ECONOMIC RESOURCES : PETROLEUM. 297 



marked sulphurous odour), but when ignited it burns well with abundant flame ; does not 

 cake much, and, with ordinary care, yields but little clinker. Tried practically in the loco- 

 motives o£ the Punjab Railway, both at Lahore and Mooltan, it proved very successful ; 

 it was found to answer well, both in getting up and maintaining steam for an ordinary train 

 travelling twenty-five miles per hour. It answered well at Mooltan, but required screening 

 and foreign matter picked out. There was dust from its brittle nature, and the fire-bars 

 required attention. It was tried in the steamers on the Indus, and favourable opinion of its 

 quality was given, it having been calculated to be, weight for weight, four times as effective 

 as wood. 



" The coal would prove a very efiective fuel, though it cannot be considered a first-rate 

 coal, one maund of it being equal in effective work to 2*5 to 4 maunds of ordinary wood." 



Petroleum. 

 The position and circumstances of the petroleum and mineral tar 



situated in the western part of the range have 

 Petroleum. , ^ . , . . 



been mentioned in the loregomg descriptions^ and 



all but one locality have been fully reported upon by Mr. Lyman (see 



List of Authors) . This is the Sulgi coal locality, where the rocks which 



contain the tar are only an isolated and widely separated mass of the 



tertiary beds, the exact continuation of which it would be impossible to 



point out. The quantity of the tar exuding- here is not commercially 



valuable, but the saturated sandstone rock, if continuous beyond what 



can be seen at the surface, could easily be quarried. 



The petroleum near Jaba at the Chota and Burra Kutta glens comes 

 to the surface in greater quantity than in most other places in the 

 mineral oil region of the Upper Punjab (the workings near Fatehjang 

 of course excepted), the natural supply being about four and a half 

 quarts a day. 



The localities are in some respects well situated for boring, and the 

 distance from the Indus at Kalabagh, where water-carriage could be had, 

 is only about nine miles. A tolerable foot-road exists hence to the vil- 

 lage of Jaba, less than two miles from the springs. The oil is dark 

 green, and the water which accompanies it evolves sulphuretted hydrogen. 



The other localities produce such trifling quantities of petroleum as to 

 be of little or no economic value. 



o2 ( 297 ) 



