Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s7.t4.30

v2.c27.s7.t4.30

The town of Merta covers a large space of ground, and is enclosed with a strong wall and bastions, composed of earth to the westward, but of freestone to the east. All, however, are in a state of decay, as well as the town itself, which is said to contain twenty thousand houses. Like most Hindu towns, there is a mixture of magnificence and poverty; a straw or mud hut adjoins a superb house of freestone, which "shames the meanness" of its neighbour. The castle is about a gun-shot to the south-west of the town, and encloses an area of a mile and a half. Some small sheets of water are on the eastern and western faces. There are plenty of wells about the town, but the water has an unpleasant taste, from filtering through a stiff clay. There are but two strata before water is found, which is about twenty-five feet from the surface : the first a black mould, succeeded by the clay, incumbent on a loose sand, filled with quartzose pebbles of all hues, and those stalactitic concretions which mark, throughout the entire line from Jodhpur to Ajmer, the stratum in which the springs find a current. There are many small lakes around the town, as the Dudasar, or ‘lake (sar) of Duda’ ; the Bejpa, the Durani, the Dangolia, etc.