TOPOGRAPHICAL SURVEYS. 85 



The area plane-tabled during the season 1886-37 consisted of a 

 block of hills from four to eight thousand feet in height, including 

 the south-west corner of the Palnis and parts of Madura and 

 Travancore. It is for the most part bare and exceedingly rugged, 

 some of the precipices being tremendous, so that a body falling 

 therefrom with a slight impetus would touch nothing for a quarter 

 of a mile. The following season (1887-88) was exceptionally 

 unhealthy, hardly a man escaped illness, and there were 12 deaths 

 out of a comparatively small establishment. The operations of 

 the triangulation included the locale of the Periyar project, an 

 important and bold undertaking, which has greatly changed the 

 character of the country, once the home of sambhar and of 

 herds of wild elephants, but now swarming with troops of 

 dusky coolies busied in excavating or raising embankments. 

 The project consists in building a gigantic concrete dam, 160 

 feet high, across the Periyar river and cutting a tunnel 2,000 

 yards long, through which the imprisoned water will flow into the 

 channel of a small stream that rushes down the face of the Ghat 

 into thousands of thirsty acres in the Cumbum valley. The cost 

 amounts to about 70 lakhs of rupees.* 



During 1888-89 and 1889-90, the party were engaged exclusively 

 on forest surveys in the Salem, Madura, and Tinnevelli districts, a 

 class of work of increasing importance, which is already absorbing 

 four parties in the Central Provinces, Bombay and Madras Presi- 

 dencies, as well as a detachment in Orissa. 



Kathiawar and Cutch. — The topographical survey of Kathiawar 

 described at page 134 of the "Memoir" was brought to a conclusion 

 by Major A. Pullan in 1879-80. It is an elaborate and important 

 piece of work, surveyed on the 2-inch for reduction to the 1-inch 

 scale, and consisting of 61 sheets. On its completion the operations 

 of the party were extended into Cutch, and in 1880-81 the Great 

 Rann or Punn was surveyed on the ^-inch scale. This remarkable 

 tract, marked so conspicuously on the maps, consists of sandy waste 

 and salt beds separating Cutch from the province of Sind, During 

 the south-west monsoon the Kami is a shallow inland sea, but during 

 the cold and beginning of the hot season a few roads cross it; 

 at first oozy salt slime and water overlies it in patches, but as the 



* The general appearance and character of the country are capitally and picturesquely 

 described by Mr. R. W. Senior, p. iv. of "Survey Report for 1887-88." 



