GEOLOGY. 
19 
We found the principal jade locality to be about 1^ miles distant from the river, and at 
a height of about 500 feet above the level of the same. Just in this portion of the range 
a few short spurs abut from the higher hills, all of which are, however, as usual, thickly 
covered with debris and sand—the result of disintegration of the original rock. The whole 
has the appearance of being produced by an extensive slip of the mountain-side. Viewing the 
mines from a little distance, the place seems to resemble a number of pigeon-holes worked 
in the side of the mountain, except that they are rather irregularly distributed. On closer 
inspection we saw a number of pits and holes dug out in the slopes, extending over a height 
of nearly a couple of hundred feet, and over a length of about a quarter of a mile. Each 
of these excavations has a heap of fragments of jade and rock at its entrance. Most of 
them are only from 10 to 20 feet high and broad, and their depth rarely exceeds 20 or 30 
feet; only a few show some approach to low galleries of moderate length, and one or 
two are said to have a length of 80 or 100 feet. Looking on this mining operation as a 
whole, it is no doubt a very inferior specimen of the miners’ skill; nor could the workmen 
have been provided with any superior instruments. I estimated the number of holes at 
about a hundred and twenty; hut several had been opened only experimentally—an operation 
which had often to he resorted to on account of the superficial sand concealing the under¬ 
lying rock. Several pits, also, which were probably exhausted at a moderate depth, had 
been 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, syenitic 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, crystalline mineral, varying in thickness from a few feet 
to about forty, 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 to¬ 
wards north, or they run vertically. I have at present no sufficient means to ascertain the 
true nature of this vein rock, as it may rather be called, being an aggregate of single crystals. 1 
The mineral has 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, rhombohedric 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 white rock is again traversed by 
veins of nephrite, commonly called jade; which, however, also occurs in nests. There appear 
to be 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 splintery, as in- 
true nephrite. Portions of this mineral, which is apparently the same as that 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 
white vein rock, with which it sometimes appears to be very closely connected. The middle 
part of some of the veins, and the greater portion of others, consist entirely of the common 
1 The only specimen in the collection made by Dr. Stoliczka at this place which agrees with his description proves to he 
dolomite. 
