body having tried to make him understand the extraction of sugar from beet root, he has impressed his whole neighbourhood with the notion, that Russian sugar, which they always see in loaves, grows in its primeval shape like a carrot. One of my most acceptable visitors was the blind son of my host. He is not yet thirty, and has been blind some 12 or 13 years; one eye has been entirely destroyed by the lancet of some Candahar practitioners; from the other he can see a little, and it might I think be cured by couching. I wish indeed to bring him with me to Caubul, that some of our occulists might look at his eyes; but having thought of trying to cross the Ghore mountains, I feared his helplessness in such a region, and only pressed him therefore to go at once to Herat and take the advice of the doctors there. Like the most educated blind persons, he has a mild placid address, and a very retentive memory, and it was from him that I learnt the greater part of his father's history. He asked me to dinner, and the Khan, for once in his life, consented to be of the party. The host on this occasion would not sit down with us, but stood at the door, superintending the relays of dishes till we had all finished.

I mentioned to Shah Pussund my desire of paying my respects to the governor of Jorraine; he evidently was unwilling that I should go there, but did not well know how to put me off. He sent one or two persons privately to persuade me that the visit would look odd; that Goolzar Khan was a mere cypher, and of course there was a ready answer to such arguments. I have a letter to present, and must go. He was, I believe, fearful lest old Goolzar Khan, who is not on very good terms with his nephew, and who had all the garrulity of age, might speak to his disadvantage, or perhaps let out things he might not wish me to know. At last, however, I set out. I was met as usual by a large crowd, and by an istikbal of three or four of the old man's sons, and Goolzar Khan himself came down from the fort on foot to receive me, though he cannot walk without difficulty. He evidently was delighted to see me his guest; he began to fear that I should pass him by, and his honour was concerned in the matter. Somebody had also told him, that I would not make myself understood in Persian; but when he found that I enjoyed his stories of the old times, he told them with all the pleasure one receives from finding a new auditor to an old tale. He is a fine old gentle

Jorraine..

man, of about eighty, and his whole life has been a series of adventures. He was very funny and amusing: "There, bring the Sahib a kullion. I suppose you smoke well. In my younger days not one of us smoked, but those Persians have infected us; very well, and how is my friend the vuzeer? May his house be blasted! Look at my feet, this is his doing." He held up his feet, of which all the toes had grown as it were into one. A very few years ago, Yar Mahomed Khan wrote to him addressing him as his father, as the whole hope of the Douranees, and sending him a Koran in pledge of his sincerity, and pressed him to come to Herat, where he should be treated with every distinction. The old Khan trusted him and went; he was seized and brought before Jorraine, where they beat the soles of his feet to a jelly with sticks, to make him write to his son to give up the fort.

I spent a very agreeable day, and returned in the afternoon to Laush. Jorraine is still a virgin fort, and could always, if well defended, keep out any Asiatic force. The walls, which may be about 200 yards in length, are very thick and high. The balls of the Heratees made hardly any impression on them. It has but one gateway, which is on the north face, and would be difficult to be forced. The base of the fort is elevated above the surrounding plain. Its weakest point is, that it is surrounded on all sides by buildings, so that it can be securely approached. The few measurements we were able to get by stealth, are mentioned in the Military Memoir. There is a dry ditch, but it is now half filled up. It was, when we were there, the most populous place I had seen since Candahar. All the Furrahees were settled round the walls in huts or black tents; their flocks were feeding in the plain; their cows had been sent off to the Humoon. There was hardly a yard of ground within the fort not covered with buildings. I do not exactly understand the relative situation of the governor of this fort and of Shah Pussund Khan. The latter is the real head; but he seems to interfere little with the affairs of the fort, and when Goolzar Khan dies, it is an understood thing that his son is to succeed to the lands immediately belonging to the fort, which yields only some 80 khur

wars.

Shah Pussund has three parts and Goolzar two.

Memoir on the Coal found at Kotah, &c. with a Note on the Anthracite of Duntimnapilly, (H. H. the Nizam's Dominions.)—By W. WALKER, Esq. 24th April, 1841.

NOTE.---In submitting the accompanying Memoir, I have purposely abstained from giving any opinion either as to the quality of the Coal, the practicability of mining, or the likelihood of a large supply of the mineral being procurable at Kotah.

Destitute at this remote place of all means of forming any estimate on a subject on which I must in a certain degree be one-sided and prejudiced, I leave to others the decision of the intrinsic worth of the article, and both the other points. I refer to the practical engineer and miner, who alone, after survey, &c. are capable of forming a correct judgment.

