Chap. V.] post-sivalik deposits. 155 



parts of the Kangra plateau, there are superficial clays and conglomerates 

 lying thickly on an eroded surface of the gray, conglomeritic sandstone, 

 which is there the youngest of the subjacent rocks. All these deposits 

 must have been laid down before the excavation of the present great river 

 gorges to anything like their actual depth, or else during the temporary 

 obstruction of these gorges ; in many cases indeed the latter alternative 

 seems to be involved, for, the surface of deposition is but little different 

 from that of the actual valley, and in some cases is nearly as low as the 

 actual valley ; as a cause for such interruptions I can only think of 

 upheavals along the external zone of hills, the last effects produced 

 during the period of disturbance. These considerations would seem to 

 throw back the period of deposition of the dun-deposits. 



The most interesting of these deposits is that in which large erratic 

 Glacial debris of Dhao- blocks occur so abundantly along the base of the 

 ladhar - Dhaoladhar. It first shows itself on the east, 



about Haurbaug, and is nowhere more strikingly seen than along the 

 steep inner slopes of the duns east of Dhurmsala, where the huge 

 blocks are thickly scattered over the surface. In viewing this deposit as 

 the result of glacial action, I base my opinion chiefly upon the size of 

 the blocks (I measured one twenty-five feet by eighteen, by ten), and 

 upon some peculiarities of distribution. An eye more practised than 

 mine in glacial phenomena might detect more direct evidence, but it 

 certainly is not well-marked, and it is easy to account for the subsequent 

 removal of all such traces of glacial action in such a position as this. 

 The blocks occur at a present elevation so low as 3,000 feet above 

 the sea-level, and they are found through fully a thousand feet in 

 height. They are almost exclusively composed of the granitoid gneiss 

 of the central mass of the Dhaoladhar, from which their area of distribu- 

 tion is separated by a lofty ridge of schists, through deep gorges in which 

 they have evidently been conveyed, a huge block being occasionally 

 found perched on the sides of these gorges, some hundred feet above the 



