1852.] The Kurrukpoor Hills. 199 



tiful crop of Indian corn, junera, cotton, pulse, a small quantity of 

 tobacco, a few chillies and edible roots. The inhabitants principally 

 consist of Sonthals, from whom we experienced every kindness they 

 had in their power to bestow. They gave us a house to sleep in, milk, 

 water and fire ; beyond these necessaries of life their generosity could 

 not proceed. A tolerable quantity of iron is smelted near both of these 

 villages, generally in the jungle for the sake of being near the spot 

 where the charcoal is burned. 



5th September. — Started early in the morning to visit the hot 

 springs one mile from the source of the Mun river. Half a mile after 

 leaving Goormaha we passed through a small hamlet Misree Bungla, 

 and entered a very narrow valley in which the Mun takes its rise, 

 densely wooded on both sides, the forest climbing to the summits of 

 the hills both on our right hand and on our left ; the rough and un- 

 equal road passing over asbestos and hornstone with occasional 

 masses of quartz ; when nearing Bheembandh the strata of asbestos are 

 exhibited as vertical lamina, very fine, — of a red, black, blue or grey 

 colour. Two miles and a half walking, during which time we had 

 crossed and re-crossed the narrow bed of the Mun, brought us to the 

 descent into the plains of Kurrukpoor and to the village of Bheem- 

 bandh, a small collection of huts surrounded by rice fields and palm 

 trees, near which are the hot springs. The first spring we visited is 

 situated about three hundred yards to the North of the village immedi- 

 ately under a small detached hornstone hill named " Mohadewa," from 

 whose base the water issues in a fine stream at a temperature of 147° 

 Fahrenheit ; this was the hottest spring we met with in these hills ; the 

 whole of the hornstone rocks over which this water flows appears to 

 be partially decomposed as well as encrusted with a siliceous sinter ; 

 a few hundred yards farther to the North, at the foot of the hornstone 

 hill " Dumduma," we came upon a region of hot springs, hot water 

 appeared to be spouting from the ground in every direction ; the prin- 

 cipal springs, of which there are eight or ten had a uniform tempera- 

 ture of 145°, all rising within a space of about three hundred yards 

 square. Whilst our party was engaged bathing in the stream containing 

 the united waters of all the hot springs and which falls into the Mun, 

 I made the following observations. At the source of the Bheembandh 

 hot-well at the foot of the Mohadewa hill, the water as before observed 



