1849.] On the Physical Geography of the Himalaya, 783 



the gravel into sand, and here to deposit both in a series of terraces, 

 there perhaps utterly to displace both, in the latter quarter long after the 

 former had emerged from the waves. Now, that the Himalaya really was, 

 at one time, in great part submerged ; that the vast mass of detritus from 

 the Himalaya at present spread over the plains in its vicinity, was so 

 spread by the ocean when the founts of the deep were broken up; that this 

 huge bed of detritus, every where forthcoming, is now found in unequal 

 proportion and distribution and state of comminution; as, for example, 

 deeper piled within, than without the sandstone range, and the embaying 

 spurs, and also, more gravelly and abundant to the N. W., more sandy 

 and scant to the S. E. ;* and, lastly, that the Gangetic plain really now 

 has a great oblique dipf from the Sutledge at Riiper to the Brahmaputra 

 at Gwalpara, whereby all the Himalayan feeders of the Ganges are in 

 the plains so much bent over to the eastward — these are presumptions 

 relative to the past as legitimate as the extant facts suggesting them are 

 incontrovertible ; and, we have but to observe how, at the grand epoch 

 adverted to, the action of general causes was necessarily modified by 

 the peculiar features of the scene, as above indicated, in order to come 

 at a just conception of the aspect and character of the lower Himalayan 

 region, all along the line of the mountains. Thus the longitudinal 

 trough parallel to the mountains, and exclusively denominated the Tarai 

 by Capt. Herbert, may to the N. W. have been caused by the set of 

 the subsiding oceanic current from K. W. to S. E. ; but, however 

 caused, it exists as a palpable defiuite feature only beneath Kumaon ; is 



* Capt. Herbert has given statements of its depth to the westward, where there is a 

 sandstone range. To the eastward, where is none, I found it, on the right bank of 

 the Tishta, under the mountains, 120 feet, at 15 miles lower down, 60 to 70 feet, at 

 15 miles still further off the mountains, 40 to 50 feet. There was here no inter- 

 ruption to the free spread of the detritus, and I followed one continuous slope and 

 level — the main high one. The country exhibited, near the rivers especially, two or 

 three other and subordinate levels or terraces, some marking the effect at unusual 

 floods of extant fluviatile action, but others unmistakeably that of pristine and 

 oceanic forces. I measured heights from the river. I could not test the subsurface 

 depth of the bed. There was every where much more sand than gravel, and boul- 

 ders were rare. 



f Saharunpiir is 1000 feet above the sea ; Muradabad 600 ; Gorakpur 400 ; 

 Rangpur 200 ; Gwalpara 112. My authorities are As. Res, Vol. XII. J. A. S. No. 

 126. Royles Him. Bot., Griffith's Journals, and J. Prinsep in epist. 



