THE KOLADI-GHAUT GRAPHITE OUTCROP. I 5 



be worth exploiting for industrial purposes, though before any large 

 expenditure is incurred it would be well to have fair samples sent to 

 Europe or America for valuation as the value depends upon freedom 

 from certain harmful impurities, and on the physical properties of the 

 mineral. 



It is interesting to note that graphite deposits occur both in the 

 hills composed of para-schists and in rocks that appear to have an 

 igneous origin — the granitoid gneiss. 



Specimens from the two chief occurrences, near Densurgi and near 

 Lonjigarh, were sent in 1882 to the Geological Museum 1 by the 

 Commissioner of the Chhattisgarh division, Central Provinces, but so 

 far as I am aware the deposits have not been previously visited by an 

 officer of this department. 



The Koladi-Ghaut Graphite Outcrop. 



This outcrop occurs about two hundred yards west of the 168th 

 mile post from Raipur on the Raipur-Parvatipur road, three miles east 

 of Santpur where the road winds upward around the north shoulder of 

 Koladi hill. 2 So far as can be learned locally this outcrop was dis- 

 covered in i()Oo by Surju Singh, a road contractor, while excavating 

 on the south side of the road for clay for top dressing. When I visit- 

 ed the place in January 1901, the pit was about five yards square and 

 nearly the same in depth. The so-called clay had been formed by the 

 decomposition of the rock in situ as the rock structure could be plainly 

 seen in the clay. So far as I could determine from the rock frag- 

 ments buried in the clay and from the clay itself the original rock was 

 a complex of quartz-garnet-sillimanite schist — Khondalite — the most of 

 the undecomposed fragments being garnetiferous quartzite. In the 

 vicinity there is a very impure banded crystalline limestone containing 



1 Mallet: Geology of India, Part IV, p. 9 



2 This is probably the Lonjigarh outcrop mentioned by Mallet— in a straight 

 ire, however, the places are thirteen miles apart. 



