184/.] Geological and Miner alogical Observations. 1135 



short seams, and the latter ore has in former times been diligently 

 sought after by the natives. Numerous and half-choked up excavations 

 are met with in the surrounding hilly jungly tracts, attesting a perse- 

 verance and spirit of research which is rarely met with in the present 

 occupiers of the soil. 



" Near the Western mouth of the pass in the vicinity of Bussurapoor 

 and Gograpilly, are a large number of old diamond pits, sunk in beds 

 of ground evidently derived from the plumbiferous sandstone compos- 

 ing the adjacent Eastern Ghats. These gravel beds, from a careful 

 examination of the pebbles composing them, appear to have been formed 

 for the most part by aqueous causes no longer in action. The present 

 insignificant streams that carry off the Ghat drainage could never have 

 spread out to such an extent as these gravel beds cover, so large a 

 quantity of transported and detrital matter. The large size of the 

 pebbles, the depth and present situation of the diamond beds, all mili- 

 tate against the supposition of their being composed of recent alluvium 

 or detritus, now in process of accumulation.' ' 



Extracts from a letter from Capt. J as. Abbott, descriptive of his 



Geological and Mineralogical Observations in the Huzaree district, 



dated Camp Puhli, in Huzaree, \$th June, 1847. 



I have now the pleasure to send you some specimens of what I 

 conceive to be black iron ore, in small rounded masses of crystalline 

 structure. I have with me no acids nor other tests, and my reason for 

 supposing this an iron ore, is simply that the crystals are tetrahedral 

 prisms, of dark brown color, and that the specific gravity seems to 

 agree with that of the ore in question. 



Whatever these ores may be, they occur in a very interesting forma- 

 tion of sandstone and blue mountain limestone, which commencing at 

 the spur of a very lofty summit called Moachpoora, about 1 miles west 

 of the Jelum, stretches W. S. W. about 40 miles, gradually dwindling 

 in altitude and in the number of its parallel ridges, until, from having 

 been a triple mountain, it has become a single hill of trifling altitude, 

 intersected at Margrella by the main road from Lahore to Attok. 



At the south-eastern foot of this extended ridge, large boulders of iron 

 ore are found intermixed with the debris of lime and sandstone of the 



7 h 



