West Frontier Province, where the quantity of salt may be regarded as practically inexhaustible. At Bahadur Khel the salt lies at the base of the Tertiary series, and can be traced for a distance of about eight miles with an exposed thickness of over 1000 feet, sometimes standing up as hills of solid salt above the general level of the plains. In this area the production is naturally limited by want of transport and the small local demand, the total output from the quarries being about 16,000 tons per annum. A small quantity of salt (generally about 4000 tons a year), is raised also from open quarries in the Mandi State, where the rock-salt beds, distinctly impure and earthy, lie near the junction between Tertiary formations and the older unfossiliferous groups.
Coal occurs at numerous places in association with the Nummulitic limestones of Lower Tertiary age, in the Pan jab, 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.
