1846.] from Devamunni and Nundi Cunnama passes. 383 



about thirty paces broad, and running towards the south with great 

 rapidity. 



Granite is seen in this vicinity outcropping from the laterite. 



The black exterior of the rocks I found to be occasioned by a thin 

 coating of mixed vegetable and ferruginous matter. 



The jungle still continues, but is lower than below the Ghauts. 

 The cinnamon tree is abundant : the natives here class it into two 

 species, viz. the male and the female : the former they distinguish by the 

 greater size of its leaf, and the less aromatic and more bitter taste of the 

 bark. 



From the top of the Ghauts to Sircy. — The hypogene schists, princi- 

 pally gneiss and hornblende, and a coarse-grained felspathic granite, 

 appear occasionally from beneath the laterite. The low hill, on which 

 the ruins of the old town of Sircy are still to be traced, is covered with 

 a thick stratum of laterite imbedding angular fragments of quartz. The 

 laterite is here used extensively as a building stone ; and the quartz 

 is pounded into an excellent sharp sand for mortar. 



The indented and more abrupt features, which distinguish the anti- 

 clinal line of the Ghauts, are here softened down into smoothly swel- 

 ling hills, with round tops, in general thickly covered with wood, and 

 vallies in which, and on the hill sides, the cultivation of cardamoms, 

 black-pepper, and the areca nut, is carried on with great success, chiefly 

 by the Haiga Brahmans. The areca trees are planted in rows on strips 

 of ground five or six paces asunder, and separated by channels of run- 

 ning water, two or three feet deep. The pepper vine entwines its cling- 

 ing tendrils around the tall stems of this graceful tree, covering it thyr- 

 sus-like, with its foliage ; while the long, flag-leafed cardamom shoots 

 out its string of aromatic seeds along the ground shaded by groves of 

 plantains, which form a sort of underwood beneath the tall arecas. These 

 gardens of spices growing in the midst of forests still uncleared, have a 

 unique and very beautiful appearance. The extreme fertility of the 

 reddish-grey vegetable mould, (in spots where the woodman's axe has 

 not yet been felt,) shows that much still remains to be done. 



Sircy is a place of considerable traffic, and a depot for the cotton and 

 other produce of the Southern Mahratta country, ceded districts, and 

 part of Mysore, on its way to Koompta on the western coast, whence 



