96 POOTE : GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF THE EASTERN COAST. 



Further up the river the banks become cliffs, and continue so gener- 

 ally up to Venkateshwarapuram, where a reef of gneiss crosses the 



Human bones at great river ' About lialf a mile east o£ the villa # e of 

 depth in alluvial cliffs. Velampalle (Valumpully), where the great north 



trunk road crosses the Gundlakamma, the gritty alluvial sand cliffs 

 were found to contain human bones imbedded at very considerable 

 depths below the present surface — depths so great as quite to preclude 

 the idea that the bones might be connected with any recent, or quasi- 

 recent, burial. The first bone found was a lower jaw imbedded in an 

 undisturbed bed of loamy sand 18 or 20 feet below the present surface. 

 This find set me looking for more, and I succeeded in finding others im- 

 bedded in equally undisturbed sands at depths from 16 to 18 feet below the 

 present surface. The other bones consisted of a scapula, femur, tibia, fibula, 

 humerus, ulna, radius, and a few doubtful fragments belonging to more 

 than one, and probably to three individuals. The bones present a rather 

 recent aspect, no infiltration of mineral matter having taken place. They 

 owed their position in the alluvium doubtless to flood action at a period 

 when the Gundlakamma was forming the great flat it now cuts deeply 

 into, and flowed at a level of from 30 to 35 feet higher than at 

 present, or was subject to floods of vastly greater magnitude than 

 those now occurring. Thin beds of gritty silt are intercalated with the 

 sandy loam both below and above the sites of the bones, and in them are 

 numerous Unios and Melanias of the same species as now live in the river. 



The alluvium of the small rivers draining the country between the 

 Alluvia of the smaller Kistna delta and the Gundlakamma consists mainly 

 rivers and streams. of washed _ up cot ton soil, though sand, sandy loam, 



and silty grits are occasionally met with. Gravels are rarely seen. 



The streams draining the great cotton soil tract lying north and west 

 of the Kondavidu hills form remarkably distinct and striking alluvial 

 flats along their courses, and, as might be expected, these flats show hardly 

 anything but washed-up cotton soil. 



The river side cliffs frequently show beds of the dark reddish-brown 

 clay underlying the top bed of washed up regur. This may be seen • in 

 ( 96 ) 



