ECONOMIC RESOURCES. 191 



The coal is described as bright, and to all appearance good, and the 

 situation indicated for it is among the upper beds of the tertiary sand- 

 stone group, where thin layers of lignite and fossil-wood converted into 

 coal are not unknown in other parts of the country. 



At the time the examination of the district was in progress, places 

 in the vicinity of the locality where the coal is said to have been found 

 were visited, but of its existence nothing whatever was heard, probably 

 for the same reasons, whatever they may have been, which made the 

 people of the neighbourhood anxious to conceal it from the native 

 officer. 



From the position of this coal it seems unlikely to prove of much 

 (if of any) economic importance. Coal or fossil-wood embedded in thes"e 

 tertiary sandstones is often bright and good enough, but totally deficient 

 in quantity, yet there is no reason why a workable, though perhaps not 

 extensive, coal bed should not exist among them. 



Specimens of the coal are promised for transmission to Calcutta, 

 and further enquiry will be made about the matter. 



Since writing the former note further enquiry has been made, and 

 Captain Cavagnari, Deputy Commissioner of Kohat, is of opinion that 

 the Dand or Dhand village alluded to is not the Dand near Shukkardarra, 

 but the village of Shin Dhand in the country of the Jawaki Affridis, a 

 place not marked upon the map, but situated probably near the Jawai 

 (or Zhuwakai) pass, crossing the eastern part of the Affridi hills, pToject- 

 ing into British India between the Kohat and Peshawar districts. 



It is not quite certain whether this may be the situation of another 

 coaly bed ; if coal exists there, it is probably a continuation of the car- 

 bonaceous alum shale zone which occurs on the north side of the Nilab 

 Gash hills, near the village of Nummul, intersected by a stream which falls 

 into the Indus from the right bank below ' Ghoratarap ' (the horse's leap), 

 where the stream is said to be only 60 yards wide. This alum shale is 

 thought to be Jurassic, or lower nummulitic. 



A. B. W. 



( 295 ) 



