THE TEAK REGION 195 



with a right and left shot. Next day we crossed the 

 plateau to a place called Bingara, near which T. had a 

 survey station to put up. The road for some distance 

 lay over a tolerably level plain of black soil, covered by 

 a thin scrub of teak poles and thorny bushes; but pre- 

 sently, leaving the plateau, passed on to a very narrow 

 ridge which forms the backbone of these singular hills 

 throughout their length. In some places an exceedingly 

 steep slope of a thousand feet or so led down from this 

 saddle^back to the plains on either side, leaving scarcely 

 room for the path we were treading. It was a terrible 

 business getting the baggage camels along these narrow 

 places, studded as they were with trees, and encumbered 

 with boulders of trap; and though we had a number of 

 Bheels with axes to clear a passage for them they did 

 not get in till nightfall. The views at the turns where 

 the plains on both sides could be seen were remarkable, 

 though scarcely to be called picturesque. At our feet 

 steep hill-sides of crumbling basalt, covered with long 

 yeUow grass beaten almost flat by the western blasts that 

 sweep the hills at this season, and studded over with 

 large black boulders and the naked yellow stems of the 

 Salei tree. Above, short scarps of dark gray trap leading 

 up to the flat tops of the range ; and below, so near looking 

 that you would expect a stone thrown over to light on it, 

 and yet so far beneath that towns, and groves, and corn- 

 fields were all melted in one indistinguishable blue haze, 

 the long, level cotton-yielding plains of Berar. 



At Bingara the Mahomedan Nawabs of Berar had, some 

 hundreds of years ago, constructed a pleasure house after 

 their earnest fashion, which, despite the effects of a 

 destructive climate, and the searching roots of the peepul 

 and banyan figs, remains to this day, though probably 

 never repaired, an example of the solidity of their style 

 of construction. The massive domes, thick walls, and 

 narrow openings combine in these buildings to form the 

 coolest structures to be found in India. The building at 

 Bingara is erected on the banks of a small artificial lake, 

 the waters of which, however, now escape a good deal 

 through the rotten embankment, leaving behind a shme 



