2 TIlE INDIAN EAIPIRE [CHAP.
gneiss and granite which formed the bed-rock when, in the
earliest beginnings of which geological science can take
account, the Peninsula extended from the Aravallis to the
present east coast. There is no evidence of any great change
in the outline of the east coast of India since Palaeozoic times.
No fossils are found in the marine deposits of Secondary and
Tertiary age in the interior of the continent. No life, no slow
movement of creeping things, disturbed the awful silence of
that weird landscape of primaeval days, when India was
represented by the central plateau and its northern fringe of
Arivalli mountains. This, then, was the first stage of evolution.
Never since the Palaeozoic era has this part of the continent
been depressed beneath the sea. Over the extra-peninsular
area, north of it and west, where now exist the regions of
Baluchistan, Afghanistan, the valley of the Indus, and Raj-
putana, with the great extension of the North-western Hima-
layas, the tides of a wide and shallow sea ebbed and flowed.
Then, in Tertiary times, followed the slow formation of the
Gondwana beds, the gradual spreading out of sandy deposits,
and the outlining of the leading features of Indian topography
as we see them now. After the Palaeozoic era, and during the
econdary stage of evolution, when India was probably con-
ected with Africa by dry land and ocean currents swept from
e Persian Gulf to the Aravallis, the rock area extended
ver Assam and the Eastern Ilimalayas, while Burma, the
North-western Himalayas, and the uplands beyond the Indus
were still submarine, or undergoing alternations of elevation
and depression.
At the close of the Cretaceous period, the infinitely gentle
process of sedimentary deposit and the dead repose of the
geological world were rudely shaken. Then ensued a series of
volcanic cataclysms, such as the eastern world has probably
never seen since. Two hundred thousand square miles of
India's surface were covered with lava and volcanic deposits
to a depth of thousands of feet, and the Deccan land-
scape was shaped to its present outlines. As the period
of volcanic activity ceased, there commenced in the far
north the throes of an upheaval, which has gradually (acting
through inconceivable ages) raised marine limestone of Num-
mulitic age to a height of 20,000 feet above the sea, and
resulted in the most stupendous mountain system of the
world. The North-western Himalayas, Tibet, and Burma
were gradually upraised and fashioned during this epoch;
but there is evidence that Burma is a much more recent
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