332

INDIA

wards from the dome under the foot of the hill till it
opens on to the sea-shore, is a gallery so full of the quaint
{evices which salt can assume that it is difficult to make
one’s way along—impossible, indeed, without the aid of
artificial light. So much beauty of natural design compressed
 and multiplied in so narrow a space 1 have never
seen elsewhere, excepting, perhaps, in the tracings made by
frost upon glass in the early mornings of a hard winter.
The beauty of it is past description, but the economic result
of unscientific mining is only too obvious. The mine is
unworkable, and has been abandoned for years. It is
reported to be the abode of mountain spirits, and indeed
t requires no great effort of imagination to picture them
amidst such surroundings. The salt mines of the Punjab
are beautiful, but all picturesque illusions vanish before
clean-cut galleries and tramways and scientific engineering.
Iron is an economic product of the soil that cannot
se overlooked, although it is no longer one of any great
value, regarded as a contribution to the wealth of India.
Local iron industry has long been superseded by iron
importations, nor is it likely that it will ever revive to
any great extent ; yet there was a time when it found employment
 for thousands of workmen, and less than two
centuries have passed since iron was welded and forged
in a fashion quite unknown to the western world, and
which is hardly surpassed even in the largest foundries of
to-day. There is a mass of wrought iron weighing six
tons or more which stands as a monument to the capacity
of India’s workers in iron near the Kutb at Delhi—a solid
iron pillar measuring 23 feet 8 inches in length, with an
average diameter of more than 14 inches above its base,
expanding to 2 feet 4 inches below. To this day it is a
puzzle to those scientists who endeavour to account for its
production. Scattered through India there are to be found
znormous “tops,” or cannon, relics of the forgotten skill
of the past races of Indian iron-workers.
Iron ore is distributed through India in great abundance,
 indeed Central and Southern India may be said
to be red with if. Near Salem, in Madras, ‘ whole hills