Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c23.s4.6

c23.s4.6

Next in succession, still proceeding westward, is the *Chapar* hills near the town of *Bajna* which abounds in iron, and viewed at a distance it appears as if blackened by fire; its base is surrounded by protrusions of greenstone, and its stratification appeared to me to exhibit marks of derangement; at the foot of it is a cavern, and a chasm, filled with water to the depth of 220 feet, and an isolated fragment in its neighbourhood seems to have been separated from its parent mountain by violence; these appearances are very striking, and furnish grounds for speculation, but my present business is with its mines, which are situated at *Bajna*, *Keritanga*, and *Suka*, near to *Surajpura*; the ore of all which is nearly compact; the former (No.32) is on the summit of the hill, in large amorphous masses, the ore appearing to have penetrated the *sandstone* rock from a fissure of which it is excavated; the second (No.33) is a vein, in Syenite about half way up the hill, and the third (No.34) is in a small adjoining colline; there are some rounded pebbles of iron stone—dug out of ferruginous clay near the village of *Bhojpura*—but they closely resemble those of Motehi and deserve no further notice.