1845.] Notes on the South Mahratta Country -, fyc. 275 



may be procured however of much larger dimensions, and of any 

 degree of thinness. A capital writing slate and pencil were cut 

 for me out of the quarries, shaped and polished all in a couple of 

 hours. 



A loose, friable, dark blue slate in the bed of the nullah near the 

 quarries is sometimes pulverized and ground up with water and used 

 as a blue wash for houses, &c. 



Iron Mines of Hirasillaky. Iron ore is procured, according to 

 native information, near the village of Hirasillaky, about two and a half 

 koss from Kulladghi. The metal sells at from two to two and a half 

 rupees the pukka maund of forty-eight seers. Land carriage by bandies 

 or bullocks, and abundance of cheap fuel for smelting are readily pro- 

 curable. 



From want of time and opportunity, my visit to the hone quarries 

 of Katurki was by torch-light, when little was to be made out regard- 

 ing the thickness or nature of the beds furnishing the Novaculites. 



From Kulladghi to the Falls of Gokauk. Proceeding in a W. by 

 N. direction near the right bank of the Gutpurba, towards the falls 

 of Gokauk, over extensive plains of regur with patches here and 

 there rendered sterile by saline infiltration (the muriate and carbonate 

 of soda,) the limestone and its associated shales are occasionally 

 seen basing the plains intersected by dykes of basaltic greenstone, 

 of which four were counted between Lokapoor and Hulkoond, 

 about twenty-three miles distant from Kulladghi; to the intrusion of 

 these dykes much of the alteration seen in the limestone is attri- 

 butable. 



A little to the west of Hulkoond the great overlying trap of the 

 Deccan is seen to extend over the surface of the schists, and may be 

 traced nearly to the base of the sandstone cliffs to the south and west, 

 covered by sandstone debris ; a few scattered sandstone outliers occur 

 between Hulkoond and Kulladghi. 



At Munnikerry, about twenty-six miles from Kulladghi, is a ridge of 

 sandstone, approaching a quartz rock in compactness, intersected by 

 a net work of brown, ferruginous veins. The sandstone is, in some 

 situations, covered with a breccia composed principally of sand- 

 stone and quartz in angular fragments cemented by a ferruginous clay. 



