2 RANIGANJ COAL FIELD. [CHAP. I. 



claim to accuracy ; and the only notices which had appeared were the 

 following : — 



The earliest mention of the field appears to be in a paper by 



D ribed b M "^ r * *J° nes > wno ^ rst °P ene d mines in 1815, at 

 Jones, 1829. Raniganj itself, though other collieries had previ- 



ously existed in various places more to the West ; one, at Damulia, being 

 not more than a mile distant. This paper appears in the XVIIIth 

 volume of the Asiatic Researches , page 163, and was published in 1829, 

 but was written several years before, about 1817. It is entitled "Des- 

 cription of the North- West Goal District, stretching along the River 

 Damljjda, from the neighborhood of Jeria or Juriagerh, to below Sanam- 

 pur* ; in the Pergunnah of Sheargerh, forming a line of about 65 miles." 

 The accompanying map, however, does not include Juriagerh in the 

 coal formation, which is represented as only extending about two-thirds 

 of that distance. The principal portion of the paper is devoted to an 

 account of the Raniganj seam, and of the various circumstances 

 noted in sinking shafts for the mine. Some peculiar anomalies in the 

 dips, which appear to have considerably puzzled Mr. Jones, were 

 doubtless due, in the first place, to the sandstone being false-bedded ; 

 and, secondly, to the shafts being sunk in the immediate neighborhood 

 of two or three faults. Mr. Jones concluded that the general dip of 

 the beds, which was South-east in the neighborhood of Raniganj, 

 wheeled to the North-east at the shafts, and he speculated upon the 

 probabilities of coal being found at Kutwa on the Hiigli, and of its 

 underlying the alluvium of Bengal, which he supposes to be of no great 

 thickness. It is evident that Mr. Jones's explorations were confined 

 to the immediate neighborhood of Raniganj, since otherwise he could 

 scarcely have failed to observe that the dip of the strata at Raniganj 



* This is probably Serampur, a village on the Damuda, South of Andal, close to which 

 saidstones are seen. 



