the
Serampore Raja, may be about four miles long and between one and two
miles across. It is in two pieces, the Serampore field being separated
from the Karharbari (or Kurhurballi or Kabarbari) field by the property
of the Bengal Coal Company. The Raneegunge Coal Association lies to the
east of all other workings. So we have three companies at work on about
eleven square miles of land.

There is no such thing as getting a full view of the whole place. A
short walk over a grassy down gives on to an outcrop of very dirty
sandstone, which in the excessive innocence of his heart the visitor
naturally takes to be the coal lying neatly on the surface. Up to this
sandstone the path seems to be made of crushed sugar, so white and shiny
is the quartz. Over the brow of the down comes in sight the old familiar
pit-head wheel, spinning for the dear life, and the eye loses itself in
a maze of pumping sheds, red-tiled, mud-walled miners' huts, dotted all
over the landscape, and railway lines that run on every kind of
gradient. There are lines that dip into valleys and disappear round the
shoulders of slopes, and lines that career on the tops of rises and
disappear over the brow of the slopes. Along these lines whistle and
pant metre-gauge engines, some with trucks at their tail, and others
rattling back to the pit-bank with the absurd air of a boy late for
school that an unemployed engine always assumes. There are six engines
in all, and as it is easiest to walk along the lines one sees a good
deal of them. They bear not altogether unfamiliar names. Here, for
instance, passes the "Cockburn" whistling down a grade with thirty tons
of coal at her heels; while the "Whitly" and the "Olpherts" are waiting
for their complement of trucks. Now a Mr. T. F. Cockburn was
superintendent of these mines nearly thirty years ago, in the days
before the chord-lines from Kanu to Luckeeserai were built, and all the
coal was carted to the latter place; and surely Mr. Olpherts was an
engineer who helped to think out a new sleeper. What may these things
mean?

"Apotheosis of the Manager," is the reply. "Christen the engines after
the managers. You'll find Cockburn, Dunn, Whitly, Abbott, Olpherts, and
Saise, knocking about the place. Sounds funny, doesn't it? Doesn't sound
so funny, when one of these idiots does his best to derail Saise,
though, by putting a line down anyhow. Look at that line! Laid out in
knots--by Jove!" To the unprofessional eye the r