( 7 ) 



The area is scantily peopled by Karens (Squau), and Barman villages are seen only 

 along the outer skirt of tlie hills. A great part of these hill-Burmaus along the Sittang side 

 are called Yabines. 



4. Calcareous sandstone. As we approach the north-west corner of Pegu, a highly 

 indurated impermeable rock of a rather greenish colour becomes so prevalent, that it produces 

 a striking change in the vegetation. This older sandstone is compact, indistinctly stratified, 

 and is often also highly fossiliferous. It is usually so extremely hard, that scarcely any water 

 is allowed to percolate. Hence decomposition goes on very slowly and very incompletely. 

 This older sandstone formation possibly extends far into Ava, and is probably accompanied 

 by limestones. I infer this from the Botanical collections which Dr. Wallich made there in 

 1826. Thin incrustations of calcspar are not unfrequent, but nowhere in large quantities. 



Sometimes layers of soft grey sandstone are conformably superposed upon the older beds, as 

 for instance, on the path that crosses the watershed between the Paday and Kliyoung-Koung- 

 gyee choung, and then an upper mixed forest appears rather abruptly, with such trees, as 

 Homalimn tomajifosHm, Millettia Brandisiana (thitpagan) and fine-grown teak. Soft and cal- 

 careous sandstones, with shales, are frequently seen alternating with one another and forming 

 folded or undulating strata, as I have already indicated. Numerous fossils may in places 

 be obtained from this sandstone, and the whole Prome tract up to the main range of 

 the Yomah appears to abound with larger or smaller boulders, which are particularly fossili- 

 ferous. 



The vegetation on this older formation is peculiar, and quite dissimilar to any occurring in 

 British Burma. This vegetation consists of the Sha forests, curiously mixed up with other 

 trees, that are found elsewhere only on laterite, as for instance, Eng, Engyin, &c. The coun- 

 try looks, during the dry season, barren, dry, and in many respects not unlike Behar. 



The above-mentioned would appear to be the principal rocks that influence the vegeta- 

 tion. A granitic rock is also observed (as Major Twynam was good enough to inform me) at 

 Tounghoo, not far from the ferry over the Sittang to Myatson-yee-noung, where a quarry has 

 been worked for some time. But such a local and limited occurrence is of no consequence in 

 a botanical point of view. 



Schists, syenites and other metamorphic rocks, often accompanied by mountain limestone, 

 appear to cover a great extent of the country east of the Sittang, where they, in the same way 

 as along the Pegu Yomah, are bordered all along the base towards the Sittang by laterite 

 formations, often forming hill ranges 300 to 400 feet high ; but more frequently the outer spurs 

 are covered by numberless larger and smaller fragments and boulders of granitic (syenitic?) 

 and other rocks. Some huge boulders of granite rest on the ground (the under strata 

 probably of schistose rocks) broken up into several pieces, but evidently belonging to one and 

 the same gigantic block. 



A granitic bouUer, broken up , on the vidgos towards 

 Shan toung'gyee toung', E . cf Toizngiioo 



During the dry season, the springs on the higher ridges for the most part dry up, but 

 trickling springs, which are actually nothing but percolations of rain water, are still frequent 

 at favourable exposures in the valleys. The only spouting sjKing I met with in Pegu, is at 

 Kenbatee village, in the soft sandy bed of the choung, whence the villagers fetch their water. 

 Spouting springs are such as owe their origin to impermeable strata, and the occurrence of a 

 spouting spring in a locality surrounded by low forests, would confirm my supposition of 

 there being a laterite bed beneath the stiflf yellowish clay, which I distinguished as diluvial 

 clay. 



I 



