Chap. XXXVTII. ] sandur : kamataru. 1027 
During 1!J06 a start was made to open up a deposit of detrital ore 
lying on the low ground at the foot of the hills. Now, however, pre- 
parations are being made to work the deposits in situ from which this 
ore was derived. It is proposed to bring the ore down by a ropeway. 
The output from Kannevihalli in 1906 and 1907 is as follows: — 
Year. Long tons. 
1906 2,762 
1907 7,595 
Group III.— The Kumapaswaml Deposits. 
Beyond the list of deposits given on page 1003 I have nothing to 
say about these deposits, because I was not able to visit any of them. 
Group IV.— The Kamataru (Kammatharuvu) Deposits. 
The deposits to which Foote refers on page 195 of his Bellary 
Memoir are probably ones situated on low ground to the south of the 
Kumaraswami and Kamataru areas in the Tonashagiri and Tumraguddi 
Re.?erved Forests in the Kudligi taluk of the Bellary district (see 
page 993). 
In two days spent round Kamataru I was shown some ten of the 
deposits of this group by Mr. Ghose. The astonishing feature about 
them is that they should have remained undiscovered so long. On the 
plateau itself, which is given up to cultivation in parts and fairly bare, 
in the other parts, there are some ten deposits all within a radius of a 
mile from Kamataru village. They mostly take the form of long low 
outcrops showing faint signs of dip, are fairly bare, except for lichens 
in places, and are usually black. They do not as a rule rise more than 
five to ten feet above the level of the plateau. But there are also 
outcrops both of laterite and of iron-ore ; and, further, there is a great 
similarity between the outcrops of the manganese- ores and iron-ores, 
and often a similarity of these with the laterite outcrops. And the 
only way in which it would be possible for a geologist or prospector 
crossirg the plateau to miss the manganese-ores, would be for him to be 
deceived by their similarity to iron-ore or laterite, to break the rocks 
in only a few places, and happen to strike on the ferruginous rocks in 
every case. These remarks do not apply to most of the other deposits 
in the State, for they occur in parts well covered with jungle f nd grass, 
which I am told gets as high as a man during the cold weather. T was 
■Z E 
