COMMON OK TABLE SALT 



Influence 

 of Transport. 



Supply. 



Mining. 



SALT 



SODIUM CHLORIDE! 



Supply 



ported from Tarravieja in Spain and is obtained by solar evaporation. (12) Port 

 Said karkach salt. (13) Madras karkach salt this is imported by Calcutta from 

 Coconada, Vizagapatam and Tuticorin. It is obtained by solar evaporation, 

 has a brown appearance, is gritty, and accordingly not much in demand. 



Although India possesses a mountain range of rock-salt, immense beds of 

 salt-bearing soils and a vast extent of salt lakes, as well as many hundred miles 

 of sea-coast where sea-salt might be manufactured, the conviction prevails that 

 it will not pay to carry salt over more than some 300 to 400 miles, by internal 

 routes, from any centre of supply. Moreover, the export traffic of India originates 

 shipping that practically conveys salt as a ballast cargo, the profit being in the 

 return cargoes. It is on these and such-like considerations that Bengal has always 

 been largely dependent on external sources. Owing to the immense amount 

 of fresh water poured into the Bay of Bengal, it does not pay to manufacture 

 sea-salt near Calcutta. 



Sources of Supply. Holland gives the following classification : 



" (1) Sea-water, from which 61*8 per cent, of the total production was 

 obtained during the period (1898 to 1903) ; 



" (2) Subsoil water and lakes in areas of internal drainage, in both 

 of which the origin and mode of concentration of the salt are the results 

 of essentially similar natural processes. From these sources about 27 

 per cent, of the total was obtained ; and 



" (3) Rock-salt beds, from which 1T2 per cent, of the total was ob- 

 tained by mining and quarrying." 



Salt Mining in India. There are three chief centres the Salt Range 

 of the Panjab, the Kohat hills, North- West Frontier Province, and Mandi 

 State in Kangra district, Panjab. These have produced, for the five years 

 ending 1903, the annual average of 109,000 tons, of which 81 per cent, is 

 obtained from the Salt Range, 14'5 per cent, from Kohat, and 4-3 per cent, 

 from Mandi. 



The following particulars may be here given from Holland (I.e., 1905, 

 83-5) : 



" The chief deposits of rock-salt are in the so-called Salt Range of the Panjab, 

 where the seams of salt and included marl partings have, where worked in the 

 Mayo mines at Khewra, an aggregate thickness of 550 feet, of which five seams of 

 pure salt make up 275 feet, the rest, known as kolar, being too earthy and impure 

 to be marketable. These beds occur in a formation lying directly underneath 

 beds of Lower Cambrian age, but it is suspected that they may be of Lower 

 Tertiary age, like the other salt deposits of this part of India, and that they have 

 arrived in their present apparently anomalous position by an overthrust of the 

 older fossiliferous beds. 



" Mining for rock-salt is carried on in the Mayo mines, Jhelum district, the 

 Warcha mines in the Shahpur district, and across the Indus at Kalabagh. The 

 rock-salt in this area varies from white to brick-red in colour, and thus differs 

 in colour from that of the Kohat area. 



" The most important of the mines in the Salt Range are the Mayo mines 

 near Khewra (32 39' ; 73 3'). In this area salt-quarrying was practised for an 

 unknown period before the time of Akbar, and was continued in a primitive 

 fashion until it came under the control of the British Government with the 

 occupation of the Panjab in 1849. In 1872 the system of mining was reorganised, 

 and the work now in operation was planned out by Dr. H. Warth, late Deputy- 

 Superintendent, Geological Survey of India. 



" The rock-salt being raised in the Mayo mines has, on account of its purity, 

 a wide distribution. A recent analysis of one of the seams gave the following 

 results : 



98-86 

 0-57 

 trace 

 nil 

 0-08 



Salt Range. 



" Sodium chloride 

 Sodium sulphate 

 Sodium carbonate 

 Magnesium chloride 

 Moisture . . 



99-51 



964 



