Nummulitic
limestones of Lower Tertiary age, in the Panjab, in the North West
Frontier Province, and in the Jammu division of Kashmir. The largest
output has been obtained from the Salt Range, where mines have been
opened up on behalf of the North Western Railway. The mines at Dandot in
the Jhelam district have considerable fluctuations in output, which,
however, for many years ranged near 50,000 tons. These mines, having
been worked at a financial loss, were finally abandoned by the Railway
Company in 1911, but a certain amount of work is still being continued
by local contractors. At Bhaganwala, 19 miles further east, in the
adjoining district of Shahpur, coal was also worked for many years for
the North Western State Railway, but the maximum output in any one year
never exceeded 14,000 tons, and in 1900, owing to the poor quality of
material obtained, the collieries were closed down. Recently, small
outcrop workings have been developed in the same formation further west
on the southern scarp of the Salt Range at Tejuwala in the Shahpur
district.

~Gold~ to a small amount is washed from the gravel of the Indus and some
other rivers by native workers, and large concessions have been granted
for systematic dredging, but these enterprises have not yet reached the
commercially paying stage.

~Other Metals.~--Prospecting has been carried on at irregular intervals in
Kulu and along the corresponding belt of schistose rocks further west in
Kashmir and Chitral. The copper ores occur as sulphides along certain
bands in the chloritic and micaceous schists, similar in composition and
probably in age to those worked further east in Kumaon, in Nipal, and in
Sikkim. In Lahul near the Shigri glacier there is a lode containing
~antimony~ sulphide with ores of ~zinc~ and ~lead~, which would almost
certainly be opened up and developed but for the difficulty of access
and cost of transport to the only valuable markets.

~Petroleum~ springs occur among the Tertiary formations of the Panjab and
Biluchistan, and a few thousand gallons of oil are raised annually.
Prospecting operations have been carried on vigorously during the past
two or three years, but no large supplies have so far been proved. The
principal oil-supplies of Burma and Assam have been obtained from rocks
of Miocene age, like those of Persia and the Caspian region, but the
most promising "shows" in North West India have been in the older
Nummulitic formations, and the