210 Notes, chiefly Geological, [No. 171. 



A series of bare granite rocks, naturally of fantastic contour, nearly 

 a mile long and 1 20 feet high, has afforded the Hindu artist ample 

 scope for the exercise of his chisel, which must have been wrought of the 

 finest tempered steel, for which India, since the dawn of history, has been 

 justly celebrated. The bronze tools of the Egyptians might answer 

 well enough in the limestone quarries around old Cairo, in work- 

 ing the blocks which constitute the great bulk of the pyramid, but 

 would be of little avail in the quarries of Syene, a type of whose gra- 

 nite we find in the redder felspar. Quaternary granites compose the 

 great monolith raths of the seven pagodas — a mixture of red and 

 white felspar, white quartz, dark mica, and hornblende. It is more 

 than probable that Indian steel found its way into Egypt during the 

 early traffic that is known to have subsisted between India, Judaea, 

 Yemen, and Egypt. It is absurd to suppose, that the sharply cut and 

 deeply engraved hieroglyphics which cover the granite obelisks of 

 Egypt, were done with chisels of bronze, even armed with corundum 

 dust. 



Quintus Curtius informs us, that Porus presented Alexander with a 

 quantity of steel as one of the most acceptable and valuable gifts India 

 could offer. 



The granite blocks here, as elsewhere in India, are subject to spon- 

 taneous concentric exfoliation and splitting. The globular mass ap- 

 parently about sixty feet in circumference, which we see nicely poised on 

 a convex mass of granite — the pat of butter petrified by the god of milk- 

 maids, Krishna — is ascribable to the first process ; and the rents in the 

 sculptured rocks — one of which cleaving the monolith pagodas, was as- 

 cribed by Mr. Chambers to a violent earthquake — have doubtless been 

 caused by the latter process of spontaneous splitting. 



With regard to the Brahmanical history of the seas overwhelming the 

 ancient city and rolling over its ruins at the fiat of the God of the Heavens, 

 Indra, who, it is said, loosed the chains of the ocean and overwhelmed 

 its wicked ruler Malecheren, there are few facts that can be relied 

 on — except that pieces of pottery, Roman and Chinese coins, are occasion- 

 ally washed ashore in storms, and the remains of ruins and sculptured 

 rocks are at a little distance in the sea. 



From a multitude of enquiries which I have made regarding the 

 encroachment of the sea on various parts of the Coromandel Coast, I am 

 led to think, that the shore has been subject, like that of the Baltic, to 



