1847.] Geoloyical Notes on Zillah Shahabad, or Arrah. 281 



walk from the gateway leading up from Raj ghat. The echo at this 

 spot, which is a complete amphitheatre of precipices, is very distinct and 

 grand, giving seven distinct responses to several syllables ; the report of 

 a gun reverberates like thunder ; the sandstone at this spot is of a dark 

 red, an overhanging rock at this spot enabling a person to look over and 

 to fully contemplate this fearful abyss. At the foot of a small detach- 

 ed hill at Sasseram a very curious apparently horizontal column, or 

 formation in the sandstone appears, which has been described by me 

 in the 163d No. of the Journal of the Asiatic Society at pp. 495 — 

 497. 



Mountain Limestone. — Next in order, is the limestone, and from the 

 fact of its appearing in so many places, though far apart, separated even 

 for many miles and yet always appearing of the same structure, I am 

 inclined to think that it penetrates in an unbroken stratum under the 

 sandstone. Start, for instance, from the eastern face of the table-land, 

 where the limestone forms an unbroken bed from the foot of the For- 

 tress of Rhotas to the village of Dhowdand, a distance of 30 miles north, 

 and proceeding in a north-westerly direction at the distance of thirteen 

 miles we meet with the same limestone in the valley of Soogeea-k'hoh at 

 the depth of a thousand feet below the summit of the table-land and in 

 company with the limestone Gupta caves ; nine miles further in the 

 same direction, it again appears at Buranoon in two low detached hills, 

 much lower than their sandstone neighbours ; four miles further north 

 it again appears in a low hill at Nowhutta, then turning nine miles to 

 the west, it again appears at Musehee ; beyond that, I lost all trace of 

 it, but I have little doubt that from the fragments that are washed out 

 of the numerous k'hohs, that it will be shown to exist wherever the 

 sandstone has been deeply penetrated. To the west of Rhotas limestone 

 appears cropping out as two small hillocks situated in the forest under 

 the lofty sandstone precipices bounding the southern face of the moun- 

 tains. It also appears at the foot of the sandstone at the western 

 entrance of the large valley named Doomur-khar, on the northern face 

 of the hills about 12 miles south-west of the town of Sasseram. This 

 limestone is extensively quarried wherever it appears, and from Tilo- 

 thoo on the banks of the Sone, large quantities are burnt for lime and 

 taken down the river in boats to Dinapore, Patna, Arrah, Chupra and 

 to other large towns. 



