tance
in front of the scarp, and the pit was just on the northern edge of
this terrace, some twenty feet below the summit, and itself about ten
feet deep. On the top of the diamond bed was a foot or so of hard thin
flaggy sandstone and about seven feet of the same mixed with shale. A
little further to the south and west on this terrace was an old pit
between thirty and forty feet deep, but the bottom filled with water,
so that the rocks immediately above the diamond bed could not be seen,
but there were certainly ten to fifteen feet of shale between it and
the lower Rewah sandstone. In all the pits examined there must have
been ten to twenty feet of shale intermediate. The Pannas are here very
thin, so that this position is not much above the top of the Kaimurs
(the lowest group of the upper Vindhyans). There are some small
outlying hills to the north at the village of Bungla and north of
Babupur. The former is about fifty feet high, with Kaimurs at the base,
then fifteen to twenty feet of shale capped in turn by the lower Rewah
sandstone; this was the only outlying hill in which the shales were
seen (on account of the northern overlap). A few hundred yards to the
north-east another little hill has been excavated in every direction by
the old diamond searchers. Again at Babupur are numerous old pits, and
some sufficiently well preserved to admit of examination. They are
about fifteen feet deep, exposing sandstone with thin flaggy beds at
the top, but no shales.
A
bed of fine brown sandstone, including fragments of a green silicious
rock, and bits of red and green shale, was traced from Bumbhen to
Kissengurh, which is not impossibly the continuation of the diamond bed
; that the natives do not work to the east is no proof that the beds do
not continue in that direction. This is evident from the fact of there
being no pits at Bungla, notwithstanding the hills all round, even to
the north, having been extensively worked.
It is, therefore, almost certain that at Bungla the diamond bed exists, though untouched.
