338

INDIA

exceptionally hard material—granite and gneiss—traversed
by quartz reefs, and in spite of estimates based on the
results of unusually successful prospecting, mines have
proved unproductive owing to the cost of plant and working.
 Gold mines have been started by half-a-dozen companies
 in Mysore, where the rocks all belong to crystalline
or metamorphic groups interlaced by quartz reefs, and
the Kolar mines have been successful—perhaps the most
successful—of all. Rocks of the Kamthi age in the
Gondwana system appear to be exceptionally auriferous.
To them may be traced the source of the gold washings
in the Godavari affluents of Haidarabad, where again
gold mining has largely developed lately, and where (as
in Kolar) ancient workings carried to a considerable depth
have exhausted all the most profitable sources of supply.
The Kolar mines have quite recently far exceeded the
original expectations of their founders. In the year 1899
the production of gold in this part of India amounted to
no less than 447,397 ounces, the production in Burma,
Madras, and the Nizam’s territory (Haidarabad) bringing
up the total to 457,020 ounces, the value of which may
be taken to represent about £1,828,000.
In Chutia Nagpur and the eastern districts of the
Central Provinces, all more or less on the line of the
Bengal-Nagpur railway, is situated a large group of gold
fields. In the districts of Manbhum and Singbhum,
north of the Mahanadi basin ; and in Gangpur, Jushpur,
and Udaipur, within the limits of that basin, as well as at
Sambulpur, which is on the Mahanadi, gold industry
flourishes, The gold of these districts occurs in schists,
slates, and quartzites of sub-metamorphic series. The
gold washings of the Ib and the Mahanadi are still carried
on by the aboriginal Gond people, with the assistance of
the primitive pan and scraper, just as they may have been
‘wenty centuries ago.
In Upper Assam the gold of the Dihong River has long
been famous. It is said that all the rivers in these
districts of Assam contain gold. It was estimated that
£10,000 represented the value of the revenue derived