The only other important river is the Kali Nadi, which traverses the entire length of the district from north-east to south-west.
Though they themselves trace their origin to seven Mahommedan tribes, Hindus appear to have been associated with them at an early period; at any rate, their religious creed and practices as stanch worshippers of Kali (Devi, Durga), the Hindu goddess of destruction, had certainly no flavour of Islam in them.
It lies among the mountains of Kumaon, between the upper waters of the Ganges and the Gogra, here called the Kali.
Durga, " the unapproachable," and Kali, " the black one," or, as some take it, the wife of Kala, " time," or death the great dissolver, viz.
Kali, on the other hand, the most terrible of the goddess's forms, has a special service performed to her, at the Kali-puja, during the darkest night of the succeeding month; when she is represented as a naked black woman, four-armed, wearing a garland of heads of giants slain by her, and a string of skulls round her neck, dancing on the breast of her husband (Mahakala), with gaping mouth and protruding tongue; and when she has to be propitiated by the slaughter of goats, sheep and buffaloes.