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" Though a common rock in India, laterite has not found a 

 place either in our dictionaries, or the treatises on geology ; and 

 it has occurred to me, that specimens may be wanting in your 

 collections. Under the surface of the earth, it is a stiff, porous 

 clay, with or without quartz pebbles ; but, on exposure to the 

 atmosphere, it becomes ' as hard as a rock.' In its soft state, it 

 is cut into large pieces, shaped like bricks, of which the accom- 

 panying is a specimen, and is then used for building purposes ; 

 more especially for pagodas, steps, and to pave paths. Hence 

 the name laterite, from later^ a brick. Its singular power of 

 hardening, on exposure to the atmosphere, does not arise from 

 the presence of lime, but is attributed to six per cent, of silica 

 that it contains, in a soluble slate, dissolved by potass. 



" Laterite ridges are the first rocks that appear in the deltas 

 of the rivers in Burmah. Not a pebble is found in the Irrawady, 

 on coming up from the sea, till Rangoon is reached, which is 

 built at the base of the first ledge of laterite in the delta, rising 

 one hundred and sixty feet above the river. The name of the 

 city is Ran-gung, from raw, war, in Burmese, and gung^ a hill ; 

 the hill of war. It was anciently called Ta-gung, the ta being 

 either the numeral one — when it would signify simply a hill ; 

 or the verb to grieve — the hill of grief. The original name still 

 appears in that of the famous pagoda, which rises three hundred 

 and sixty feet above the summit of the hill, and is called Shweta- 

 gung. This the early travellers transformed into Golden Dagon, 

 and then tried to connect it in some way, not clear to them- 

 selves, with the fish-god of the Philistines. 



" After entering the Sitang River, which falls into the sea be- 

 tween the mouths of the Irrawady and the Sahven, not a vestige 

 of a rock is seen for a hundred miles, till reaching the old city 

 of Sitang ; which, like Rangoon, is at the first ledge of laterite, 

 on coming up from the sea. The Sitang ridge rises from one 

 to two hundred feet above the alluvial plain, which it crosses, 

 like the walls of the Cyclops, as far as the eye can reach, and 

 terminates in a perpendicular bluff on the margin of the river. 

 Within a distance of thirty miles above, are three other ledges 

 of laterite, parallel to this, and also terminating on the east bank 

 of the river ; all of which are the sites of old cities — illustrat- 



