File:The Quarterly journal of the Geological Society of London (12981404434).jpg

224
PEOCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY.
In descending a slope of the Karewah Hills, near Manganwar, I
came upon wliat seemed to me to be both curious and interesting in
many ways, more particularly as showing the manner and extent to
which the surface of this formation (the lacustrine deposit forming
the Karewahs) has been lowered and reduced. The sketch, fig. 4,
Fig. 4. — Perched Block, on a pillar of clay, on the side of the
Karewah Hills, near Manganwar.
which will describe it better than words, represents an enormous
block of stone (of the kind of igneous rock to be met with in the
higher range) resting on a column of hard clay, about 8 feet in
height. The clay, with pieces of rock, mostly angular, is the same
with that which forms the mass of these Karewah Hills, and all
the materials of which hills have been washed down from the higher
ranges above them.
The lowering of the surface, except when it was protected by
a block of stone, must have been owing to heavy vertical rain-falls ;
nothing else could have left rocks so perched and isolated. This
process is not going on now. The surface of the soil is protected by
a covering of vegetation (Deodars) ; and the particular block here
represented must have been in its present position for an enormous
length of time, as a tall Deodar has grown up alongside, so that
the block seems to rest against it*.
" Karewah " is the Kashmere name for these low alluvial hills,
some of them 200 feet in height, and very steep, with small streams
(not so large as ours at Clulworth) bubbling along the valleys, which
here and there open out to 300 yards or so in width ; at these spots

• Mr. Vigne notices what I fancy must be the same tiling (see his work, p. 285,
  

vol. i.) : — " The valley of the Gm-ys contains a great mass of alluvium at its north
end, and in that of Iskard there is a vast quantity of muddy deposits worn into