198 MINERALS COLLECTED 



little other cultivation except towards the Northern hills, on a reddish 

 soil which grows a small quantity of wheat and oil crops, but mostly very 

 thin and stunted, compared with the same productions of our provinces 

 on the Ganges.* About Nagpur, and perhaps generally over the whole 

 neighbourhood to which my specimens belong, the calcareous concretions 

 which we name Kankars, are every where abundant, the nodules about 

 Kamti, (the cantonments of the Nagpur force,) are mostly very small, 

 black, and hard, but burnt with charcoal, they give a clean white lime, 

 and a strong and quick-setting cement, and are more commonly used 

 than lime from any descriptions of lime-stone, of which there are many 

 varieties at short distances. 



The soil at Kamti is so full of small Kankar pebbles, that it is dif- 

 ficult to make good bricks of it ; for if not kept a little underburnt, the 

 bricks burst to pieces on being touched with water. 



Within the range of my proposed sketch, there are no mines that I 

 am aware of ; but there are ores of iron, manganese, and lead, and small 

 quantities of gold sand. The iron ores are poor, but that metal is abun- 

 dantly supplied from the rich ores beyond the Nerbuddah. The manga- 

 nese is the black oxide, rich and abundant, and of lead, there is a small 

 quantity in the state of Galena, found only in detached boulders about 

 the hills at Nima ; no vein has yet apparently been discovered. 



The principal and almost sole demand for quarried stone was confin- 

 ed, at the time I write of, to the wants of the European residents, and to 

 the public buildings for the troops. The quarries open were, a quarry of 



the 



Beyond the Wyn Ganga, in the Bandara district, the principal crop is rice, and very abundant. 



