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INDIA

(&lt;.e. the basin of the Mahanadi) contains a comparatively
large area of inferior coal measures, note of which are
grofitably worked at present.
The largest coalfields of India exist in Bengal, and
the most important colliery is that of Karhabari, in the
Hazaribagh district, about 200 miles from Calcutta.
This, with the Ranigange mines (120 miles from Calcutta),
furnishes the East Indian railway with all its coal. The
Karhabari and Serampur collieries between them put
ut 450,000 tons of coal in 1897. Ranigange is probably
 the largest and most important of all coal areas
n India, covering 500 square miles. Coal has been
worked here for more than a century. It constitutes the
‘Black Country” of India, and the supply seems to be
practically inexhaustible.
The Central Provinces possess two important collieries
in Warora (near Chanda), south of Nagpur in the Godavari
basin, and Mohpani, which is 95 miles south-west of Jabalpur,
 in the Narbada basin. The latter is a comparatively
small field which, in 1879, turned out only 12,400 tons.
[t has now risen to 20,000 tons, but the mine is chiefly
interesting from the nature of the galleries, which open
on to the face of a cliff. The Warora mine put out
111,600 tons last year. The coal mines of the Salt
range, in the Punjab, which are worked from an altitude
 of nearly 2000 feet above sea-level, are not productive
 of a very good class of coal, but the 90,000 tons
of coal which they can produce per annum are exceed-.ngly
 valuable to the N.-W. Railway.
The Umaria colliery, which, like the Warora, is worked
by Government, is avaluable resource for the Indian Midland
and the Great Indian Peninsula railways. Its output is
124,000. In Assam there are five or six coalfields in the
valley of the Brahmaputra. The coal differs from that of
the peninsula in possessing a homogeneous structure, and
is of distinctly superior quality. The Tikak and Ledo
mines put out 171,000 tons last year, a large contribution
to the total value of the coal industry to India. In Burma
there are coal measures of variable quality in nearly every