1842.] of the Damoodah Valley . 737 



vendor twenty shillings per ton, still the average will not exceed sixteen, 

 and although he has a heavy delivery charge to sustain, the miner 

 at this price is supposed to be amply paid for his undertaking. 

 Again, supposing the plan of a rail-road or a canal to be entertained, 

 to what place should it direct its highest point, so that branches may 

 be formed to the various collieries now open, and others which would 

 doubtless follow ? The most expensive part of the undertaking would 

 lie within the line of the mineral field wherein the collieries are now 

 working, which we may take at twenty miles in length. Any un- 

 dertaking of this nature must be conducted to the extreme point, 

 those most favoured at the lowest point would otherwise possess a 

 virtual monopoly of supply. It is a just source of complaint, that at 

 the present day the right of passage, or way-leave, to the river 

 can be so exercised as to prevent the minerals from reaching 

 the line of navigation of the river, which is an open, free, and 

 untaxed road to the market of Calcutta; but any petty landhold- 

 er possessing a biggah of ghaut land on the river's margin, may 

 prevent the interior of the country for miles from pouring its re- 

 sources to the capital, by what seems to me impolitic, withholding of a 

 regulation to open these ghauts to public use. There is scarcely a 

 canal or rail-road act in England but has some clause to oblige 

 persons possessing lands applicable to such purposes, to accept a com- 

 pensation for its use, settled usually by a jury of assessors. Why should 

 not the rule for what is required for public purposes in that country, 

 be applied to this? The present demand for about 50,000 tons by the 

 removal of such obstacles as these, and many others of a similar nature, 

 may be extended to double or treble that quantity in a year's time, 

 if there was a demand for it, as the costs of the coal at the present 

 day is much enhanced by these sorts of demand, which tell grievously 

 in the accounts of a small concern. These observations apply to the 

 whole of the river-ghauts. 



The iron worked within this mineral field is generally the produce 

 of the thin veins which crop out on the surface of the ground, and is 

 smelted now in but a very few locations ; but the whole country has in 

 different places been subjected to the workers of iron. Scarcely a 

 spot of five miles square within this field but the scoriae of iron are 

 found in great quantities; and it would seem, that as the country 



