1845.] from Pondicherry to Bey poor. 781 



The staple article of cultivation here is rice, and the prevailing 

 castes, are Namburis, Tiars, Moplays, Churmars and Vellalis. 



In the jungle I saw some of the squalid aborigines of Malabar, — 

 the Neadis — who reminded me in feature and lowness of stature of 

 those of the Malay Peninsula, and of the Chensu-var, inhabiting the 

 jungles of the Eastern Ghauts. 



Betiangady.— The houses, or huts rather, composing this Malabar 

 village, are scattered as usual over a large space of ground. The flat, 

 cultivated rice vallies run down towards the sea, flanked by steep, low 

 ranges of laterite, like so many rivers enclosed by banks. The soil is 

 lateritic, manured chiefly with decayed vegetable matter and wood 

 ashes. 



Staple article of cultivation, rice ; and the prevailing castes much 

 the same as the last march. The Traveller's bungalow stands on a 

 low hill of laterite, which by the boiling point is about 320 feet above 

 the sea. 



The temperature of water in a well twenty feet deep, in laterite, 

 was 82°. Of air in shade at the time (March 23rd, 5 p. m.) 87°. 



Beypoor. — The sea is first seen at Beypoor, a large village at the 

 mouth of the Beypoor river, Lat. N. 11° 12', and Long. E. 75° 52'. 

 The cliff on which the Traveller's bungalow is pleasantly situated, is 

 of laterite. It is on the north bank, and commands a good view of 

 the embouchure and bar. The prevailing rock is laterite, running 

 down in low flat topped ridges from the interior, separated by flat 

 bottomed tortuous vallies, which have been evidently scooped in it 

 when the land was uplifted from the bed of the sea. These ranges 

 usually terminate in precipices of from forty to one hundred feet high 

 at the sea. 



The laterite embeds layers of lignite associated with sulphates of 

 iron and alumina (the result probably of the decomposition of iron 

 pyrites,) and occasionally mineral copal. The largest bed of lignite 

 occurs at the base of the cliff of lateritic sandstone, which overlies it a 

 short distance up the river, on its right bank, in a bed of black and 

 grey micaceous slate clays and shales. 



Beypoor was formerly a favourite sea- port of Tippoo, who styled it 

 Sultan-patnam, the city of the Sultan ; he constructed a fort on the 

 river, warehouses, and an arsenal. 



