2 FOOTE : GEOLOGY OF THE BELLARY DISTRICT. 



fiscal one. The district is mapped in sheets 58 and 59 of the Indian 

 Atlas, and its extreme western end occupies a small area in sheet 42. 



General topography. — Excepting a very few square miles on the 

 eastern frontier of the district, which are drained by affluents of the 

 Penner, the whole area has a general slope to the northward and 

 sheds the drainage into the Tungabhadra river. 



The greater part of the inclined plane thus formed is open and 

 but slightly undulating country, but the uniformity of the plain is 

 broken by several ranges of hills which cross it diagonally at intervals 

 in a north-west to south-east direction, beside which a number of small 

 groups of hills, and several isolated hills, rise here and there between 

 the several ranges. The district as a whole is remarkable for its 

 bareness of trees, a sad fact due to the utterly reckless way in which 

 the natives cut down trees without making provision for their being 

 replaced. The evils caused by the want of forethought of the people 

 are greatly intensified by the locust-like propensities of the large 

 flocks of goats and herds of cattle they keep and by the practice of 

 burning the dry grass on the hill-sides in the hot weather which kills 

 all seedlings and saplings that may have chanced to escape the goats. 

 Orography. — Of the several hill ranges which, as before mention- 

 ed, cross the district diagonally in north-west to south-east direction, 



the most important is formed by the well-known 

 The Sandur hills. c , ..... , . , . . . . 



bandur hills which, rising close to the right bank 



of the Tungabhadra, stretch south-east for 32 miles, with only one 



break, the gorge of the Nari Nalla. This range is practically the 



centre of the district, which it divides into two unequal lobes, of which 



the north-eastern one is the larger by fully one-third. 



To the west-south-west of the Sandur hills, at a distance of about 



32 miles, rises a high ridge, rather similar in ao- 

 Mallapan gudda hills. _ L 



pearance, and forms the Mallapan gudda range, 



which also starts from close to the right bank of the Tungabhadra at 

 the western end of the Honur reach of the river and stretches south- 

 west for 25 miles to the valley of the Chinna Haggari river. Here 

 a gap, some seven miles in length, occurs, and beyond it the hills rise 

 ( 2 ) 



