Record's of the Geological Survey of In ilia. 
[VOL. VII. 
galleries of moderate length, and one or two are said to have a length of eighty or a hundred 
feet. Looking on this mining operation as a whole, it is no doubt a very inferior piece of 
the miner’s skill ; nor could the workmen have been provided with any superior instruments. 
■I estimated the number of holes at about hundred and twenty ; but several had been opened 
only experimentally, an operation which had often to he resorted to on account of the 
superficial sand concealing the underlying rock. Several pits also which were probably 
exhausted at a moderate depth were again filled in; their great number, however, clearly 
indicates that the people had been working singly, or in small parties. 
The rock, of which the low spurs at the base of the range are composed, is partly a 
thin bedded, rather sandy, sycnitic gneiss, partly mica- and hornblendic schist. The felspar 
gradually disappears entirely in the schistose beds, which on weathered planes often have the 
appearance of a laminated sandstone. They include the principal jade-yielding rocks, being 
traversed by veins of a pure white, apparently zeolitie mineral, varying in thickness from a 
few to about forty l'eet, and perhaps even more. The strike of the veins is from north-by¬ 
west to south-by-east, or sometimes almost due east-and-west; and their dip is either very high 
towards north, Or they run vertically. I have at present no sufficient means to ascertain 
the true nature of this vein-rock, as it may ftther he called, being an aggregate of single 
crystals. The mineral lias the appearance of albite, but the lustre is more silky, or perhaps 
rather glassy, and it is not in any way altered before the blowpipe, either by itself, or with 
borax or soda. The texture is somewhat coarsely crystalline, rhoiuboheJric faces being on 
a fresh fracture clearly traceable. It sometimes contains iron pyrites in very small particles, 
and a few flakes of biotite are also occasionally observed. This zeolitie rock is again 
traversed by veins of nephrite, commonly called jade; which, however, also occurs in nests. 
There appear to he two varieties of it, if the one, of which I shall presently speak, really 
deserves the name of jade. It is a white tough mineral, having an indistinct cleavage in two 
different directions, while in the other directions the fracture is finely granular or splintry, as in 
true nephrite. Portions of this mineral, which is apparently the same as usually called white 
jade, have sometimes a fibrous structure. This white jade rarely occupies the whole thickness 
of a vein ; it usually only occurs along the sides in immediate contact with the zeolitie vein- 
rock, with which it sometimes appears to bo very closely connected. The middle part of 
some of the veins and most of the others entirely consists of the common green jade, which 
is characterized by a thorough absence of cleavage, great toughness, and rather dull vitreous 
lustre. The hardness is always below 7, generally only equal to that of common felspar, 
or very little higher, though the polished surface of the stone appears to attain a greater 
hardness after long exposure to tire air. The colour is very variable, from pale to somewhat 
darker green, approaching that of pure serpentine. The pale green variety is by far the most 
common, and is in general use for cups, month-pieces for pipes, rings and other articles used 
as charms and ornaments. I saw veins of the pale green jade fully amounting in thickness 
to ten feet; but it is by no means easy to obtain large pieces of it, the mineral being generally 
fractured in all directions. Like the crystalline vein-mineral, neither the white nor the green 
variety of jade is affected by the blowpipe heat, with or without addition of borax or soda. 
Green jade of a brighter colour and higher transluceney is comparatively rare, and, already 
on that account, no doubt much more valuable. It is usually only found in thin veins of one 
or a few inches; and even then it is generally full of flaws. 
Since the expulsion of the Chinese from Yarkand in 1801, the jade quarries in the 
Karate ash valley have become entirely deserted. They must have yielded a considerable por¬ 
tion of the jade of commerce ; though no doubt the workmen made a good selection already 
on the spot, taking away outy the best coloured and largest pieces; for even now a great 
number of fair fragments, measuring 12 to 15 inches in diameter, form part of the rubbish; 
thrown away as useless. 
