184 NERBUDDA DISTRICT. 



stone masses are disposed; vertical escarpments with clear rock faces many 

 hundred feet high, are constantly met, and this remarkable feature is pre- 

 sented wherever these rocks are (in this district) 

 Escarpment. 



found. The sketch given in Fig. 7, p. 1 68, is a view 



of the south face of the Mahadeva hill itself, where the finest of these 

 escarpments is well seen, rising from the flat ground of the Deinwa valley. 

 To the west, the prolongation of the same range often presents a sheer 

 precipice very nearly as high as this one, and frequently far more con- 

 tinuous. A very remarkable glen by which the Sonbudree river flows 

 north to join the Tawa, gives a most striking case of vertical escarpment. 

 In this place the nearly horizontal bedding of the sandstone is clearly 

 marked on the nearly flat vertical surface of the precipice, by lines ap- 

 parently quite straight, and traced by the hard iron-earth partings above 

 alluded to. These partings form quite a feature 

 in the rock of the summit of Belkunda Peak, a 

 few miles to the west, and one of the culminating points of this range. 

 Here the ferruginous earth, besides forming regular layers at intervals 



through the sandstone mass, was irregularly dls- 



Strange appearance ° D J 



they give rise to. seminated. Sometimes it forms nodules, sometimes 



hollow tubes or cylindrical pipes of different diameters, sometimes waved 

 layers like rippling. This ferruginous earth has now assumed a pseudo- 

 vitreous texture, and looks on the fracture like rude pottery. 



From their superior hardness these bands have resisted denudation 

 better than the surrounding sandstone, and they now stand out from 

 its surface, often giving a honey-comb aspect to the rock, and affording 

 facilities for climbing, without which it would be totally impossible to 

 reach the top of the isolated peaks such as Tek Belkunda, Chaorigurh 

 &c. Round the foot of the highest points of these hills great quanti- 

 ties of broken fragments of these iron clay aggregations lie strewed over 

 the ground, and closely resemble heaps of broken drainage tubes and 

 tiles. 



