1877.] S. E. Fenl—Oji Qoalpdra Hill. 261 



tion on 'pot-holes' and doubts whether your statement that they are 

 exceedingly common, is correct. From a boy I can remember them, 

 and was never particularly aware that any other explanation than 

 running water, sand and gravel was necessary. Out in India, here 

 in Assam, I find them almost the only common characteristic of the 

 water-worn forms. I do a good deal of Eob Eoy canoeing in cold 

 seasons, up the gorges of the rivers coming from these Naga Hills, and 

 so have ample opportunity for studying them (if necessary). On one occa- 

 sion up the Tankak river, at a place where a bed of sandstone crosses and 

 causes a fall of some 10 feet, large surfaces are exposed in the dry season ; 

 and the surface of the rock is full of pot-holes. I once caught thirteen 

 good large turtle, each in a hole, head downwards ; some wet sand and gravel 

 at the bottom kept them from being quite dried up by the sun. Holes two 

 and three feet deep — quite round and nearly vertical. 



At another fall, I, one day, saw the spray flying back and upwards in 

 such a peculiar manner, that I went over and examined closely, and dis- 

 covered it was simply millions of small fish, 4 and 6 inches long, all trying 

 to jump the fall, up stream, and that a tolerably large pot-hole was half 

 full of fish, which served for the supper of our camp. * * * Up the 

 Disang F. R. Mallet and I saw some curious sections of pot-holes, in a 

 large mass of exposed sandstone. The holes were pretty close, and of sizes 

 from 6 inches to a couple or three feet in diameter, and from 5 to perhaps 

 8 or 9 feet deep. They may have been more, as they ended in deep water." 



The next passages read, refer to Goalpara hill and are as follows :— 

 " I see the Glacier question is on the tapis. I have been trying to convince 

 Mallet that Goalpara hill is a moraine. Seeing that Goalpara hill is only 

 about 500 feet* above sea-level, I am afraid Mallet won't be convinced. 

 The hill has large, angular, grey, metamorphic blocks, lying on the surface, 

 and bedded in contorted gravel and sand ; no bedded rock above on the 

 hill." " I stayed on it for over a fortnight in 1873, and it was while 

 watching excavations for gravel near the top, that I had my attention first 

 roused by the extraordinary colour and curvature of the sands, embedded in 

 layers ; * * * some beds of sand dark rose colour, white, yellow, brown, 

 and even bluish grey, contorted, and having coarse gravel and small blocks 

 of stone here and there. * * * I don't know much about glaciers but the 

 formation was so peculiar, I noted it well at the time. I found no scratch- 

 ed stones, but the big blocks on the hill, more or less angular and partially 

 embedded, are hornblende, — so Mallet says, after I had sent him some 

 pieces. Where this hornblende came from, I cannot guess. The hill is 



* It is less. The Meteorological Observatory wliicli is on the top of the liill is 

 386 feet only above sea-level, and 249 feet above the highest flood level of the river. — 

 H. F. B. 



