1844.] from Masulipatam to Goa. 997 



heights stood a few denuded laterite cliffs about 20 or 30 feet high, 

 insulated from each other by spaces 4 or 5 feet wide and resembling 

 those already delineated in the Beder valley section. A piece of 

 calcedony was picked up in the gravel but none could be discovered 

 in the unfractured laterite. The trap, in the form of wacke, here 

 underlies both the laterite and its detritus ; the line of demarcation is 

 perfectly defined and distinct. 



Bazaar excavated in the Laterite cliffs of Calliany. 



Nearer Calliany the bed of laterite gravel is succeeded by laterite, 

 which forms a low ridge of hills immediately to the West of the town. 

 A street has been cut from the rock, running along the side, about mid- 

 way up the ascent, in the scarp of which a long row of now deserted 

 houses and shops have been excavated, and also small caves supported 

 by pillars of the laterire left untouched, while excavating. The bases 

 of the cliffs in the vicinity are quarried for the softer variety of the 

 laterite, which is carried off in baskets, ground with water into a plastic 

 clay, and used as a water proof covering to the tops of the flat roofed 

 houses of Calliany. The laterite is here called by the natives from its 

 worm-eaten appearance kire ka putthur, or silika putthur. The Ta- 

 muls call it chori kulloo, vettic and culloo and on the Malabar coast 

 it is termed stika culloo. 



The wells here are of considerable depth. The temp, of one, 35 feet 

 to the surface of the water was 78° 5' — Temp, of air in shade, 89° ; 

 the boiling point of water 206° 5' — Temp, of air 84.° 



The soil between Beder and Calliany is principally lateritic mixed 

 with the detritus of the subjacent trap crossed in a few situations by 

 zones of regur> often blended with the trap and laterite soils, the low 

 flat* topped hills avoided by the route appear to be of laterite resting 

 on the trap. 



From Calliany to Gulburgah. 



The laterite continues from Calliany to a few miles beyond Murbi, 

 a distance of about 15 miles, forming long flat- topped ranges of hills 

 rising about 100 feet above the general level of the table land, and 

 running E. S. E. They are separated by narrow flattish valleys having 

 a similar direction to that of the hills, and to that of the wider valley 



6a 



