341 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[Nov. 



be anthracilic. These coal-beds are not far from the Soane river, a n 

 about 100 miles from its confluence wilh the Ganges, a little above Diua- 

 poor and i'atna ; but the Soane is not at present navigable. To the west 

 of Palamon the carboniferous beds are described as appearing; along two 

 irregular lines, the uue towards the south-west for 150 miles, reaching 

 beyond Koorbah, and the other more westward, by Sohagepoor, lo the 

 Nerbudda, These beds appear to connect themselves with the 15urdwan 

 coal-lield ; and near ](ani;;urh, coal has been obtained in two or three 

 places. This coal is said to be of very good (juality and of considerable 

 thickness; but there can be little doubt that a statemeut made in the 

 report, of the bed of coal being 200 yards in thickness, must be owing to 

 some misunderstanding of the account and sketch originally communi- 

 cated. It seems certain, however, from the extent of the outcrop, that the 

 seam must be oue of considerable magnitude. Westwards, again, from 

 Palamon, and at a distance of about 60 miles, coal has been found in se- 

 veral places in Singronii, but the beds at present known are thin ; and 

 again, lo the south-west, the same mineral occurs at Sirgoojah, where line 

 coal lias been seen, but is not used at present. Between the Singrowli 

 coat and Jubbulpore excellent coal has been found in several places, indi- 

 cating aa extensive coal-lield ; but the nature and thickness of the beds is 

 not slated. 



The Nerbudda district, although from the drainage of the country it 

 btl^tugs to the Hombay side of India, is manifestly more related, so far as 

 the old rocks are concerned, with the Bengal territory. The coal is about 

 330 miles from Bombay, and the Nerbudda river is at present not navi- 

 gable. There seem to be three districts in the Nerbudda valley in which 

 coal is found, but the most important of them is that near Gurrawarra, 

 about midway between Hoosungabad and .Jubbulpore. The coal here, 

 indeed, appears lo be perhaps the best hitherto found in India, and exists 

 in beds three iu number, whose thickness respectively is said to be 20 feet, 

 40 feet, and 25^ feet. There are also other beds, one of which is four 

 feet. 



The discovery of this, the Benar coal-field, promises to be of great im- 

 portance. It is also very near another basin, where there are beds also of 

 excellent quality, one of them 6 feet in thickness. At Jubbulpore itself 

 coal has been found at a depth of TO feet, oue bed being nearly 12 feet 

 thick. 



Coal Ficlils East of Calcutta. 



III. Let us consider now the district east of Calcutta. We there find 

 true carboniferous rocks on both llanks of the Garrow Mountains, com- 

 mencing near Jumelpore, and thence continuing north-eastwards for a dis- 

 tance amounting on the whole lo nearly 400 miles through Lower and 

 Upper Assam. The district nearest Calcutta isSilhel, on the south flanks 

 of the Garrow, where eleven beds of coal have been determined, whose 

 total thickness as already ascertained is said to amount to 85 feet. This 

 coal is of excellent quality, and can as readily be conveyed lo the LTpper 

 Ganges as the Bnrdwan coal. The most remarkable beds dccur at Cherra 

 Ponji ; but these appear irregular, although they are undoubtedly of great 

 thickness in several spots, amounting snnidlimes lo nearly 30 feet. There 

 are also otht-r important beds. They have been known for more than ten 

 years, but have not been worked; and since their first discovery large 

 quantities of iron have been smelted with charcoal. 



After |iassiug the districts in which the coal has been thus clearly ex- 

 hibited, we proceed next to the Assam districts, also more or less continu- 

 ous, and extending for about 350 miles chiefly along the south side of the 

 ilurliarnpooler ; the whole being divided into the two gri>ups of Lower 

 and Upper Assam, separated at Bishrnatli, 170 miles above Calcutta. 

 .Six coal-flelds are enuineraled in the Upper district, and three iu the 

 Lower; but the latter, although it would seem not so promising, are looked 

 on as scarcely less important in consequence of their greater accessibility. 



So far as details are ctuicei'ued, however, the Lower Assam coal ofl'ei's 

 but little that is in any way positive ; the indications consisting rather of 

 rolled fragments drifted, than of distinct and well-marked beds, it is 

 called lignite iu a report from Lieut. Vetch ; but both coal and lignite are 

 terms frequently used without reference to any peculiar character of the 

 mineral, or any geological position. Similar beds of coal or lignite to 

 those found in Lower Assam, south of the Burhampooter, are al-o men- 

 tioned as occurring on the north in three of the streams flowing into that 

 river from the Bootan range. The Upper Assam coal is manifestly of 

 great interest, and likely to prove very important. It is associated with 

 abundance of clay ironstone. 



About eighty miles above Bishenath other beds, stated to be G feet 

 thick, have been worked for the sake of trying the economic value of the 

 coal. It is described by the commander of one of the Assam Company's 

 steamers, in a letter dated 24lh January, 1S45, as far the best he ever had 

 on board a steamer, and far superior to any coal in Calcutta. From the 

 growing importance of the tea-trade from Assam, this is likely, therefore, 

 to be of great value. SliU farther up the country there are several im- 

 portant beds, dipping, it would appear, at so high an angle, and placed so 

 unfavourably with regard to present means of transport, that it would be 

 diflicult to work them. The other beds that appear in this district are 

 exposed to the same diHiculty ; and the coal tliroughout northern India 

 appears to be in this respect unfavourably placed. 



