KHASI HILLS. 201 



vered with water for some months in the year and communication can be 

 maintained only by boats. 



I have above referred to a great superiority of the Cherra coal over 

 other Indian coals for the manufacture of gas. 



Ieon. The manufacture of iron appears to have been carried on in 

 these hills from time immemorial ; and by all the tribes inhabiting them. 

 Very soon after the British occupation of the Khasi hills, this manufacture 

 attracted attention. In a short notice of these hills (a) in 1829, it is re- 

 ferred to ; and in the same year Mr. Jones, writing of the mineral produc- 

 tions of Bengal (h), recommends Pondua, at the foot of these hills, as an 

 excellent site for an iron mill, for the manufacture of bar, bolt and hoop 

 iron. Mr. Walters (c), in his account of a trip across these hills, refers 

 to this manufacture, and gives a rough sketch of the furnaces in use for 

 smelting. A few years later, Lieut.-Colonel Watson detailed the circum- 

 stances which appeared to him to render Cherra Poonjee a favourable 

 site " for the erection of an iron and steel manufactory on an extensive 

 scale." (d) And still more recently Lieutenant Yule published a very 

 good account of the processes adopted in washing and smeltino- the ore • 

 and the manufacture of the iron (e). Mr Cracroft (f) had ten yeai-s 

 before described the same process, though not so fully, and had published 

 a sketch of one of the Khasi smelting furnaces in operation. 



The system at present followed in these hills, both in the extraction 

 and -washing, and in the subsequent smelting of the ore, being precisely 

 the same as it was twenty years since, it will be quite unnecessary to do 

 more than refer to the papers quoted above for description of the details 

 of the several processes. 



(a) Gleanings in Science, Vol. I, p. 252. | (5) /6i(i, Vol. I, p. 231. 



(c) Asiatic Researches, Vol XVII, p. 499, published in 1832 ; excursion made 



in 1828. 



(d) Journal Asiatic Society, Vol. Ill, p. 25, Jauu.iry 1834. 



(e) Ibid, No. CXXIX, p. 85.3, 1842. • 



(f) Ihid, A^ol. T, p. 150, 1832. 



