SALEM, the capital of the above district, in a valley formed by the Shevaroy Hills on the N., and a smaller ridge to the S., on the Tyromany, 170 miles S.W. of Madras. The valley is studded with tanks, as well as with a great number of wells; and being thus plentifully irrigated, the soil is highly cultivated. Salem itself is a fine specimen of a native Indian town, having broad streets planted with rows of cocoa-nut trees, and some of them lined with handsome houses two storeys in height. Here is an old fort, a jail, and many handsome inns. Salem is the principal seat of
the Indian steel manufactory, which is carried on by a process of great ingenuity, proceeding upon a very recondite theory. It appears to have been practised from a remote antiquity; and probably the hieroglyphic carvings on the ancient Egyptian monuments were executed with Indian steel, as no other nation at that period was acquainted with the article. Pop. of the town (1843), 19,021.