June, 1850. RAIN-FALL OF CHURRA, AND ITS EFFECTS. 283 



has been registered in succeeding years ! From April, 

 1849, to April, 1850, 502 inches (forty-two feet) fell. This 

 unparalleled amount is attributable to the abruptness 

 of the mountains which nice the Bay of Bengal, from 

 which they are separated by 200 miles of Jheels and 

 Sunderbunds. 



This fall is very local : at Silhet, not thirty miles further 

 south, it is under 100 inches; at Gowahatty, north of 

 the Khasia in Assam, it is about 80 ; and even on the 

 hills, twenty miles inland from Chnrra itself, the fall is 

 reduced to 200. At the Churra station, the distribution 

 of the rain is very local ; my gauges, though registering 

 the same amount when placed beside a good one in the 

 station ; when removed half a mile, received a widelv 

 different quantity, though the different gauges gave nearly 

 the same mean amount at the end of each whole month. 



The direct effect of this deluge is to raise the little 

 streams about Churra fourteen feet in as many hours, 

 and to inundate the whole flat ; from which, however, 

 the natural drainage is so complete, as to render a 

 tract, which in such a climate and latitude should be 

 clothed with exuberant forest, so sterile, that no tree 

 finds support, and there is no soil for cultivation of any 

 kind whatsoever, not even of rice. Owing, however, to 

 the hardness of the horizontally stratified sandstone, the 

 streams have not cut deep channels, nor have the cata- 

 racts worked far back into the cliffs. The limestone alone 

 seems to suffer, and the turbid streams from it prove how 

 rapidly it is becoming denuded. The great mounds of 

 angular gravel on the Churra flat, are perhaps the remains 

 of an extensive deposit, fifty feet thick, elsewhere washed 

 away by these rains ; and I have remarked traces of the 

 same over many slopes of the hills around. 



