5
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),
