and litigation, the freshness of its cheery highlanders with their curious customs and their unsophisticated ways, CHAP. I. Hills. the scope for action on broad and original lines afforded by an unopened country, and the survival of personal and paternal rule and responsibility, more than compensate for the remoteness, discomforts and unhealthiness of the Vizagapatam hills.
The rivers of the district group themselves into two sets; Rivers. namely, those which flow eastwards through the coastal plain into the Bay of Bengal and those which drain the Ghats and the country west of them westwards into the basin of the Godavari.
Of the former, the first, beginning in the south of the district,is the Varaha-nadi, or ' boar river,' The Varaha. which is so called because it is supposed to have been made by Vishnu during his incarnation as a boar. It rises in the Golgonda hills to the north of Narasapatam and flows south-eastwards, past the sacred fane of Balighattam to the west of Narasapatam, under holy Sanjivikonda,through a deep and narrow gorge in the red range of which that hill is the highest point, across the Sarvasiddhi taluk, and so into the Bay of Bengal at Vatada. Its only noteworthy tributary is the Sarpa-nadi, or Kottakota stream, which fills the natural lake near Kottakota called the Komaravolu ava. Like the other rivers of the Vizagapatam plains, its shallow, sandy bed is dry during the hot weather and no part of it is ever navigable. The irrigation from it (which is referred to on p. 105 below) is of considerable importance.
North of it flows the Sarada-nadi. The Sarada. This rises in the Madgole hills, runs south to Anakapalle, where it is crossed by the trunk road and Madras railway bridges, turns south-west past Kasimkota, and flows into the Bay at Vatada through the same mouth as the Varaha. A channel from it fills the pretty natural lake six miles south of Anakapalle called the Kondakarla ava, which swarms with lotuses, fish and wildfowl. This and the Komaravolu ava are two of the very few real freshwater lakes in the Presidency. The irrigation under it and under the other channels from the Sarada is referred to on p. 105 below. The river is liable to sudden and terrific floods, and the damage it has more than once caused to Anakapalle town is referred to in Chapter VIII below.
The Chittivalasa river. The Chittivalasa (or Bimlipatam) river rises in the slopes of the great Galikonda hill mentioned above and runs nearly south, past historic Padmanabham and busy Chittivalasa (where the trunk road crosses it on a bridge which has twice been swept away) into the Bay at Bimlipatam.