ECONOMIC ASPECT OF SALT REGION. 2£3 



searched at all the outcrops which I examined, but have never been re- 

 warded by finding any, not even a trace of their occurrence, though a 

 small deposit of the kind has been met with in the Cis-Indus Mayo 

 Mines. 



The salt is constantly accompanied by gypsum, yet only at a few 

 places (as at Kurrar) small fragments of this mineral have been found 

 enclosed in the salt itself, and it required analysis to detect the presence 

 of this mineral. Neither has anhydrite been found associated with the 

 salt except as very small crystals in the gypsum of Malgin. The princi- 

 pal impurity of the salt in this district is a bluish clay, which is, however, 

 rarely present in sufficient quantity to prevent its being worked. The 

 uppermost salt layers include, at most places, black laminae containing 

 bituminous matter and smelling of petroleum; and sometimes the 

 ordinary salt when of a slightly darkish colour, as, for instance, at Jatta, 

 has the same smell when freshly broken, though but slightly. In one 

 quarry here a layer of black earthy salt occurring in the midst of good 

 salt was highly bituminous and smelt strongly of petroleum ; it contained 

 also pieces of iron pyrites and calcareous marl. On dissolving some of 

 the upper bituminous salt of this Jatta locality, a residuum was obtained 

 of a brown bituminous sand which burned white before the blowpipe, yet 

 retained a slight petroleum smell. There was evidently not sufficient 

 oil in the salt to appear as such on the water in which it was dissolved.* 



* In Karsten's large work on salt (previously referred to, p. 37, &c., ) such refer- 

 ence is made to the occurrence of mineral oil with rock-salt as would appear to show 

 that he was certain of some relation existing between the two, Thus at page 491, speaking 

 of modern Italy, he says, " the occurrence of earth-oil in several parts of the country com- 

 bined with its geological constitution to lead to the expectation of finding brine springs and 

 even rock-salt, though neither were yet known." Again, at pages 506-7, he gives the result 

 of borings for rock-salt at Marmarosh in Hungary. " The rock-salt is covered by 

 31 feet 8 inches of clay of various quality, 3 feet of which immediately overlying the 

 salt has a strong bituminous smell, this bituminous clay being always the immediate 

 covering of the salt." Another boring gave 31 feet 7 inches of strata overlying the salt, the 

 layer of bituminous clay next to it being 5 feet thick, and the lowest 2 feet of the clay 

 being saline (p. 587). He also says that all over the region of earth-oil and naphtha at Baku, 

 &c, on the Caspian Sea there are also brine or salt springs. 



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