306 On the formation of the 



It is from the occurrence of this bed of granite, close below 

 the surface, that water occurs in most parts of South India, 

 at a depth of a few feet only. 



Few wells are more than 50 feet in depth, and in general 

 water is found in plenty at half that depth. About Hydra- 

 bad, I have been informed the wells exceed the depth here 

 mentioned, being sometimes 300 feet before water is obtain- 

 ed. The geological peculiarity which may be the cause of 

 this, we have, I believe, no published descriptions of. 



It appears therefore probable, that the part of the Penin- 

 sula of India, to which these observations are confined, is 

 formed of a mass of granite, the general surface of which 

 rises gradually from the level of the sea, up to an altitude of 

 3,000 feet. 



Upon the surface of this mass, in some parts, there are a 

 number of conical points and ridges, sometimes of consider- 

 able altitude, (near Allambaddy on the Cauvery river, the 

 summits are fully 3,000 feet above the vallies at the bases 

 of the hills,) where it is channelled out towards the bed of 

 the Cauvery river. 



A belt of these hills in close approximation runs nearly 

 parallel with the sea-shore along the whole coast of the 

 Peninsula, and forms what are generally called the Eastern 

 Ghauts. This belt is not a connected ridge in any part, and 

 is generally about twenty miles in width, and in no case ever 

 resembles what some writers have endeavoured to compare it 

 to — a sudden break in levels, produced by a disruption of the 

 rocks of the mass. 



There are of course many points of resemblance between 

 the "schistose series" of rocks, and the primary schists of 

 English authors, but we cannot consider them identical; in 

 the first place, because tracts formed of the latter always 

 form broken and rugged tracts, and are. elevated and stratifi- 

 ed at high angles conformable with the subjacent rocks : 

 while the schists of South India never lie conformably upon 



