from the amygdaloids above; but its great thickness usually preserves it from obliteration, and it rises from the wood below with majestic effect, its black front being finely contrasted with the rich and lively green of its sylvan associate. It is these strata, arranged in slopes and scarps repeated three or four times, and so commonly met with in insulated and other mountains in Dukhun, that constitute the amazing strength of the hill forts of the country, leaving a succession of natural walls encircling a mountain. This feature did not escape the observation of Captain Dangerfield in Malwa, who says, "From the great difference in the resistance made to decomposition by these trap and amygdaloid beds, their exposed ends acquire a very distinct degree of inclination and character; the amygdaloid forming a great slope, and affording a loose mould covered with vegetation, the trap retaining its original perpendicularity and dark bareness."[1]
In the alternation of the strata there does not appear to be any uniformity; but the general level, thickness, and extent of a stratum are preserved, as in sedimentary rocks, on both sides of a valley; the basalt and hardest amygdaloids being traceable for miles in the parallel spurs or ranges; but the imbedded minerals, and even the texture, vary in very short distances.
Columnar Basalt.—A great geological feature of Dukhun is the occurrence of columnar basalt. The basalts and hardest amygdaloids run so much into each other that the line of separation is not always readily distinguishable, excepting of course the lines of horizontal stratification. I observed the prismatic disposition more marked and perfect in the basalt strata than in the amygdaloids, and the more or less perfect development of determinate forms was dependent on the compactness and limited constituents of the rocks. Basalts and amygdaloids, however compact, with many imbedded matters, rarely formed columns. Perfect columns were generally small, of four, five, or six sides; but the prismatic structure sometimes manifested itself in basaltic and amygdaloidal columns many feet in diameter. A bare mention of the places where they occur will testify to their extended localities.
On the low table-land of Kurdah, near Serroor, between sixty and seventy miles east from the ghats, columnar basalt occupies an area of many square miles. Small columns are Been in most of the slopes of the very narrow sinuous valleys of the flanks of the platform, and
- ↑ Malcolm's Control India, Appendix, p. 392.
