ECONOMIC RESOURCES : SALT. 291 



to that whicli is concealed or which may have been destroyed. Mines 

 have been worked along the range from periods so remote that their date 

 cannot be ascertained^^ and very much of the salt 

 has been both naturally and artificially removed, 

 yet if the present outturn were increased many times, the supply might 

 still be considered inexhaustible, so far as quantity is concerned. The 

 salt-marl appears so frequently that its continuity, for a distance of 134 

 miles, more or less, can hardly be doubted, and it occupies a breadth 

 which, on the same sort of evidence, may be fairly assumed at from four 

 to five miles ; while its reappearance on the north side of the range in 

 two places would indicate its underlying the mountains everywhere, with 

 a breadth of from twelve to sixteen miles, or it may extend to a much 

 greater width. Allowing a breadth of five miles, this estimatef gives an 

 area of salt-bearing marl 670 square miles in extent, in which the 

 salt-zones vary from nearly 100 to 275 feet in thickness ; separate beds 

 or groups' of beds of salt, where the size of the bands collectively is 

 least known, having thicknesses of 20, 30, and 40 feet. 



Excepting for about twelve miles in length, at the eastern end of 

 this area, salt is seen or known to exist within almost every mile where 

 the marl is fairly exposed, so that although little or nothing is known 

 as to the manner in which the salt-zones are laterally extended or ter- 

 minated, the quantity of the mineral present must be enormous if it is 

 considered that (a roughly shaped cubic foot of salt weighing about 136 

 pounds) the solid contents of a bed of salt, only 30 feet in thickness and 

 one square mile in area, would amount to over 50,778,514 tons. 



* " Dr. Fleming records that the mines were first worked in the reign of Akbar, and 

 mention is made of them in the Ain-Akbari, hut this is all the information existing upon 

 the subject. The native tradition is that Akbar was informed of the existence of the salt 

 by a certain Asp Khan on condition of his receiving, as a reward, during his life-time, a 

 sum equal to the whole of the wages of the miners employed in digging it. Salt was sold 

 in Lahore during the reign of Akbar at the rate of 6 annas per maund." — Panjdb Govern- 

 ment Gazetteer, Jhelum District. 



f A smaller estimate was made previously in order to be well within the mark (see 

 Chapter III, p. 81). 



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