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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 17, p. 53.

MALABAR 53 r8' E., about 1,700 feet above sea-level: Population (1901), 2,222. It is a small place, formed of an irregular congeries of houses dominated by the fort called Naiakila or the `new fort,' which was built by Râjd Vikramaditya of Raghugarh about 1730. A school, a hospital, a jail, and a British post office are situated in the town, which is 30 miles by fair-weather road from Biaora on the Bombay- Agra high road. Makurti.-Peak in the KUNDAHS in the Ootacamund tciluk of the Nilgiri District, Madras, situated in 1r° za' N. and 76° 31' E., at an elevation of 8,403 feet above sea-level. This is a favourite point for excursions from Ootacamund, the ascent being made by a zigzag path cut on the eastern face. Its western side is an almost unbroken precipice, several hundred feet in depth. The spirits of men and buffaloes are supposed by the `.Codas to take a leap together into Hades from this peak. Malabar (Malayalam, or Malayam, 'the land of hills').-Perhaps the most beautiful, and certainly one of the richest and most fertile, of the Districts of Madras, lying on the west coast of the Presidency, between io 15' and 12° 18' N. and 75° 11' and 76° 51' E. Its ancient name was Kerala, which included also the District of South Kanara and the Native States of Cochin and Travancore; the form Malabar appears to be derived from Arabic sources, the termination bar meaning I country.' Excluding the LACCADIVE ISLANDS, the District has an area Qf 5,795 square miles, and stretches for a distance of 150 miles along the Arabian Sea from South Kanara in the north to Cochin State on the south. On the east it is separated from Coo rg, the Nilgiris, and Coimbatore by the Western Ghats, which form a continuous mountain barrier from 3,000 to 8,ooo feet high, at a distance from the coast which varies from 20 miles in the north to 6o in the south, and are interrupted only at the Palghat Gap, 16 miles wide, the one break in the whole of the range. In two places the limits of the District extend beyond the mountain wall: namely, in the Wynaad t2luk, a plateau 3,000 feet above sea-level, which Physical aspects. really forms part of the great Mysore table-land; and in the ATTAPt1I)i and Silent Valleys, which lie behind the irregular ridge stretching from the KUNDAHS to the northern pillar of the Palghat -Gap. The most conspicuous peak in the Malabar hills is the Vavûl Mala or `Camel's Hump,' 7,6oo feet high, which heads a magnificent buttress thrown out to the south-west below the Tamar- asseri pass, where the general line of the Ghats recedes eastward. This spur constitutes the right flank of the NILAMBUR Valley, while the left is formed by the Kundahs, which rise to over 8,ooo feet in the Nilgiri Hills and Makurti peaks on the Nilgiri boundary.