Page:Modern Hyderabad (Deccan).djvu/133

Rh and since that time the coalfields have expanded, although, perhaps, the coal industry has not become all that was hoped and expected of it twenty years ago. Four distinct seams have now been found, the principal one being the King seam, which contains a valuable, hard, semi-bituminous steam coal, and which is being worked at a considerable depth, some of the works being not less than 1,400 feet from the surface.

The main shaft is at the Osman pit (named after H. H. the Nizam when he was a little boy), and this accommodates the King seam. Here the tubs of coal are brought to the bottom of the shaft on rails, run by a cable that is worked by electric power, and the tubs, which contain eleven hundred-weight of coal each, are raised to the pit's surface in cages, two at a time, and the coal is then tipped on to an endless revolving belt, from which women and boys extract the shale and outside products before it travels to the end of the belt, and there falls into wagons that convey it to the railway station.

All this I saw the next morning, but I did not go down the shaft, being satisfied with recollections of mines I had explored elsewhere. I saw the miners — men, women and