13 FOOTE : SOUTH MAHRATTA COUNTRY, 



This review of the principal geographical features of the country 

 under discussion suggests two questions — firstly, whether it is possible 

 in any of those features to recognize the peculiar character of the 

 denuding agencies which brought about the present state of things; 

 and secondly, whether any inferences can be drawn from the form and 

 structure of the older land surfaces as to the agencies by which they 

 had been shaped. The first question is easily replied to. There are 

 distinct evidences of the action of the two great forces of denudation, 

 namely sub-aerial and marine denudation, having both contributed to 

 the formation of the most important and greatest of the existing moun- 

 tain features, the Sahyadri Mountain Range (or Western Ghats) with 

 its great westerly scarp. 



The strong contrast in appearance between the grand Western 

 Scarp of the Ghats, with the low country of the Konkan at its base on 

 the one side, and the eastern slope of the Ghat region on the other, 

 must strike forcibly any observer who stands on some summit command- 

 ing views of both tracts of country. Their dissimilarity suggests 

 at once the reasons for such great difference in shape and character of 

 scenery. The Ghat region, with its long stretching valleys, V-shaped 

 in section, running between terraced hills, at once reveals its having been 

 formed by sub-aerial denudation alone. The great cliff-like scarp and 

 gently sloping low country at its base, suggest, on the contrary, the 

 action of marine denudation on a great scale — operating during a period 

 of gradual elevation, the result being subsequently much modified by 

 the tremendous sub-aerial influences of the south-west monsoon, which 

 must have begun as soon as the scarp had been elevated sufficiently to 

 form an obstacle to the great cloud-drifts. 



The plain of marine denudation, formed after the out-pouring of 

 the Deccan trap-flows had ceased, is well shewn in a sketch section 

 given by Mr. C. Wilkinson, who examined the Konkan (Plate VIII, 

 Section 6). The whole of the Deccan trap denudation above the Ghats 

 and across the Deccan, presents features of purely sub-aerial action ; 



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