Yet, I may be permitted to give it as my opinion, that the river merely touches the edge of the Coal basin, and to this I am led by the fact of no carboniferous limestone appearing on the other side, or on any of the shallows to the right: the dip too of the stratum to the N. E. would appear to be favorable to boring on the left bank. The alluvion there, as noticed in the Memoir, is about forty-five feet deep, and is a loose soil containing few pebbles. I may also observe as favorable to mining operations, that the general complaint of the inhabitants along the river is the great depth they are obliged to go before water is reached; this is particularly the case in the fort of Seronge, five miles below Kotah. On account of this difficulty of obtaining well water, the inhabitants are compelled to use that of the river, much against their inclination; as at certain seasons it is deemed by them very unwholesome.

At Madhapore, there were brought to me some minerals from the bed of the Godavery at that place, which it required little discrimination to decide were of the nature of slate coal. Upon inquiry I found, that after the monsoon at the Dassara festival, persons employed themselves in gathering these minerals to be vended as medicines; and more particularly as charms to keep off the all-dreaded Evil eye, for which purpose they were burnt, incantations being said over them while inflamed. Their Tellugoo name is assoorpoory, and it is believed by some of the natives, that they were the weapons with which the

gods contended; while other maintained the opinions, that they annually grew and were thrown off the river's bed, or sprung like the Cytherean goddess from the water foam; but all agreed that it was the Pundeetah river that supplied them. I lost no time in proceeding to the Sungum of the rivers Godavery and Pundeetah, and upon receiv. ing, what I conceived from specimens shewn me, correct intelligence of their origin, I ascended the river to a place called Kotah, a small Goand village on its banks, about ten miles from the Sungum, and twenty miles N. E. of Chinnore; a space of about eighty yards in length, and thirty in breadth was pointed out at the edge of the left bank of the river, the alluvial covering of which could not be much under forty-five feet, and this I was told was the original seat of the coal. Upon examination, I found that limestone, more or less argillaceous, occupied this space; the upper strata were completely dislocated, and deranged by the force of the current; the inferior, however, appeared more compact and hard, and as far as could be ascertained, dipped to the N. E. at a low angle. Seeing that the water must have completely denuded these limestones of any shale or coal that may ever have accompanied them, I thought of searching a little higher up in the bed of the river, and observing a small rock of the same argillaceous limestone just above the water, search was made there, when coal along with its accompanying shale and bituminous shale was broken off from the sides of the rock this left no doubt as to the existence and position of a coal measure. The rock formation in which it is to be supposed this coal measure exists, is that where the mineral is usually found all over the world, and in India without any exception. According to the report of the Calcutta Coal Committee, the depth of the alluvium, and the circumstance of the outcrop being in the river's bed, precluded all possibility of ascertaining the relative position of the several strata; but as sandstone is found on all sides, and towards the north at the short distance of two or three hundred yards, it is more than probable that here there is no deviation from the arrangement of rock commonly found to exist in such cases. As to the sandstone itself, I cannot give a better description than in the words of the late Dr. Voysey, who travelled over a great part of this country, and must have been perfectly familiar with the sandstone formation of the Godavery:

"The sandstone varies considerably in composition and colour. Its variations however, occur principally in the neighbourhood of its junction with the other rocks. Its most common cement is lithomarge, which is also found in it in nests and beds of various sizes, and of colour both white and reddish white;" and he might have added, yellow.

But I am aware any description I can give of the locality and of the accompanying strata, will be deemed deficient by the geologist, without specimens illustrative of both. I therefore proceed to give a brief description of those sent.

Box No. 1.-Contains specimens of shale, more or less bituminous, which were broken off the rock along with the coal. Box No. 2.-Contains specimens of shale found in the same situation. Box No. 3.-Contains specimens of the argillaceous limestone, composing the dislocated and disturbed strata formerly described. Some of these blocks are from a foot to a foot and a half in thickness, with a surface twenty to thirty square feet.

Box No. 4.-Contains specimens broken off from the compact and hard limestone, that has resisted displacement by the current.

One of these will be observed to be water-worn.

Box No. 5.-Contains specimens of sandstone in the vicinity of the coal measure.

Box No. 6.-Contains specimens from a neighbouring hill.

The river at Kotah is one hundred and fifty yards wide, is proportionably deep, and is always turbid. It contains, at this season at least, more water than the Godavery. The country around is jungly; Kotah itself is the first Goand village on that side of the Chinnore Sircar, and is a miserable little place. I sent a party several miles up the river to discover, if possible, any sign of another coal deposit; but they returned without a mineral of any description. About eight miles up the river, among the hills at the village of Yenkatapore, there is found brown clay iron ore among the sandstone. I did not hear of this until I had reached Chinnore, and an opportunity was thus denied me of visiting the locality. I send specimens procured from the place in box No. 7. This ore was formerly smelted; but the works have been abandoned; the natives give a good character of the iron produced. The specific gravity is above 3.