1877.] 
31 
Chandrasekhara Banurji —The Kaimur Range. 
during the freshes, flows forth in abundance through the adjacent country. 
The sound and fury of the cataract keep the people in the plains sufficient¬ 
ly awake. The fall of a stone or boulder over night when washed down 
from the hill to the pool, fills the heart of the timid peasant with awe. 
The waters at times flood and spoil their crops, but beyond these sad' 
effects to how little good use are they brought ? With comparatively 
little effort on the part of man, could not the dry vale be turned into 
a luxuriant lake, to serve as feeder to irrigation canals ? But as the case 
with her history, so it is with her physical resources : in India nature and 
man work in silence in their accustomed courses of evil, without awakening 
a thought or making “ the pulse beat one stroke more or less.” The out¬ 
side world is indifferent. To subjugate nature to the uses of civilised life, 
is a task which we have never been taught to accomplish, and while a water¬ 
fall only 150 feet in height on the opposite side of the globe has taught the 
Indian youth to talk with wonder of the falls of Niagara, this grand 
water leap of Tuttala, nearer our homes, from at the least twice that height at 
the period of the rains, passes unknown, unmarked by the geologist, unnoti¬ 
ced alike by the engineer and the painter of natural scenes. The historian, 
who loves to dive into the depths of antiquity, never dreams to see what 
this spot is like. 
But to the scene and the shrine. The shrine stands on the precipitous 
wall between the edge of the projecting cataract above and the gulf below. 
From the opposite bank of the pool the shrine appeared like a red spot on 
the breast of the precipice. To climb up to it was a hopeless task, we 
thought. But winding round the eastern bank of the pool we saw 
stones sufficiently broad to permit us to ascend or rather scramble up. So 
up we went, on all fours at times, leaving boots aside, until we found ourselves 
more than 125 feet above the water’s edge of the pool below, and over 300 
feet beneath the cataract, and face to face with the goddess Bhavani. The 
niche of the idol is a curve in the rock, sloping below and projecting about a 
foot and a half above. From this projection the hill rises 500 feet straight 
up, forming on each arm a stupendous curve of a high rocky wall, from 
the top of which the fleeting clouds seem hardly a stone’s throw apart. It 
was awful to behold the projecting precipice above threatening to hurl and 
sweep one down to the gulf beneath. From this recess there is but one 
opening which displayed the country towards the north-east. 
The shrine is hardly in keeping with the grandeur of the scenery 
around. It speaks well of the poetical temperament of the Hindu; a 
better site could hardly have been selected to excite religious feelings, 
or to hold an annual fair. The idol is small and poor. It is an 
image in stone of the great Bhavani, hardly two feet in height. The 
eight-handed goddess stands armed in her usual triumphant posture over a 
