept away, 

 and with it the strongly built revetment wall which supported the road. 

 The peculiar modes of distribution of such material, depending on 

 the rapidity of the current, the inclination of its 



Mode of distribution. 



bed, and the fineness or coarseness of the mate- 

 rial, can here be studied with great advantage. There is, however, one 

 peculiarity. While the two extremes of such action are well seen, in 

 which the rushing torrent drives before it on its rapidly inclined bed huge 

 blocks and masses, or in which the more tranquil stream can only keep 

 suspended the finest debris, there is a comparative absence of all inter- 

 mediate stages. Within the hills, the river beds are strewed with rolled 

 masses and boulders of great size ; but when the streams emerge from 

 these rocky gorges they pass almost immediately into a country of per- 

 fectly uniform level, and therefore become comparatively stagnant. At 

 a very short distance from the foot of the hills not a single pebble even 

 as big as'a nut is to be seen. And from this to the shores of the Bay 

 of Eengal one unbroken deposit of fine sandy mud and sand conti- 

 nues without interruption. 



The curious way in which such turbid streams raise their banks above 

 the ordinary level of the country round, may be well seen after rain 

 at the base of these hills. Along the edges of the ordinary channels 

 of many of these streams high and continuous banks have been formed, 

 which are not uncommonly five and six feet above the general level of 

 the land all around. On these banks, fed by the continuous moisture 



