180 FOOTE : SOUTH MAHRATTA COUNTRY. 



The iron-clay bed which caps the Baged Gudda, is an outlier of a 

 Iron-clay or lateritic very important bed of that remarkable rock so 

 ^^^' often called laterite. This bed is important, as 



beino* the youngest known, the most constant, and most safely determi- 

 nable member of the Deccan trap series in this quarter. 



This particular iron-clay bed caps all the highest ridges and peaks 



in the Kolhapur and Belgaum mountains, and 

 The "summit bed." in, ^^ -, • , , 



may thereiore be called not maptly the " summit 



bed/^ Of all the mountains, those which it caps are the most perfectly 



table-topped, and in most cases the capping is sharply scarped all 



round the edge. As these scarped plateaux crown all the highest hills, 



and were easily rendered very strong, many of them were chosen by 



native chiefs as sites for their strongholds, such 

 Fortified outliers. 



as the Yellurgarh, Mahipalgarh, Kalanandigarh"^ 



(Kalanuddeegarh), and Gandharvagarh (Gundhurvugurh) in the Bel- 

 gaum ghats, and Bhudhargarh and Sdmangarh in South Kolhapur. 

 Wallabgarh and Paizargarh in the Chikori taluq are also both of them 

 built on small outliers of this iron-clay bed. The flows underlying this 

 iron-clay bed show great similarity throughout the extensive area they 

 cover. 



The correspondence of flows in different great spurs is especially 

 Correspondence of ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^'^e ridges into which the Bhudhar- 

 terraces. gg^j,jj gp^^j, (divides; it is admirably seen when 



looking westward from the high bluff on the eastern ridge which towers 

 over Belwarree. The view northward from Bolaee at the northern end 

 of the lofty part of the western ridge on which the Bhudhargarh itself 

 stands, shows this correspondence and extension of the flow-terraces most 

 distinctly in all the ridges on either side of the Yed Gauga valley, and 



* This fort is called " Kalanidhigad " in the official list fixing the spelling of names, 

 but it is generally and locally known by the name given above and not by the other. I vi^as 

 corrected by the people when I used the official name. 



( 180 ) 



