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64. With the exception of the Kuttungee sub-division of the Seonee
district, Bijiragogurh, the most northern of the Jubbulpore district, and Koon-
dum, I inspected towns and groups of villages in all these tracts of country, and I
will now describe the prevalence of cholera in each. I will begin with the trap
country, as it was in this that the disease, first appeared.
65. The trap formation occupies the largest portion of the area over
which cholera prevailed with the greatest intensity. It includes the north-western
portion of the district of Chindwara, the northern half of the Seonee district,
the northern portion of Mundlah, and the south and south-eastern portion
of Jubbulpore. It is for the most part a hilly tract of country, presenting a
succession of hills and valleys and undulating upland; but southward and south-
east, between the hills of the trap and those of the metamorphic formation, there
intervene the open plateau of Seonee and a wide extent of open undulating
country that stretches eastward from the Sagur river. Northward again
around Bu railla in the Jubbulpore district the trap expands into an undulating
tract of open county.
66. The rivers that drain this region, are the Ncrbudda with its
numerous affluents, of which the chief are the Shere, the Tainur, and the Gour ;
and the Wyngunga,—the principal affluents of which are the Bijna, the Sagur,
and the Than war. These streams all possess similar characteristics,—they all cut
through the clay stratum of the valleys which they traverse, and their beds are
thus formed of black basaltic rock lying between steep banks of calcarious clay.
67. With the exception of the Nerbudda, these rivers are little better
than mountain torrents. In the hot weather they consist of a succession of nearly
stagnant pools, separated from each other by broad masses of basalt, over which
the water trickles in divided streamlets. In the Wyngunga and other of the moro
important streams the pools are sometimes of considerable extent and depth, and
they are commonly shaded by small trees and brushwood growing on the banks.
A peculiarity everywhere observable in these rivers, is the almost entire absence
of weed. Stagnant though the pools are, the water, even in those that are shallow,
is without weed, either on the surface or crowing from the bottom. This is no
doubt partly due to the rocky nature of their beds and the force of the torrents
by which they are scoured in the rainy reason.
68. The drainage of the country effected by these streams is very com-
plete ; flowing in the lowest trough of the valleys, and with their beds cut down
to the non-porous rock that underlies the soil, the sub-soil water is everywhere
rapidly drained away, excepting in spots where the underlying rock takes a basin-
like form. In these spots water is often abundant between the clay and the
rock. In the narrow bottom between the hills also there is often a strip of
undrained land, in which water lies between a shallow layer of porous moorum
or decomposed trap, and the harder rock below. A jheel or marshy tract of
any extent rarely exists. The inhabitants of the villages along the streams
depend almost entirely upon them for water. In the open plateau and uplands
wells are sunk through the soil and clay down to the rock, but unless a reservoir
is formed in the rock the supply becomes very scanty in the hot weather. I have
frequently seen, in a well sunk 31 feet through the clay, the water flowing in a
small stream across the rock that forms the bottom, and as the rock is hard, a
reservoir cannot be formed without blasting. Among the hills the villages
depend upon springs or surface wells sunk in the porous moorum of the bottom.
These surface wells are in some cases simply open puddles, with the ground
sloping towards them from all sides ; in others they are holes from 3 to 8 feet
deep, and the loose moorum in which they are dug is prevented from falling in
by an interlacement of stout sticks. In some of these surface wells a fair supply