BUNDELCUND. 73 



kunkurj and lateritic clay, great pits are dug in this to get at the 

 layer of coarse sub-angular cherty gravel in 



Diluvial diggings. , 



winch there are diamonds. "Well up on the ridges 

 of the Kymore sandstone to the north a similar gangue constitutes the 

 sub-soil and is much worked — but the most interesting of these diluvial 

 mines are those of Udesna and Sakeriya. 



I have before noticed that since the change of strike in the Rewah 



scarp, one is not obliged to climb the face of 

 Udesna. 



the chit to get on the plateau: there are fre- 

 quent sloping valleys cut in, by which one reaches the south face 

 at some miles from the edge of the scarp; it is near the top of 

 one of these valleys that the workings are carried on. The mines 

 at Udesna are in active work; when I was there there was water 

 in all the pits, at what appeared to be the level of the top of the boulder 

 bed, under an irregular thickness of yellow clay variously charged with 

 kunkur and laterite gravel ; the gangue is a stiff gravelly clay. There 

 was but one pit open in the Sakeriya field; as at Udesna there is a 

 variable depth of clay, the middle third being kunkury and the lower 

 lateritic; below this the clay becomes charged with gravel, pebbles and 

 boulders, these rapidly increasing in size to great angular blocks of sand- 

 stone scarcely moved from their original bed, it is from between these 

 that the best stuff is got, a stiff unctuous clay with quartz gravel through 

 it. Above these deep pits which are never far from the stream, and well 

 up on the slope of the Rewah sandstone are chila diggings in the surface 

 lateritic gravel. 



From the present abandoned state of the Mujgoan mines one could 



never discover the great vortex described by 

 Mujgoan- 



Franklin; there was but one shallow pit open ; it 



is however possible from old workings to trace a small area, bounded on 



three sides by a ledge of sandstone. Franklin's conjecture regarding it 



seems the most probable, that it is the deserted gorge of a stream : the 



filling in is certainly peculiar ; the structure is like coarse foliation, a net- 



L 



