1851.] Notes upon a tour through the Rdjmahal Hills, 561 



The More is about half a mile across with a small but brisk stream 

 of pure water ; the southern outliers of the Rajmahal hills are visible 

 to the north-west, distant twenty-four miles. 



In the village I saw large heaps of coal that had been brought by a 

 zemindar from the Ajye river, distant forty miles, to be used for 

 burning bricks. 



17 th December, 1850. — Direction west, ten miles to Sury, the civil 

 station and capital town of the district Birbhum. The whole march 

 lay through a highly cultivated and well wooded country. 



Sury is a moderate sized native town situate on an extensive ridge 

 of gravel, composed of quartz felspar, silvery mica and a great abund- 

 ance of pisiform iron ore ; the whole lying upon granite, which is seen 

 cropping out from the gravel one mile north of the station. 



As far as the eye can see to the north, the country appears composed 

 of long undulating ridges, running east and west, well wooded and 

 backed by the Rajmahal Hills. 



18th December, 1850. — Direction north-west eight miles to Nag- 

 gulia. As before observed the granite is met with one mile from the 

 station, it has about seventy-five per cent, of felspar in its composition, 

 with translucent quartz and silvery mica. Pass through Ratangarh a 

 small village on the right bank of the More, but which in Arrow- 

 smith's large map is made to appear on the left bank ; at this village 

 I passed under two large kuchla or Strychnos nux vomica trees, whose 

 branches were bending under the weight of large clusters of their 

 tempting orange looking, but deadly poisonous fruit. 



Naggulia is situated on the summit of one of the numerous ridges 

 that generally extend throughout the western portion of the district ; 

 they are in general from ten to fifteen miles in length, and from thirty 

 to fifty feet in height ; the valleys between averaging from the crest of 

 one ridge to the crest of another about five miles in width ; the ridges 

 are invariably covered with a forest of sakua trees, a species of shorea, 

 and assan, with naked rocks of quartz, felspar, gneiss, dykes of green- 

 stone, hornstone, occasional actinolite and nodular iron stone, the latter 

 disintegrating, forms the pisiform iron ore so plentifully found spread 

 over the country, and which forms the finest natural roads possible to 

 conceive ; unlike kankar roads which are always liable after continued 

 rain to run into holes from the pounded lime re-crystallizing, these 



4 c 



