Ball — On the Volcanoes and Hot Springs of India. 163 



petrified remains of dragons or monster snakes, as at Bisut in 

 Bamian ; ^ or even the bones of human giants. And here it may be 

 well to add that throughout India deposits of travertin, though not 

 necessarily formed through the agency of hot springs, are called 

 assahar, or giants' bones. I have seen many cases of this deposit being 

 formed by the evaporation of percolating waters and even of running 

 streams both in India and elsewhere, in fact the phenomenon is not 

 uncommon. In one case near a waterfall in a river flowing from the 

 plateau to the south of the station of Hazaribagh, in Bengal, the spray 

 which struck one of the confining walls of the fall has, by its con- 

 tinuous evaporation, left behind it a deposit of calcareous solids, which 

 by long accumulation has foiTQed a mass of several hundred tons in 

 weight. More than one instance might be quoted where geologists 

 in India have been strongly urged and sometimes even induced to 

 make long and fruitless journeys to investigate such deposits' of 

 travertin, in the hope of finding a rich harvest of fossil remains of 

 extinct animals.* 



The following are a few of the cases where there are considerable 

 deposits of travertin in connection with hot springs. A hot spring 

 near Pir Gazi, in Sind, has deposited what is now a cli:ff of calcareous 

 tuff, 200 feet high, and several hundred feet in length.^ There is 

 also a considerable spread of calcareous tuff at Shah Euhi. Besides 

 which there are in Sind various other springs which afford similar 

 deposits. All of them evolve sulphuretted hydrogen.* In Baltis- 

 tan the hot springs are accompanied by enormous deposits of travertin, 

 which have even been compared to the deposits in the Yellow-Stone 

 Park in America. They also evolve sulphuretted hydrogen ; and 

 one of them at Chongo enjoys a high repute among the Baltis for 

 its medicinal virtues.^ 



Apart from all superstition there can be no doubt of the medicinal 

 value of many of these springs, and in some cases they have been 

 highly commended by medical men ; but to what extent the waters 

 are used internally as curatives has seldom been recorded fully ; 

 indeed, in some cases they are regarded, probably from experience, as 



^ Masson, " Belochistan," vol. ii., p. 357. 



^ Similar stories are told, I believe, about the pumice in some of the South Sea 

 Islands. 



^ Blanford, "W. T., Mem. Geol. Surv. India, vol. xvii., pp. 111-2: and Yicary, 

 Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc, 1847, p. 344. 



* Blanford, W. T., 1. c., p. 113. 



* Lydekker, R., Eec. Geol. Surv. India, vol. xiv., p. 54. 



