1845.] across the Peninsula af Southern India. 421 



talcose and micaceous schists have suffered most. Mr. E. Maltby tells 

 me, that an instance lately occurred of the manner in which the great 

 Fall has receded. One of the crags composing the edge of the precipice 

 gave way, and in its descent struck a projecting ledge of rock with so 

 violent a concussion as to carry away a large extent of the face of the 

 precipice. The whole mass fell into the basin below with a noise that 

 startled the country for some miles around. 



Rock basins are frequent in the bed of the river, which is worn in 

 the rock, and rugged with water-worn rocky masses. The Falls of 

 Gairsuppa may be justly ranked amongst the most magnificent 

 cataracts of the globe. While excelled in height by the Cerosoli 

 and Evanson cascades in the Alps,* and the Falls of the Arve in 

 Savoy, the Gairsuppa cataract surpasses them in volume of water 

 precipitated; and while much inferior to Niagara in volume, it far 

 excels these celebrated Falls of the New World in height. 



There are other picturesque falls and cascades in this part of the 

 Ghauts: those most worth seeing are the cascades of Honeycoom, about 

 three koss from Allawully, and those of Yellapoor. Farther North 

 are the splendid Falls of the Yenna in the Mahabuleshwar hills, 600 

 feet high ; and to the South those of the Cauvery, 300— viz., the Gunga 

 Chakki 300 feet high, and the Burra Chakki, or Southern Fall, about 

 200 feet. Then come the Cascades of the Neilgherris, viz. those of Py- 

 kari, Kaiteeor Kulhattee, and the Elk cataract. The Falls of Courtal- 

 lum in Tinnevelly are about 220 feet high, and the sacred cataract of 

 Pupanassum among the Ghauts of Travancore 160 feet high, and 

 lastly, of the Falls of Komari near Cape Comorin. The mass of water 

 precipitated over these Falls in the monsoon, and the amount of erosion 

 and minor details are still desiderata. Many other Cascades exist in 

 the Western Ghauts, of which there are no published accounts at all. 

 Those of Gokauk I have already attempted to describe. 



* The height of the Cerosoli Cascade is 2400 feet; that of Evanson, 120U feet ; and 

 the Falls of the Arve, 1100 feet. 



At Niagara a sheet of water, two miles across, is contracted to less than half its former 

 breadth, and in the state of an impetuous rapid, running at the rate of seven or eight 

 miles an hour, and about 25 feet in depth, is hurled over a projecting mass of horizon- 

 tal limestone strata down a precipice 164 feet high, over which it falls in two great 

 sheets into the basin below. 



