Himalayan Journals — Volume 1: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.Hooker, Joseph Dalton
History
Himalayan Journals — Volume 1: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.
Hooker, Joseph Dalton
Himalaya Mountains -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Himalaya Mountains
Monghyr is celebrated for its iron manufactures, especially of
muskets, in which respect it is the Birmingham of Bengal. Generally
speaking, these weapons are poor, though stamped with the first
English names. A native workman will, however, if time and sufficient
reward be given, turn out a first rate fowling-piece. The inhabitants
are reported to be sad drunkards, and the abundance of toddy-palms
was quite remarkable. The latter, (here the _Phoenix sylvestris,)
I never saw wild, but it is considered to be so in N.W. India; it is
still a doubtful point whether it is the same as the African species.
In the morning of the following day I went to the hot springs of
Seeta-koond (wells of Seeta), a few miles south of the town.
Illustration -- MONGHYR ON THE GANGES, WITH THE CURROCKPORE HILLS IN
THE DISTANCE.
The hills are hornstone and quartz, stratified and dipping southerly
with a very high angle; they are very barren, and evidently identical
with those on the south bank of the Soane; skirting, in both cases,
the granite and gneiss range of Paras-nath. The alluvium on the banks
of the Ganges is obviously an aqueous deposit subsequent to the
elevation of these hills, and is perfectly plane up to their bases.
The river has its course through the alluvium, like the Soane.
The depth of the former is in many places upwards of 100 feet, and
the kunker pebbles it contains are often disposed in parallel
undulating bands. It nowhere contains sand pebbles or fossils;
concretions of lime (kunker) alone interrupting its uniform
consistence. It attains its greatest thickness in the valleys of the
Ganges and the Soane, gradually sloping up to the Himalaya and
Curruckpore hills on either flank. It is, however, well developed on
the Kymore and Paras-nath hills, 1200 to 1500 feet above the Ganges
valley, and I have no doubt was deposited in very deep water, when
the relative positions of these mountains to the Ganges and Soane
valleys were the same that they are now. Like every other part of the
surface of India, it has suffered much from denudation, especially on
the above-named mountains, and around their bases, where various
rocks protrude through it. Along the Ganges again, its surface is an
unbroken level between Chunar and the rocks of Monghyr. The origin of
its component mineral matter must be sought in the denudation of the
Himalayas within a very recent geological period. The contrast
between the fertility of the alluvium and the sterility of the
protruded quartzy rocks is very striking, cultivation running up to
these fields of stones, and suddenly stopping.
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