Passing on now to the other districts iu India, and the East, in which 

 carboniferous rocks and beds of coal have been met with, I have to enu- 

 merate two, the Tenasserim and the Arracan districts, which, from their 

 near vicinity to India and their geographical position, are of considerable 



importance. The former has been known for some years, and there are 

 said to be four spots at which coal appears; but of these one only seems 

 likely to prove of economic value. From the accounts given of this coal 

 there is every reason to conclude, that one of the beds is not of the car- 

 boniferous period ; and although another (on the Thian Khan) his been 

 the subject of a far more favourable report, being called cannel coal, and 

 staled by Mr. Prinsep to be an admirable coal for gas, there is yet much 

 probability of the whole being of the tertiary period. These beds have 

 been described in the Journal of the Asiatic Socielij for 1838. 



In Arracan there are eleven beds of coal, bul all of them are thin, and 

 their position nearly vertical. They are said to be associated with sand- 

 stones, limestones, and shales ; but it is clear that they can at present be 

 looked at only as indications, and not of any practical importance. 



Such is a general account of the coal-districts ot India, so far as I have 

 been able to glean evidence from the report of the committee for the in- 

 vestigation of the coal and mineral resources of India for r^Iay 1S45. 

 This report manifestly contains much detailed information that is of prac- 

 tical importance; but one can hardly help being struck by the absence of 

 that delinite information with regard to associated beds, and the general 

 position of the coal, which could alone, under the peculiar circumstances, 

 have given to geologists satisfactory evidence as to the age of this widely- 

 extended deposit. Speaking now to geologists, and to many who are fully 

 alive to the vast importance of accurute and detailed knowledge of the 

 structure of a country before great mining operatmns are commenced in it, 

 I need nut do more than allude to the absence of this kind of information ; 

 bul, having staled its absence, I may perhaps be permitted to olicrmy own 

 views of the subject as obtained from ihe perusal of the documents laid 

 before me. 



Geological Position. 



Connecting, as I think we caunot help doing, the general geology of 

 Asia with that of Europe, and looking at the wide extension of true coal- 

 bearing rocks iu the northern hemisphere, — tracing these rocks, as we are 

 able to do at intervals, from our owu country eastward through Belgium, 

 Northern Germany, Bohemia, and Silesia, thence across to the val- 

 ley of the Dunetz, watching the development of the older beds of ihe 

 Devonian period in Armenia, and theuce on the northern side of the 

 great Himalayan range, — discovering them in their most characteristic 

 form in the Altai mountains, and finding them also on the south flanks of 

 these lofty mountains in the neighbourhood of Calcutta, where the Burd- 

 wan beds have long been known, giving satisfactory evidence of their age; 

 there is certainly no reason for wonder if these carboniferous bfds, in their 

 most typical and valuable form, should be traceable also throughout 

 Northern India. For what is the geological structure of that country > 

 The Himalayas themselves, the great back-bone of Asia, are probably to 

 be looked on as a mountain chaiu much more recent than the Alps. In 

 India, the great Sewalik terliaries, where fo-sils are now being figured 

 and described by Major Cautley and Dr. Falconer iu a monograph, the 

 most magnificent that has yet been attempted, are lifted into hills which 

 elsewhere might well deserve the name of mount lius; and whatever the 

 conditions nia\ have been subsequently to origmal deposition of the beds, 

 there is no reason why, in a country where the scale is iu everything so 

 vast, there should not he a continuous outcrop of carboniferous rocks fur 

 hundreils of miles logetlur. In consequence of movements of very recent 

 date, wiile tracts of India, occupying tens aud almost huiulreds of thou- 

 sands of square luiles to the south, are covered wilh basalt, aud other large 

 tracts of still greater extent by modern and almost alluvial formations, 

 providing by their decomposition Ihe must prolific soil in the world. Be- 

 tween and amongst this extent of modern eruptive movement, aud forming, 

 perhaps, a barrier to some of the beds, comes in, it would seem, the great 

 range of carboniferous beds, exhibited at intervals tlirough the couutry, 

 nearly parallel wilh the great range of disturbance, and also greatly dis- 

 turbed and elevated, and broken into small basins. So far as the evidence 

 goes, it is certainly probable that the coal found near Burdwan to the 

 north and west, aud apparently continuous with it, is of the same age. if 

 so, analogy would suggest that the similar aud similarly situated beds 

 much fartlier to the west but still nearly continuous, are of the same age ; 

 aud the districts to the east contain, it would seem, at least some coal so 

 like the other in quality, tliat here also we should expect it. But analogy 

 goes jet farther, aud running down the coast of the Birman empire towards 

 the great island of Borneo, recent iuvestigations seem to show that there 

 also beds of coal of great value, and of the carboniferous epoch, exist. 1 

 will not cross the great line of elevation in the tropic of Capricorn, and 

 cross to the eastern coast of Australia, fur a farther illustration ; but the 

 idea caunot fail to strike every geologist that so singular an association of 

 similar beds oier so large a part of the existing land on the earth must, if 

 true, have its origin in some general cause, the result of a law of far 

 greater univeisaliiy than any we now recognise. 



But, on the other hand, it is by no means impossible, when we consider 

 the extent to which the terliaries are developed iu the great range of con- 

 glomerates on the flanks of the Himalayas, and the similar and almost 

 equally fussiliferous dcpii.sitson the banks of the Irawaddi on the east and 

 in the Gulf of Canibay oii the west, thai, after all, these beds are not car- 

 boniferous, but merely occasional aud irregular bands of modern or ter- 

 tiary lignite. Should this be the case, it will tie necessary and interesting 

 to determine the point, aud recognise, if possible, the actual extension of 

 the Burawan field, concerning whose age the fossils collected by Dr. Royle 

 leave no doubt. The relation also of these beds with those of the Altai J 



