The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.4

v2.c16.4

**General character of the Hills :—** The belt is throughout well wooded. Pipal and other trees rising from the crevices of the rocks, and ferns and small shrubs in cracks, hollows and low sheltered places, where the disintegrated rock has left a layer of mould for their growth, envelope it in a pretty thick coating of verdure. But the most prominent and exposed surfaces are perfectly bare. Vegetation is also sparse and stunted on the plain to the east of the belt as far as Bhuvaneśvara, the laterite having in most places cropped up to the very surface of the earth producing a soil, barren, naked, and ungrateful. Nevertheless, there are here and there some large and umbrageous mango trees, and a few scattered patches of cultivation: around the village of Jagmārā topes of mango and bamboo and clutivated fields are plentiful. On the west of the belt, the country is also well wooded; and when I visited the place in the middle of November 1868, a large and smiling crop of paddy clothed the plain to the very foot of the hills.