The Geology of the Deposit

The salt beds occur as steeply dipping strata on the south side of an anticline which is traced for the whole length of the Malagash Peninsula. These strata have been subjected to intense folding, minor faulting, crumpling, etc. Unlike coal seems when subjected to stress, they seem to flow rather than shatter and break off; and they alternately thin and thicken. This is well illustrated in the two hundred foot level at the bottom of the shaft where one particularly white seam of salt is one foot in thickness, but on passing from the fault zone to an undisturbed region, the section of pure salt is from eight to ten feet thick. At certain places this bed has been worked, eleven to fifteen feet in sections.

The salt occurs in banded structure, the colour ranging from pure white to very dark grey. The bands vary greatly in size from two inches in thickness upwards. The whole salt mass is crystalline and it is probable that the variable colouring is in part due to the size of the crystal grain as well as to impurities embedded in the salt.