362 Report on the Island of Chedooba. [No. 113. 



the character of small plains, are of very frequent occurrence. On the 

 higher hills, the trees are closest of growth and largest of size, but still 

 clear of understufT. Throughout therefore, no serious obstacle is present- 

 ed in the task of clearing the land for cultivation, — a Mug, with a good 

 dah felling the trees over half an acre a day, and a footman may pene- 

 trate without obstruction in any direction. 



The tops of the highest hills were visited with ease, save from the 

 steepness of ascent, parts being traversed, which the superstitious fear 

 of the Mug would never have permitted his voluntary approach to. 



Timber of great size, and some of valuable quality, is to be found, but 

 it is confined to the very summits of the highest hills, and is therefore 

 partly inaccessible, nor would its amount ever remunerate the labour of 

 constructing roads for its transport. The soil in which these grow is of 

 the same nature as that described above, but within a few hundred feet of 

 the summits, all of which are very steep, it is piled up in the loosest 

 possible manner. The stroke of an axe or dah on an extensive hill top, 

 would so shake it for a space of 150 yards around, as to make observation 

 in the quicksilver of an artificial horizon impossible. 



Precisely at the spot where this loose texture commences — commences 

 the growth of the large timber, increasing in size thence to the summits, 

 and from the trees not being deciduous (or at least not so at the same 

 season) a most marked line of separation is thus traced out between these 

 and the smaller leafless jungle below. 



The wood oil tree was the most conspicuous in growth and size, of the 

 larger trees of these summits. 



One was felled on the west hill, which measured in diameter at the res- 

 pective ends, of a 60 feet length, 4 feet 6 inches, and 3 feet 6 inches, and 

 another is left standing as a mark, on the summit, which measures 21 feet 

 4 inches in girt at 6 feet from the ground. The wood of this tree will 

 not, 1 fear, be found valuable as timber, but its produce, the wood oil, has 

 yet to be better appreciated than at present. This substance is produced 

 by cutting a hole into the body of the tree,* and kindling a fire in it ; the 

 flat floor as it were, of the hole, has a groove cut in it, which receives the 

 oil as it crudes from the wound, and whence a split bamboo conducts it 

 to the pots placed for its reception ; the quantity thus yielded from a large 

 tree is surprizingly great. In felling the above mentioned individual the 

 oil ran in a stream from it, and it must have contained even tons. The 

 strict propriety of designating it an oil may be doubted. It has always 



* See Dr. Spry's Visit to Arracan, No. 110.— Ed. 



