1866.] the Western Himalaya and Afghan Mountains. 187 
Between the courses of limestone are beds of slaty shales of 
various colours, but generally dark grey, brown or reddish. The 
outcrop of these shales has disintegrated and decomposed into a 
vegetable earth of a dark red colour and covered by grass and under- 
wood, and this earth has to be removed to bring the shales into view. 
In these shales the iron-ore ig found as flat bands or ribbons of great 
tenacity and hardness, accompanied by softer ochrous clayey earth 
which is also used as an ore. The richest ore is the steel grey 
variety ; this is not continuous as a regular bed, but forms bands 
or ribbons in the shale, sometimes thickening into a trunk a foot 
thick, at other times thinning into a flat ribbon a quarter of an inch 
thick. 
The shales containing the iron-ore are about four feet thick, and 
are between beds of an arenaceous limestone which is blue and 
compact when freshly fractured, but weathers into a coarse, brown, 
nearly friable sandstone in the neighbourhood of the iron-shales. 
This change in the limestone (evidently produced by the infiltrating 
water becoming charged with peroxide of iron in its passage though 
the shale, and then acting as an acid on the limestone below the iron 
bed), is the indication sought after by the miners to dig an exploring 
hole; they dig above the altered limestone, and after removing a few 
feet of vegetable mould, discover the iron-ore in the upper part of the 
shaly bed. They make a hole just large enough to creep in and use 
« short miner’s pick; the ore is difficult to detach, and, from the 
cramped position of the miner, the work is excessively laborious. The 
mines do not extend any distance under ground, and are generally 
abandoned in favour of a fresh hole, when artificial ight is required 
to work. 
From the examination of three or four of these small mines, I feel 
satisfied that the ore does not form a bed, but is arranged in a succes- 
sion of ribbons and bands which run in the direction of the dip, 
sometimes anastomosing into a broad plane two or three feet across, 
sometimes thickening into a trunk or pocket, and sometimes dividing 
into thin and narrow ribbons which become lost in the shale. 
The mines are all situated high up the hill (on this side of the 
ridge at least), within about 200 feet of the summit. The miner 
[ had for a guide told me that no iron-ore is found lower down. 
