278 KHASIA MOUNTAINS. Chap. XXIX. 



church, disused on account of the damp, stands lonely in 

 the centre of all. 



The views from the margins of this plateau are magnifi- 

 cent : 4000 feet below are bay -like valleys, carpetted as 

 with green velvet, from which rise tall palms, .tree-ferns 

 with spreading crowns, and rattans shooting their pointed 

 heads, surrounded with feathery foliage, as with ostrich 

 plumes, far above the great trees. Beyond are the Jheels, 

 looking like a broad shallow sea with the tide half out, 

 bounded in the blue distance by the low hills of Tipperah. 

 To the right and left are the scarped red rocks and roaring 

 waterfalls, shooting far over the cliffs, and then arching 

 their necks as they expand in feathery foam, over which 

 rainbows float, forming and dissolving as the wind sways 

 the curtains of spray from side to side. 



To the south of Churra the lime and coal measures rise 

 abruptly in flat-topped craggy hills, covered with brush- 

 wood and small trees. Similar hills are seen far westward 

 across the intervening valleys in the Garrow country, 

 rising in a series of steep isolated ranges, 300 to 400 feet 

 above the general level of the country, and always skirting 

 the south face of the mountains. Considerable caverns 

 penetrate the limestone, the broken surface of which rock 

 presents many picturesque and beautiful spots, like the 

 same rocks in England. 



Westward the plateau becomes very hilly, bare, and 

 grassy, with the streams broad and full, but superficial 

 and rocky, precipitating themselves in low cascades over 

 tabular masses of sand-stone. At Mamloo their beds are 

 deeper, and full of brushwood, and a splendid valley and 

 amphitheatre of red cliffs and cascades, rivalling those of 

 Moosmai (p. 261), bursts suddenly into'view. Mamloo is 

 a large village, on the top of a spur, to the westward : it 



