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BHOR GHAT.

407

Bombay, and about the same distance north-west of Poona (Puna). Lat. 18° 46° 45" N., long 73° 23' 30"

up

E.

The

carrying of the line of

one of the greatest engineering feats that has been performed in India. The summit is 1831 feet above the level at its base, or 2027 feet above sea-level. The average gradient is i in 48. The total length of tunnelling is 2535 yards. There are 8 viaducts, varying from 52 to 168 yards in length, to from 45 to 139 feet high. The total quantity of cuttings was 1,623,102 cubic yards, and of railway

this pass is

embankments 1,849,934 cubic yards. The maximum height of the embankments is 74 feet. There are 18 bridges of various spans from The estimated 7 to 30 feet, and 58 culverts of from 2 to 6 feet span. cost of the work was ;^597,222, or an average of ^41,188 per mile. It

was completed

in

commencement.

its

February 1861, within five years from the date of In former times, the Bhor Ghdt was considered

the key of the Deccan. In 1804, General Wellesley gave

Bombay

greater facilities of access

Deccan by making the Bhor Ghat practicable for artillery, and constructed a good road from the top of the Ghat to Poona (Puna) a good carriage road up the Ghat was not, however, completed until 1830, when it was opened by Sir John Malcolm, then Governor of Bombay. ‘On the loth November 1830,’ he wrote, ‘I opened the Bhor Ghat, which, though not quite completed, was sufficiently advanced to enable to the



me

to drive

down

with a party of gentlemen in several carriages.

It is

me

to give a correct idea of this splendid work,

which

impossible for

may be

Konkan and the commerce, be of the greatest of controops and travellers, and lessen the expense of European

said to break

Deccan.

down

the wall between the

It will give facility to

veniences to

and other

articles to all

who

reside in the Deccan.’

Thirty years after-

wards another Governor of Bombay, Sir Bartle Frere, at the opening of the Bhor Ghat Railway incline, which reaches by one long lift of 1 1 miles the height of 1831 feet, recalled Sir John Malcolm’s words When I first saw the Ghat some years later, we were very and said

proud

in

that time,

‘

Bombay I

of our mail cart to

believe, the only

Poona (Puna), the

one running

in

India



but

and at was some

first, it

years later before the road was generally used for wheeled carriages.

remember that we met hardly a single cart betw'een Khandalla and Poona long droves of pack-bullocks had still exclusive possession of the road, and probably more carts now pass up and down the Ghat in But the a w’eek than were then to be seen on it in a whole year. days of mail and bullock carts, as well as of pack-bullocks, are now' drawing to a close.’ The pack-bullocks, how'ever, still continue to do I



a thriving business in spite of the completion of the railway.

Mr. E. B. Eastwick, in Murray’s Handbook for Bombay (London, thus describes the scenery: ‘The beautiful scenery of the

1881),