204 MINERALS COLLECTED 



In none of the other wells of cantonments, I believe, was solid 

 rock met with, but large quantities of loose stones of every variety, 

 quartz, granite, and green-stone being the prevailing sorts, and sand was 

 invariably found mixed with and below the pebbles, which would almost 

 lead one to suppose that the specimens, 2, 3, and 4, came from immense 

 boulders, and some large white quartz boulders on the west of the can- 

 tonments, would each of them have nearly filled the diameter of the small 

 wells. Nor was any rock visible along the river bank, cropping out to 

 show whether the granite was continuous. Except at the extreme left 

 of the cantonments, and distant from the wells three miles, where a ridge 

 of red, brittle, well-defined gneiss, vertically disposed, is seen in the river 

 bed, and lost in the right bank of the river. 



This accumulation of sand and pebbles, and cropping out of the gra- 

 nite, gneiss, and sand-stone, causes a swell scarcely extending beyond the 

 limits of cantonments, and afforded to the Bengal force there at the time, 

 the advantage of well-drained hard ground during the rains ; whilst that 

 between cantonments and Nagpiir, and all round Nagpur was impassa- 

 ble, from the rottenness of the deep black soil. An equal advantage ac- 

 crued from the nature of the soil, during the hot weather, water being 

 found plentifully at little depth, throughout the cantonments, below the 

 sand, whilst at Nagpur, every hot season, nearly all the wells run dry, 

 being seemingly mere reservoirs of water, in the basalt rock, which over- 

 flow in the rains, being filled by drainage of the surface. 



<. : SILWARA. 



North of Khoi 'dri about two miles, on rather elevated ground, are ex- 

 tensive quarries of sand-stone, No. 1.* The strata are very regular, though 



of 



No. 1. " Argillaceous Sand-stone of various colors."— .VoyseY. 



