At one time India was famed for its wealth in precious minerals and
precious stones. Poets often celebrated its golden resources. But its
wealth in this respect was always fabulous rather than real. India is
in reality poor in minerals. It has a good deal of iron--iron of the
choicest quality. It has also a good deal of coal, but its coal is
poor, owing to its superabundance of ash. It has also a little copper
and tin. It has gold-mines that are worked. Diamonds, too, are found
in southern India, and numerously so. The celebrated Koh-i-nur (280
carats) was an Indian product. But neither diamond-hunting nor
gold-mining is any longer a profitable industry in India. The
principal mineral industry of India is salt-mining, pursued in the
Punjaub, where there are solid cliffs of pure salt. Owing to the fact
that the people of India are mostly vegetarians (250,000,000 of
Hindoos would rather die than eat flesh), salt is a necessary article
of diet and a universal commodity. Its production, therefore, is
controlled by the government as a means of raising revenue.