410 



Report on the Goomsur, Duspullah 



The koosnm-tree is held to he approachable only by the jungle 

 Khonds after propitiating by sacrifice its guardian demon. 



Another variety of lac is said to be procured from a climber, in 

 whose stem an insect pierces holes from which it distils in the wet 

 season. The chirwall (Morinda citrifolia) whose root affords the well 

 known red dye is also gathered, and the oil of the phesi-wood is col- 

 lected in large quantities. 



Second Line of Route from near Koradycottah over the table-land to 

 Courmingia on its Eastern verge. — The second line of route traced in 

 the plan, rises to the plateau from the dividing chain of valleys, in the 

 bed of a feeder of the Somersoothum rivulet, near Koradycottah. 



The features of this mountain ravine have as much of wild gran- 

 deur, of savage beauty, and of picturesque gloom, as is often to be 

 contemplated in nature^ 



A series of dark, precipitous, bare-walled chasms linking together 

 a succession of close and deeply shaded hollows or culs de sac, pe- 

 netrate rather than ascend for three miles the forest laden mountain 

 side; while there impend on either hand, at great elevations, the 

 dark cones and wooded slopes which compose the flank of the great 

 plateau. 



A short, steep ascent finally leads to the summit of the table-land 

 in Borogootzai 



Few contrasts can be imagined more abrupt and strikiiig than that 

 between the savage and solitary glen whose line of cavern-like chasmSji 

 and sunless dells is threaded in the ascent of the pass, and the bright 

 and smiling landscape which opens on the view upon crowning the 

 plateau. It is as if a scene of Claude were inlaid in a picture of Sal- 

 vator. An open valley, a mile and a half in length, and bounded on 

 either hand by soft lines of richly wooded hills, forms a scene, in its 

 proportions, its colouring, and picturesque details exquisitely com- 

 posed. 



The surface of the vale is a gently waved park-like expanse of rich 

 corn land, embellished with mango, saul, and the greater palm-trees^ 

 solitary, and in groups, amongst which narrow winding lines of vivid 

 verdure mark the courses of the streamlets from the abutments and 

 recesses of the hills to where they unite in a quickly flowing vein of 

 water which escapes in front. 



Three large Khond villages, shadowed by ancient groves, and em- 

 bowered in fruit trees of every leaf, lie close under the covert of the 

 hills, massively wooded in their deeper foldings and ravines, lightljf" 



