298 A sketch of the Behar Mica Mines. [No. 4. 



set of demi-savages, slightly clad, the forepart of their head shaved, 

 the rest of their hair standing up in wild curls ; they have the high 

 cheek bones, thick lips and small eyes of the Vindhyan races ; they 

 are also a hard-working and merry race. The miners receive as month- 

 ly wages one maund (80 ibs.) of rice, and a piece of cloth, the whole 

 valued at two rupees. 



The mines are worked during the months of January, February and 

 March only ; for during the hot months or from the latter end of 

 March or June the great heat dries up all the water for many miles 

 around the mines, and during the rainy season the pits fill with water ; 

 and subsequent to the rains the unhealthiness of the dense miasmatic 

 jungles in the neighbourhood, prevent the work commencing before 

 January. 



During the three working months, about four hundred maunds or 

 fourteen tons of mica, yielding upon calculation 20,000,000 trans- 

 parent plates of mica, each plate being about nine inches square, are 

 conveyed away to Patna upon pad bullocks, the whole being valued 

 at 4,000 Rs. (^6400.) To obtain larger plates than are generally 

 exported, does not seem to be an object with the agents, who by 

 their constantly urging the miners to wrench out the mica from its 

 matrix, whether in large or small pieces cause about three times the 

 amount of mica actually carried away to be destroyed in the mines. 

 The head Bandhati assured me that were time allowed him, he could 

 produce plates of almost any size. 



The largest plates are dug from the Deilwar mine where the miners 

 have hit upon a seam of mica, running along the base of one of the 

 small hillocks ; it is thus worked in the open air only a few feet from 

 the level of the country ; this seam however will be soon lost as the 

 half wild miners have no idea of propping the roof of a mine which 

 must very soon fall in by its own weight. 



