INTEODUCTOEY 3 



hills, by following whicli lie may rise gradually to these 

 higher regions ; and soon he will exchange the rich cultiva- 

 tion, of the flat land through which the railway passes for 

 unreclaimed waste and rugged forest-covered steeps. 



He will now find himself in a region where all is chaos 

 to the unguided traveller; where hill after hill of the 

 same wild and undefined character are piled together; 

 where the streams appear to run in all directions at once ; 

 and it will not be until he has traversed the whole region, 

 or closely studied a map, that some method will begin to 

 evolve itself, and the geography become plain. He will 

 find that at a height of about 1000 feet above the plain, 

 that is of about 2000 above the sea, the hills have a 

 tendency to spread out in the form of plateaux; some 

 comprising the top of only one hill and a small area ; others 

 like a group of many hills, which support, like buttresses, 

 on their summits, large level or undulating plains. From 

 these again he will fmd shooting up still higher, a good 

 many other solitary flat-topped hills, reaching the height 

 of nearly 3500 feet; some of which in like manner unite 

 into plateaux at about the same elevation. Yet higher 

 than these, but never assuming the character of a plateau, 

 he will see here and there a peak rising to nearly 5000 feet 

 above the sea. 



As is usual, the inhabitants of the hills themselves 

 have no general name for the whole chain; each indi- 

 vidual hill or minor range being called by a local name 

 derived from the nearest village, or the species of tree 

 it bears, or a god, or a river, or some other accidental 

 circumstance. The Hindus of the plains have several 

 terms for its different sections, calling the most easterly 

 the Mykal, the centre the Mahadeo, and the western the 

 Satpiira Hills. Geographers have applied the name 

 Satpiira to the entire range ; and the name is perhaps as 

 appropriate as any which could be selected. 



The watershed of these mountains varies in direction 

 in their several sections. In the extreme east the range 

 terminates in a bluff promontory with a precipitous face 

 to the south, throwing the whole of the drainage of a 

 vast area towards the north. This is the cradle of the 



