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2 NELLORE MANUAL. features of the country. The villages are poor, topes rarely gladden the eye of the traveller, and pure water is almost an unknown luxury. Small tanks obtaining an uncertain supply of water from local drainage, irrigable land constantly thrown out of cultivation, and the stunted crops reared on s hungry soil mark the difficulties against which the ryot strives to gain a precarious livelihood.”

Of the mountain ranges in the district, the Eastern Ghauts run in a north-westerly direction from the south of Venkatagiri to the north of the Kanigiri Taluq, and form the line of demarkation between this district and that of Cuddapah. The highest point, Penchalakonda, has an elevation of about 3,000 feet above the level of the sea. The slopes are covered with low jungle, in some places mixed with bamboos. Towards the north the jungle is dense and heavy. In parts timber is to be found of good size, but no great value. Totally disconnected with this range rises the Udayagiri Droog about 2,000 feet high. This fortified hill was formerly held by a Mahomedan Jaghiredar, and must have been a place of great strength.

The principal rivers in the district are the Pennair, Suvarnamukhi, . Maneru, Paleru, Musi, and Gundlakamma. The i = Pennair rises in the Nundidroog Hills in the Mysore territory, and enters the district through a gorge in the Eastern Ghauts at Somesila, 285 miles from its source. It runs in an irregular easterly course for 70 miles, dividing the district into two unequal portions, and falls into the Bay of Bengal in lat. N. 14° 36’ eighteen miles below the town of Nellore. It receives two unimportant feeders—the Bog- geru and Biraperu—in its course through the district. The river receives ite first supply of water when the rains of the south-west monsoon fall in the western districta, and is in full or partial flood on an average for 61 days in the year. There is an enicut at Nellore with two main artificial channels to Kristnapatam and toSarvepalli in the GudurTalug, and branches to the numerous tanks in the neighbourhood of their course. Thére is another irrigation scheme under examination at Sangam, 20 miles to the west of Nellore, which is designed to supply water to the lands on the northern bank of the river. Another anicut has also been designed by the Madras Irrigation Company at Somesila ecroas the gorge in the western hills. From this it was intended to carry an irrigating and navigable canal with branch supplying-channels through the south of the Atmakur and the north of the Rapur Taluga, and thus bring a large area of land under irrigated rice cultivation, but the scheme is indefinitely postponed. In the lower part of its course the bed of the Pennair is sandy, but higher up rocky, with many deap pools well stocked with fish, which, being swept down the stream during inundations, find their way into the numerous extensive tanks supplied by the river, and form a considerable portion of the diet of the people

‘Mountains, �