Mr, B. Babin gton’s Remarks , $c. 
329 
merely composed of mud. The Hindoo inhabitants, of both sexes, 
wear no clothes above the waist, but the Maplar women wear a 
loose short shift over their petticoat, not unlike that worn by the 
Arabs, their ancestors. 
The face of the country in general below the Ghauts is hilly. 
These hills are low, of a rounded form, and composed of the ferru- 
ginous stone so peculiar to India, called by Buchanan laterite. In 
this porous rock, the red ochry part is the matrix, and the kidney 
shaped interstices are filled with white earth : the whole is alluvial, 
being formed from the washings of the Ghaut mountains. In these, 
the hornblende uniformly decays into a red oxyd, and the felspar 
into porcelain earth. Why these are aggregated in their present 
form, the red particles forming the matrix, the white the kidneys, 
I cannot explain. Whenever the alluvial rock, thus formed, is ex- 
posed, the white parts are washed away, and a porous ferruginous 
stone is left behind. Such is the general formation of Malabar. 
The primitive rocks underneath possibly appear in many places 
above this coast : I know them to do so, at a place about midway 
between Calicut and Tellicherry, at Moy, and at Tellicherry. Four 
or five miles inland from Calicut, there are two low hills, composed 
of cubic iron ore.* These are probably in beds in the primitive 
rock of the country, though I could perceive nothing but the 
laterite around. From Tillicherry, the laterite forms the hills, until 
you arrive at the foot of the Ghauts, which mountains are composed 
in general of a compound rock, which I call gneiss, though in some 
* This iron ore, though it has been occasionally worked by itinerant artisans, is now 
not used. It appears to be very rich, and I have understood contains 75 per cent, of iron. 
It is sometimes mixed with a green crystallized mineral, which is probably hornblende ; 
and with another substance, which resembles bronzite in colour, but is probably the pre- 
ceding mineral in a state of decomposition. 
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