60 KING : COASTAL REGION OP THE GODAVARI DISTRICT. 



worked now, nor are they thought of in this way ; just as very many 

 of the diamond-mining localities in the Cuddapah, Kurnool, and Kistna 

 districts are now quite deserted. Still, in all these other places of 

 mining or washing with which I am acquainted, the works have been 

 either on known diamond-bearing rocks or in alluvial deposits presum- 

 ably derived from and in the neighbourhood of them. 



At Muleli, the old workings are either in very pebbly sandstones of 

 the Dtidugut range, which are not known as diamond-bearing in any 

 other part of India, or are in superficial deposits collected below the range 

 and presumably consisting for the most part of the debris of these sand- 

 stones. There is of course no reason why diamonds should not occur in 

 these beds just as well as they occur in sandstones (quartzites) of the 

 vastly more ancient Banaganpili group of the Kurnool formation 1 : 

 indeed these very sandstones above Muleli are most likely in part made 

 up of the debris of these Kurnool rocks ; but the fitf ulness of com- 

 position of such reformed and derived rocks, and their difficulty of being 

 worked as compared with alluvial patches, only make the chances of 

 successful working poorer. At any rate, whatever may have been the 

 productiveness of the Muleli mines in old days, they are now in a 

 state of desertion, and have been so for at least half a century. 



I myself only saw, by the numerous old pits dug over the flat-bedded 

 sandstones to the north of the village, both in the Rajahmundry sand- 

 stones of the Diidiigut range and in the Gollapili beds underneath, and 

 by the ruins of old washing troughs and sorting floors, that diamonds 

 had been sought for and probably found. But I believe also that many 

 of the pits were, on the other hand, dug for iron ore, such search being 

 still in progress at the time of my visit. 



Dr. Heyne gives, in his third tract, an account of the diamond 

 mines at Muleli (Mallavilly) , which, however, enters into little detail, 

 and is really subordinate to a description of those of Cuddapah and Kur- 

 nool. According to him, the Muleli workings seem to have been mainly 



1 See Mem. Geol. Surv. of India, Vol. V, pt. 1. 



2 Op. cit., p. 92. 



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