1845.] across the Peninsula of Southern India. 503 



Fragments of the same are strewed around, partly lying upon, and 

 partly imbedded in, a fine reddish soil resulting from the weathering of 

 the subjacent rock. Near the summit I picked up pieces of a vesicular 

 ferruginous rock with tubular sinuosities, a species of laterite, and ap- 

 parently of the same structure as that on the summit of the Ganjicotta 

 hills. The tops of these, as well as of the other hills in the vicinity, 

 present slightly convex plateaus forming table-lands of circumscribed 

 extent. The relative altitude does not suffer any considerable varia- 

 tion, not exceeding, I believe, 1500 feet above the level of the plain. 

 The sides are deeply indented by abutments jutting out at right angles 

 to the line of bearing. In the ravines that separate them, fine echoes 

 are produced. The sides and summits are thickly clothed with vegeta- 

 tion and low forest. The wells at the base of the range to the south of 

 Cuddapah are cut* through strata, varying from eight to twenty feet in 

 thickness, of compact and tufaceous kunker. 



Bankrapet Range, South of Cuddapah. Passing the small tank of Ipa- 

 Penta, the ground gradually ascends and becomes jungly. Several rivulets 

 are crossed until a rather high ground is reached, where two defiles 

 branch off; the one to the left or east, leads to the water- fall of the 

 Pedda Garhi, and the other to the right to that of the Chinna Garhi. 

 There I pitched my tent on the right bank of a stream, and proceeded 

 on horseback over a stony jungly path winding through defiles, over- 

 looked by jungly hills and mural precipices of sandstone. The Pedda 

 Garhi is one of those singular fissures through the sandstone, like that 

 of Ganjicotta, cleaving the rocks diagonally across the line of stratifica- 

 tion from the summit to the base. The sides are precipitous rocky 

 facades, narrowing rather abruptly, as the traveller advances southerly, 

 into a fissure two or three yards wide, with salient and re-entering 

 angles. At the base of the western cliffs are pools filled with the clear 

 water, which drips in a perpetual rain from seams in the disrupted strati- 

 fied rocks which have a dip of about 8° to the N.E. The precipice on 

 the left, or on the north-east, distils no water. Here we see one of the 

 very few illustrations observed in Southern India of the theory of springs. 

 The water evidently percolates through the porous strata capping the 

 higher adjacent summits to lower impervious beds, where collecting it 

 follows the dip of the strata, and finds an exit in the fissure which has 



3 z 



