Pt. II. Chap. II. ] collieries — mode of ,working. 161 



reason why B-aniganj may not be, half a century hence, one of the 

 richest and most important districts of Bengal ; especially if the 

 manufacture of iron be successfully introduced. 



Chapter II. — Present condition of the Coal Mines and methods of 



working employed. 



Within the known coal-producing area of about 500 square miles, 



there are now at work nearly fifty collieries, dis- 

 Collieries, number of. 



tnbuted between about fourteen proprietors or 

 proprietary Companies, European or Native. These collieries vary in size, 

 from large concerns, with numerous, pits, several steam engines, and 

 an out-turn of 18 or 20 lakhs of maunds (60,000 or 70,000 tons) of coal 

 annually, to small quarries, a few feet square, where half a dozen coolies 

 extract, perhaps, 20,000 maunds of inferior coal in the course of the year. 

 The collieries may be divided into those worked by pits, and those 



where the extraction is confined to quarries on 



Two kinds. 



the out-crop of a seam of coal. The latter has 

 been the first stage of almost every mine in the field, pits not having 

 been resorted to, until the workings became so deep, that it was incon- 

 venient any longer to extract the coal from quarries, or until the 



water could no longer be kept under by the pri- 



Open quarries. 



mitive methods adopted. In most of the smaller 



collieries, whether worked by pits or by quarries, the water is raised 

 by the same contrivances as are commonly employed in Bengal for irri- 

 gation and for wells. Of these contrivances, the principal is the 

 common "terah,"* a long horizontal pole or bamboo, working on the top 



* The " paicottah" of Madras. 



W 



