402 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [No. 4. 



Note with a Catalogue of iron ores, washings, and smeltings ; for the 

 Railway Company. 



To the following tolerably extensive series of ores, washing and smeltings 

 there is little to be added which has not already been said in Messrs. 

 William's and Oldham's reports ; but we may say with some truth that in 

 India, except in the mere alluvial districts, it is much more difficult to 

 say where iron ore is not found than where it is so. This is as regards the 

 mere ore. As regards the other great requisites for the profitable produc- 

 tion of manufactured iron, however, fuel and limestone, and carriage to a 

 market, the facts, so far as known to us, are reduced to narrower limits, for 

 except for the finer kinds of ore, and in very profitable situations, it may be 

 doubted if forest fuel, however abundant it may at first be, can either be 

 used profitably, or supplied for manufacturing to any extent worth the risk 

 of establishing large works. The small native works are easily removed 

 from place to place in an iron district, whenever the carriage and other 

 charges of the charcoal become expensive ; and the forest soon grows up 

 again in the abandoned quarters ; and another generation of smelters come 

 back to the old spots where their fathers and grandfathers worked before, 

 to allow their exhausted forests to be renewed for their children. With 

 large works this is out of the question, and it might be worth enquiry in 

 such districts as Birbhoom and Bundlecund to know if it would not be 

 more profitable to the European to undertake, not the smelting, but the re- 

 fining, puddling and rolling processes only ; purchasing the crude iron from 

 the native smelter and trusting to the demand, and, above all, to correct and 

 punctual payments by and from the hands of Europeans, without the inter- 

 vention of any Sircar or native whatsoever, for an increase of and eventually 

 an abundant supply of the raw material.* Let them but once find that a 

 lot of crude smeltings can be transmuted into silver as readily as a Bank 

 Note can be changed in Calcutta or London, or a rupee into pice and cow- 

 ries in their own bazars, and I should have little fear of the supply. 



So far as an extensive experience of business in the Mofussil both as a 

 planter and manufacturer enables roe to judge, I should say that, unless 

 under the most favourable circumstances, all the preliminary operations 

 should be left to the natives, substituting only gradually improved furnaces 

 and the like, if they can be persuaded to adopt them. This as regards the 

 districts where forest fuel is to be depended on. Where coal can be obtained 

 all the conditions of the problem become changed, and iron smelting is then 



* No one who has not seen the effect of rigidly excluding 1 Sircars, and even pen, ink 

 and paper from all ready money transactions with native dealers and ryots can imagine 

 the effect of it : I speak from extensive experience. 



