THE MAHADEO HILLS 75 



appearance, owing to the irregular weathering of their 

 material — ^beds of coarse sandstone horizontally streaked 

 by darker bands of hard vitrified ferruginous earth. 

 Looking across this wall of rock, to the north-east, a long 

 perspective of forest-covered hills is seen, the nearer ones 

 seeming to be part of the Puchmurree plateau, though 

 really separated from it by an enormous rift in the rock, 

 the further ranges sinking gradually in elevation, till, 

 faint and blue in the far distance, gleams the level plain 

 of the Narbada valley. Standing on the eastern edge of 

 the plateau, again, the observer hangs over a sheer descent 

 of 2000 feet of rock, leading beyond, in long green slopes, 

 down to a flat and forest-covered valley. Its width may 

 be six or seven miles, and beyond it is seen another range 

 of hills rising in a long yellow grass-covered slope, dotted 

 with the black boulders, and ending in the scarped tops 

 that mark the trap formation. That is the plateau of 

 Motiir (Mohtoor), with which the general continuation 

 of the Satpura range again commences, after the break 

 in it occasioned by the Mahadeo group. On this side, 

 the forest that clothes the valley and the nearer slopes 

 presents a very dark green and yet brilliant colouring, 

 which will be noted as differing from the vegetation in any 

 other direction. This is the Sal forest, which I have men- 

 tioned before (p. 22), as forming so singular an outlier 

 far to the west of the line which otherwise limits the range 

 of that tree in Central India. It fills this valley of the 

 Denwa, almost to the exclusion of other vegetation, and, 

 creeping up the ravines, has occupied also the south- 

 eastern portion of the plateau itself. 



A remarkable feature in the configuration of the plateau 

 is the vast and unexpected ravines or rather clefts in the 

 solid rock, which seam the edges of the scarp, some of 

 them reaching in sheer descent almost to the level of the 

 plains. You come on them during a ramble in almost 

 any direction, opening suddenly at your feet in the middle 

 of some grassy glade. The most remarkable is the Andeh- 

 Koh, which begins about a mile to the east of the village, 

 and runs right down into the Denwa valley. Looking 

 over its edge, the vision loses itself in the vast profundity. 



