DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS OF THE RESPECTIVE COALFIELDS. 33 
of gypsum bands, instancing a case at Ali Klian where a two-foot 
seam is so distorted that its outcrop has a seeming thickness of 
fourteen feet. Without venturing on an estimate he considered 
tliat there was a large amount of available coal within the field. 
In his opinion the best localities for mines, after the exhaustion of 
those at Khost, are at points 3|- miles south-east of Sharigh, 
between Punja Ghat and Harnai and near Ali Khan. 
The Khost Collieries, according to Griesbach,^ are situated 
in a wedge of strata let down by a system of parallel faults. They 
have been established since 1877. The two seams worked have 
an average thickness 2 of 26 and 57 inches, but the principal 
seam now worked is from 22 to 26 inches in thickness. It is 
noncoking. 
At Sharigh, where mines were worked between 1894-1896, and 
were again re-opened in 1910, the seams are, respectively, of an 
average thickness of 16| and 27 inches, the latter measurement 
including from 5 to 6 inches of shale. The thinner seam is the 
superior in quality. It has a caking quality. Th,e dip of the strata 
averages about 50°. 
In 1910 mining on a seam of coal 32 inches in thickness was 
commenced at Harnai. 
The mines are the property of and are worked by the North- 
western Railway Company, who appear to experience considerable 
difficulty in obtaining tlie requisite coolie labour. During the year 
1910, 43,428 tons of coal were raised nearly all of which was used 
on the railway. The mines at work in that year are at Zardalu, 
Khost, Sharigh and Harnai. 
Sor Range and Mach. — A number of thin coal-seams, associated 
with sandstones, occur in clay shales of middle eocene age in the 
Sor Range to the east and south-east of Quetta. The measures 
are widely distributed, but are much contorted and broken up by 
faulting, and obscured by landslips. The first locality in which 
they excited attention is Mach in the Bolan Pass where they are 
well exposed on the line of route, and have been long known to 
travellers.^ 
» Op. cit. 
2 James Grundy, Inspector of Mines in India : Report on the Khost and Sharigh 
coal mines, Calcutta (1896). 
3 p-jtton, Cal. Jour. Nat. Hist., VI, ^10, fiOl (1840). 
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