14 - 
Records of Ute Geological Survey of India. 
full of obscure plant remains, associated with the conglomerates at the very base of the section 
under Mam lull on the west; and it is more than probable that some 'of tbe local coal beds 
of tbe Cherra region, as, for instance, tliat at Moubelarka (from which the supply for 
Shillong is now taken), belong to the cretaceous and not to the nummulitic deposits. 
I wished much to go up the Koylas mountain from Seju; but the attempt would 
have been useless, without some more influential protector than the pretended sovereign, the 
Rajah of Sliushung, through whose assistance I got along the river as far as S ej u. The 
slight sketch given of this tract of the hills on the maps is very misleading, as to the relative 
importance of the several hills : Koylas, though marked rather more faintly, is about three 
times as high as any of the hills to west and south of it. One can see at a distance, by the 
sub-horizontal tiers of cliffs on the S. W. face, that at least the upper half of the mountain 
is of stratified rocks. It would seem too on the map to stand outside tbe ran of tbe gneiss 
boundary at Sejn, and to be on tbe stripe ot tbe band of sub-horizontal rocks just south of 
Seju; thus suggesting that the whole mass of the hill is of these unaltered sedimentary 
rocks. If, however, such is the case,—that the cretaceous beds pass under Koylas at the 
same elevation as in the Sumesurri—the top of the hill must he formed of the younger 
tertiary rocks, at a much greater elevation than these have as yet been observed west of 
Jynteah. I rather conjecture that there is a sharp bend in tho boundary of the crystalline 
rocks, and that these form the base of Koylas; in which case the cliffs noticed on the 
summit may he altogether composed of cretaceous and nummulitic rocks. It is possible, 
indeed, that the peak ot Koylas may be formed of a remnant of the submctamorphic 
sandstones of Shillong. 
As has been already stated, it is in the hills bordering tho Bramahpootra, that the 
question of a coal supply is most important, and where the greatest hopes have been raised by 
the published statements of discovery. These statements are, as far as I am aware, based 
upon the investigations of Mr. James Bedford who made a survey of this district in 1842. 
The.published maps of Mr. Bedford’s coal discoveries are very imperfect reductions from the 
original.manuscript, of which a tracing was most obligingly supplied to me from the Surveyor 
General s Office. In these maps the facts given are of two kinds : there are several outcrops 
of coal noticed in the hills north of Harigaou; and coal is said to exist in the hills south 
of Harigaon upon the evidence of debris found in the streams. I will first notice tbe 
former. 
A glance at tbe geological sketch map will show that Mr. Bedford’s coal outcrops at 
Salkura, Champagiri and Mirampara are on tbe exact ran of the Seju bed; and 
that tbe circumstances of the sections.are very similar. Those three localities are on the low 
table-land range ol Smgmari, which is now much eroded into irregular transverse ridges. All 
over this range the crystalline rocks weather out from beneath a thin capping of coarse friable 
sandstone, often conglomeritic; and at the three places mentioned, a local deposit of shale or of 
clay occurs between the sandstone and the gneiss, and wdiieh earthy deposit is very partially 
impregnated with carbonaceous matter. At Salkura and Mirampara the stuff is 
mainly a resinous shale, a very poor representative of the Seju coal, but quite of the same 
character; at Champagiri, more to the north and between the other two places, it is a 
thick bed of dark still’clay, with insignificant strings of lignite through it. At Salkura 
the gneiss shows continuously in the stream at about ten feet under tho shale. At 
Champagiri and Mirampara, besides occurring for some distance in the bed of the 
streams between hanks of the sandstone, the gneiss is seen at the edge of the range at a 
higher level than the shales, with pebbly sandstone resting on it; the shales having altoge¬ 
ther died out. All the streams form rapids or falls over the crystalline rocks at the edge B of 
the range. It seems strange that Mr. Bedford, when he attempts to give definite names 
to the varieties of the overlying rocks, and although he notices these water-falls, should 
have failed to make mention of the crystalline rocks, the occurrence of which so gravely 
affects the prospects of the reported coal-field. 
It must hare been a very small and carefully selected fragment from these “ coal-beds” 
that yielded the analysis published by the Coal Committee; aud it is not to he wondered at, 
that Mr. Sweetland failed to fulfil his engagement to “put the Committee in possession of 
more satisfactory samples than they had yet seen.” It would require months of labor to 
obtain a maund of anything that would, support combustion. These beds have no relation 
to “ the brown coal formation ;” but they were most correctly condemned by tbe Committee 
as “ belonging to one or more small isolated basins of a spurious coal formation, and are not 
