2l6 FOOTE : GEOLOGY OF THE BELLARY DISTRICT. 



Appendix B. 



Glaciers near Bellary. 



A most wildly far-fetched but very amusing hypothesis, explanatory of the 

 physical features of the environs of Bellary having been shaped by glacial action, 

 was put forward a few years ago in a letter to the Madras Mail by Surgeon-Cap- 

 tain Fox, A. M. D., in connection with a controversy between us about his alleged 

 discovery of a palaeolithic settlement on the top of Kapgal (the Peacock hills, 

 north-east of Bellary). 



It had better be given in his own words to obviate any possibility of miscon- 

 struing his meaning : — 



" I have also said that the rocks and boulders about Bellary bear unmistake- 

 able evidence of the action of ice. My reasons for the statements are as follows : — 

 In every new country you find lakes. None occur in this neighbourhood. They 

 have been silted up ages ago. Volcanic action is always active in the vicinity 

 of fresh upheavals of the earth, and, although earthquakes are said to have occur- 

 red in this district, there is no evidence of recent volcanic phenomenon (sic). In all 

 countries that have been raised by the subsidence of water you will find the aqueous 

 foundations of the rock abundant. In this district granite alone exists. It is an 

 igneous formation and the oldest type of rock known. Therefore it must be of an 

 enormous age. An almost continuous sheet of granite extends from the base of 

 the Copper Mountains for 5 miles to the east of Bellary. This is covered for the 

 most part by earth, detritus, drift gravel and sand which have been carried down 

 from the Copper Mountain by ice, rain, and running water. At certain points how- 

 ever the granite rises boldly out of the sandy plain. Wherever this occurs the 

 granite is split and cracked into huge boulders by the action of ice; and these 

 boulders are rounded and polished, and scattered here and there by the propelling 

 action of a pre-existing glacier. Many of these huge boulders, some as large as 

 a house, have been carried away from the parent rock. These are known to 

 glacialists as erratics. " Mercy's Umbrella," a boulder well-known in Bellary, 

 is an erratic of this kind. Moreover, on the slopes of every granite hill immense 

 mounds of round boulders exist, which have been broken off the parent rock by ice. 

 The famous rock of Bellary is one enormous mass of solid granite which rises 

 out of the plain 300 or 400 feet. To give an idea of its size I may say it takes 

 one half an hour to climb to its top, and about one hour to walk round its base- 

 The side facing the Copper Mountains, the " Stoss-seite " of the Swiss, is per- 

 fectly bald and free from boulders. The opposite side, however, the Swiss " lu-seite" 

 is covered with thousands of large round boulders which have been pushed round 

 to the lee side by glacial action and there deposited. Now, if you look at these 

 rounded boulders from a distance of half a mile or so, they have an appearance 

 as if a flock of brown sheep lay on the side of the rock. This peculiar appearance 

 the Swiss glacialists call "roches montonnes" (sic) or sheep-backs. In like 

 manner if we mount the upper fort and look from one of the bastions down the 

 east side of the rock we will observe that the boulders present a smooth and 

 undulating surface — an appearance which altogether vanishes if we stand at the 

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