130 Description of the Valley of Sondur, [July 



R. A. P. 



Yearly hire to 4 hammermen , 126 0 0 



do. to 1 furnace-man 42 0 0 



do. 6 coolies to bring charcoal.. , 126 0 0 



do. 1 man to select and bring ore 21 0 0 



do. 1 man to break ore to powder 21 0 0 



do. 1 headman 31 8 0 



Total 567 8 0 



The furnace is made by the coolies of clay, and costs nothing but the 

 price of the labour expended. After the first outlay there is no ex- 

 pence beyond the payment of the contract money to the sircar, the hire 

 of coolies, &c. and occasional repair , of bellows and tools. In the wes- 

 tern parts of Mysore, where the ore is granular and collected from the 

 sand in beds of streams, I found that it was paid for by the smelter at a. 

 fixed price per basket, which appears a better plan than hiring coolies, 

 for the purpose. The iron of Sondur is sent to Bellary, Adoni, and 

 other places in the ceded districts, and sells in the Bellary bazar at. 

 from 1| to 2 rupees per maund. 



History,— \n oxdiev to place the political history of this little valley 

 in as full and correct a point of view as practicable, I have deemed the, 

 following prefatory abstract of the annals of the Mahratta empire, 

 "which it was long a fief, as a necessary preliminary. 



Little certain is known regarding the origin of the Mahrattas ; two 

 centuries have hardly passed since they first appeared as prominent 

 characters on the great military theatre of the Deccan, and scarcely 

 half that period since they attained the zenith of a power that extend- 

 ed from the gates of Delhi to Cape Comorin. They are alluded 

 to in the old Hindu records as inhabiting a tract of country 

 to the north-west quarter of the Deccan, termed *' Maharashtra,'^ 

 supposed to extend from Guzerat to Gondwdneh, and are said 

 to have originally come from Rajputana. Although the Mah- 

 rattas are unquestionably an ancient race, it ought not to be matter 

 of much surprize that the nation should have remained so long unheard 

 of, when we consider the peculiar classification of the inhabitants of 

 India, of whom there are still many tribes and castes, whose names by 

 far the greater proportion of Europeans have never heard pronounced, 

 and that the good fortune or transcendanl ability of a single individual 

 will often exalt the ol ttoWoi of his caste from utter insignificance and 

 obscurity into a conspicuous place among their brethren, and afford 



