1856.] "Economic Geology of Assam. 343 



English iron is always an inducement to smiths to work it into 

 different articles of agricultural use, rather than take the trouble 

 of working up their own native blooms, which also is more difficult 

 to effect from the want of proper tools. 



I am led to believe that the Golaghat ores furnish a very good 

 percentage of cutcha iron — twenty seers of charcoal, and twelve seers 

 of ore, producing five seers of iron, forming a bloom, black, heavy 

 and sonorous ; but like the Cossyah iron blooms, I have found on 

 trial, that they lose between fifty and sixty per cent, before being 

 made fit for steel, or the formation of any cutting instrument. I 

 am not sufficiently versed in the statistics of iron to offer any 

 explanation on this point, beyond the idea, that the native furnaces 

 do not contain sufficient heat to smelt thoroughly any ore which 

 holds either quartz or clay ; nor do ores of this kind answer in any 

 furnace without a flux, for which their furnaces do not appear to be 

 adapted, as I am inclined to think that a proper proportion of lime- 

 stone introduced into a native furnace would cause it to run. How- 

 ever 45 per cent, from any iron ore is good, and there is no reason 

 why even the native method of smelting should not be improved, so 

 as to give 30 per cent, of really valuable malleable iron. The ores of 

 the Golaghat district certainly offer a fair prospect of remuneration 

 to the iron smelter, and I see no reason why with such resources at 

 command, Cossyah iron codals, which sell at twenty rupees per 

 maund need be imported. 



40. Iron. — Prom clay iron ore, Jeypore. This ore is not that 

 which is found deposited conformably with the coal, but is found in 

 beds throughout the whole range of low hills flanking the Naga 

 mountains ; and even amongst the clay slates, in these higher ranges 

 we find the same strata. Eeniform nodules are generally lying 

 imbedded in a marly clay, and in some localities quite exposed. 

 The amorphous lumps, are generally imbedded deep in the soil of 

 the low hills, and in former times, this ore seems to have been 

 excavated from the Tipam hill, the locality of a now extensive tea- 

 garden belonging to the Assam Company, where the plant grows 

 most luxuriantly. The present sample is from an amorphous clay 

 iron ore, or hydrate of iron, dug from the face of the hill, forming 

 the gorge of the Booree Dehing river at Jeypore. The quantity of 



