392 Notes, chiefly Geological, [No. 173. 



suara, act as a hill police. 1 have given an account of them elsewhere. 

 They may be seen usually at Metta and Pacherla, two police stations 

 in the forest. 



The pass itself is not much more than two and a half miles, but the 

 breadth of the hilly and jungly tracts from Gazoopilly to Kistnashetty- 

 pilly, on the eastern side of the range, cannot be less than twenty- three 

 miles. 



Cumbum. — Cumbum is nineteen and a half miles to the eastward of 

 Kistnashettypilly. The hills near the bund of the large and beautiful 

 tank, are of sandstone. This line sheet of water is about five miles 

 long by three or four broad. It is nearly surrounded by picturesque 

 hills, and several rocky islets stud its bosom. 



From Cumbum to Budwail. — We shall now turn southerly, down the 

 Cummum or Budwail valley, which is chiefly based on the shales of the 

 diamond sandstones and limestone formation running southerly, and 

 containing veins, and large beds of white quartz. Near Yelmacul a mass 

 of porphyritic syenite is seen rising abruptly through the shales at its 

 base. A pagoda built on its summit renders it conspicuous. The wells 

 near its base exhibit the fissures of the shales, encrusted with carbonate of 

 lime. This is the case also farther south, in the valley at Poormawala, 

 when the quartz veins frequently imbed iron pyrites. The summits of 

 the range running down the centre of the valley from Poormawala by 

 Budwail to the Pennaur, I found capped with compact sandstone, in al- 

 most tabular masses, associated with arenaceous schists. The lower 

 parts and base are composed of the shales or slates. 



From Budwail to the Auripoya pass. — From Budwail, southerly to the 

 Auripoya pass, the shales prevail, and become softer and lighter colour- 

 ed. The soil is chiefly reddish, light, fertile, and generally well water- 

 ed. Subsoil — a bed of kunker, nodules of which and fragments of 

 quartz, often honey-combed, are scattered over the surface of the lower 

 part of the valley. 



Auripoya pass. — This is a rugged pass, about eight miles long, 

 through the Sidhout ranges into the transverse valley by which the 

 Pennaur passes, through the Ghauts to the maritime plain of Nellore. 

 Here sandstone and arenaceous schists prevail ; angular blocks of 

 which, and fragments of a white and a grey smoky quartz, encumber 



