PAET II.] 
King : Paris of Nizam’s dominions. 
55 
the high ridge just crossed, there is a wide stretch of forest-covered, mostly high flat 
country with occasional shallow valleys and easy descents to other terraces of flat ground, 
until the more irregularly hilly country in which the great Pakhal tank is situated is 
reached. This country is all of Vindhyan rocks, mainly earthy slates with bands of quartzite, 
and one series of slightly magnesian grey silicious lime- 
Vmdhyans, and their lie. stone having a dip of 5° to 10° south-eastward. The general 
lie of these Vindhyans is undulating, with a gentle dip to the eastwards : occasionally also 
high, and even vertical, strata occur, so that they hade up at times in low headlands to the 
westward. 
The Pakhal tank has been made by throwing a bund across a river, which has cut its 
way over this western outcrop, between two of these low 
headlands, and thus there is a noble sheet of water kept 
back among the few irregular hills bordering eastwards on the line of low headlands. It is a 
splendid tank: there was no rain to speak of last season, and yet now there is a beautiful and 
wide-spread sheet of water lying back in two aims on either side of a good big hill east- 
south-east of the bund: while from these are long bays reaching up behind low ridges of 
outcropping Vindhyans. On every side there is far-stretching jungle; even below the tank 
bund, for miles, there is the thickest and densest jungle, only broken here and there by a 
few patches of rice cultivation. There is not the population even in the country below the 
tank to make use of its waters; and no careful means are taken in these days of Mahommedan 
rule to conduct the water to a part of the country, where the population is more numerous, 
In the old Teliugha times, when Warrungul was one of the great centres of the Telugu 
people, there must have been something more stirring in the way of human life than there is 
now in this desolate region of wide-spread jungle. 
Not more than a couple of miles below the tank, there is a great rectangular fort still 
standing entire as to its high mud and stone walls, hut all overgrown with, and in the 
midst of, tall tree jungle. The Nizam’s Government is at present erecting a large convict 
jail here, which not being yet ready for its piisoners, and with jungle around, looks almost 
as desolate as the old fort. 
The coup-d’oeil of Pakhal tank is tame, the country being flattish and unbroken by any 
good hills, except the long low ranges far to the east near Kamarum, and the one largo hill 
at the hank of the tank. In beauty and picturesqueness, it cannot for instance be compared 
with the great Cumbum tank in the Ivurnool District. 
The bund of the tank is very nearly on the western edge of the Vindhyans; in fact, the 
base of the low headlands at the south end of the bund is 
Western edge of Vindhyans. „ ,, . .... 
possibly made up ot the bottom beds oi the series, m this 
part of the country; for, about half a mile west of the bund, the stream of water from the 
sluice is crossed, and here there is very coarse granitoid gneiss of the crystalline series, and 
these are the rocks which make up the rest of the country 
westward to Hanamconda. 
Crystallines. 
Note on PaTchdl tank .—The tahsildar of Narsimpet has obligingly furnished me with the following data 
regarding this tank from records in his office: “The tank is said to have been constructed about sixteen 
hundred years ago by Rajah Khaldya. The bund of the tank is nearly 2,000 yards long, breadth 6,000 yards, 
and the depth back from the bund, 8,000 yards. When full of water, the depth at the sluice is 12 yards.” 
Camp GuddigoodiUM, I WILLIAM KING, 
ls« March 1872. J Deputy Superintendent, Geological Survey of India. 
