'THE GEOLOGY AND MINERAL RESOURCES OF DHUFAR PROVINCE, MUSCAT AND OMAN' [‎20v] (30/96)

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III. DETAILS OF TOUR
Arrival and Halt at Salalah
30. Plans having been made for a Mineral Audit of Dhufar
with the approval of the Sultan of Muscat and Oman by mid-
January, 1947,1 left Calcutta by the B.O.A.C. flying boat ‘Hanwell’
(Captain Brand) on the 2nd February, from the Hooghli river at the
Willingdon Bridge, in a non-stop flight to Karachi. The course was
over Surguja, Saugor and Udaipur, and then across Palanpur, along
the northern margin of the Great Rann of Cutch to the air port at
Karachi, where we arrived about 7 p.m. (I.S.T.). Next morning,
leaving from the Karachi aerodrome in a Uockheed plane, ‘Fake
Edward’ (Captain S. T. Beal), we flew south of the Baluchistan
coast as far as the longitude of Jiwani and then turned south-west
for Masira island (where we stopped for a short time after a 3|-hour
flight over 674 miles), and then continued to Salalah ( 2 J-hour flight
over about 400 miles) and arrived there early in the afternoon. As
we left the Indian coast from Cape Monze I studied the strike of the
outcrops of rock and thought that the general trend was to the
south-west with south-east dips. There is a small island at the tip
of the cape. The strike of the beds is by no means steady, but is
in curves, convex to the south and east. According to E. W.
Vredenburg’s map (Plate 12, Records, Geological Survey of India,
Volume XXXVIII, Part 3, 1909, ‘ Report on Jhe Geology of Sarawan,
Jhalawan, Mekran and the State of Eas Bela’) the strata from
Karachi to Cape Monze are middle Miocene, Gaj beds (upper
Aquitanian), overlying Nari (upper Nari or lower Gaj) beds of middle
to lower Miocene (Aquitanian to Tongrian) which occur in a wide
outcrop down the valley of the Hab river, and appear to swing
westwards. The beds underlying the upper Nari are the upper
Kirthar of upper Eocene age, so that the lowest Miocene and Oligocene
are missing. Below these Kirthar limestones there seems to be
another hiatus as the next beds below are upper Cretaceous
(Campanian to Neocomian) in age.
31. On arrival at Salalah I was met by Mohammad Amin Salim,
Assistant Secretary to the Sultan. He informed me that the Sultan,
Saiyid Said bin Taimur, was already in Salalah and I gladly arranged
to call at the Palace that evening. This I did and His Highness
indicated his desire to have an accurate knowledge of the mineral
resources of Dhufar seeing that its climate was so temperate and
this fact with good mineral resources might encourage the opening
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