1866.] the Western Himalaya and Afghan Mountains. 187 



Between the courses of limestone are beds of slaty shales of 

 various colours, but generally dark grey, brown or reddish. The 

 outcrop of these shales has disintegrated and decomposed into a 

 vegetable earth of a dark red colour and covered by grass and under- 

 wood, and this earth has to be removed to bring the shales into view. 

 In these shales the iron-ore is found as flat bands or ribbons of great 

 tenacity and hardness, accompanied by softer ochrous clayey earth 

 which is also used as an ore. The richest ore is the steel grey 

 variety ; this is not continuous as a regular bed, but forms bands 

 or ribbons in the shale, sometimes thickening into a trunk a foot 

 thick, at other times thinning into a flat ribbon a quarter of an inch 

 thick. 



The shales containing the iron-ore are about four feet thick, and 

 are between beds of an arenaceous limestone which is blue and 

 compact when freshly fractured, but weathers into a coarse, brown, 

 nearly friable sandstone in the neighbourhood of the iron-shales. 

 This change in the limestone (evidently produced by the infiltrating 

 water becoming charged with peroxide of iron in its passage though 

 the shale, and then acting as an acid on the limestone below the iron 

 bed), is the indication sought after by the miners to dig an exploring 

 hole ; they dig above the altered limestone, and after removing a few 

 feet of vegetable mould, discover the iron-ore in the upper part of the 

 shaly bed. They make a hole just large enough to creep in and use 

 a short miner's pick ; the ore is difficult to detach, and, from the 

 cramped position of the miner, the work is excessively laborious. The 

 mines do not extend any distance under ground, and are generally 

 abandoned in favour of a fresh hole, when artificial light is required 

 to work. 



From the examination of three or four of these small mines, I feel 

 satisfied that the ore does not form a bed, but is arranged in a succes- 

 sion of ribbons and bands which run in the direction of the dip, 

 sometimes anastomosing into a broad plane two or three feet across, 

 sometimes thickening into a trunk or pocket, and sometimes dividing 

 into thin and narrow ribbons which become lost in the shale. 



The mines are all situated high up the hill (on this side of the 

 ridge at least), within about 200 feet of the summit. The miner 

 I had for a guide told me that no iron-ore is found lower down. 



