RECORDS 
OF THE 
GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF INDIA. 
Part 2.] 1875. [May. 
Pkeliminaey note on the Gold-fields of South-east Wynad, Madras Presidency, 
by William King, b. a., Deputy Superintendent, Geological Survey of India, Madras. 
The attention of the Madras Government having been again called, after a lapse of 
Reason for present brief nearly forty-two years, to the occurrence of gold in the Malabar Dis- 
rcport ' triet, it was considered advisable that an examination of the country 
should be made by the Geological Survey of India. It now, however, turns out that the 
area over which the auriferous deposits and quartz reefs extend is so large, that a considerable 
period of time must elapse before a full report of the whole district can be made. In the 
meanwhile, as a gold mining company had been started with the intention of opening 
up the quartz reefs known to exist in Wynad, and more particularly those near 
Dayvallah, my attention was first directed to this region. The country examined up to this 
time constitutes a local division of this part of the district and is sufficiently large and 
important in itself to be described separately in these Records. 
The intermediate elevated terrace of mountain-land lying between the low country of 
Topography of Wyu4d Malabar, the loftier plateau of the Nilgiri mountains, and the 
plateau - Mysore territory, called the Wynad, has been conveniently separ¬ 
ated (principally by the Coffee Planters) into three divisions: North Wynad, South Wyndd, 
and South-east Wynad; and these larger areas are again parcelled out after a native classi¬ 
fication into Amshams. South-east Wynad includes among others the Nambalicode,Moonad, 
and Moopia-nad Amshams, the latter being the most north-westerly of the three, and touching 
on South Wynad or that in which the central village of Vythery is situated. Manantoddy, the 
principal town of the plateau, is in North Wynad. 
The present paper has to do with so much of South-east Wynad as lies to the south- 
south-west of and alongside the road from Giidalur to Sultan’s Battery (Gunuapuddy- 
vuttom of Atlas-sheet). The other boundaries are the Nilgiri plateau and Ouchterlony valley 
on the east-south-east; the great line of precipices of the Western Ghats from Nadgani 
(Carcoor ghat) to the mountain of Yellaramulla on the south-south-west, and a high water¬ 
shed running from Yellaramulla to Sultan’s Battery on the north-north-west. 
This mountain terrace has an elevation on an average of above 3,000 feet; but out of it 
rise peaked ridges and hills of considerably greater heights, varying 
from 3,500 to nearly 7,000 feet above the sea. 
Elevation, 
