ON THE PATAJS1. 139 



rocks of some of these veins of galena which becoming gradually 

 severed from the mother rock by the insidious action of the water 

 in the still depths of the ocean, have slid down to the nearest pro- 

 jection and there have been until the day of discovery, their 

 great weight and size having defied the efforts of flood or stream 

 to, disintegrate or carry them away. They may, however, have been 

 detached from the matrix by other forces of nature, such as the 

 undermining of waves or streams or by atmospheric action, but the 

 principle of their existence is the same, however detached from the 

 parent rock, whilst the coating of lime gradually formed around 

 them has, to a large extent, prevented their disintegration. After 

 exhausting these accumulated heaps of galena, the lode itself has 

 been found to continue its downward dip and has been followed to 

 considerable depths with much profit to the miners ; in these cases, 

 the upper portion of the lode had broken off, whilst that below 

 being embedded in the rock could not be affected. 



There was one remarkable instance of this at Pinyuk on the 

 galena mines of the Patani in which the lode was not exhausted 

 after twelve months' work, but still held its downward course 

 through the living rock in conjunction with galena. 



Galena being of a very friable nature, is, if not in a compact mass, 

 easily disintegrated, and consequently on all these hills and in the 

 limestone valleys, *. <?., in valleys where the entire formation is lime- 

 stone, there are large deposits of alluvial galena which can be 

 extracted by washing the drifts. 



There are to be found here considerable deposits of carbonate of 

 lead and also of phosphate of lead, and some very beautiful speci- 

 mens of the former are often met with. Copper in the form of 

 pseudo-malachite is also of common occurrence. 



Tin is also more or less abundant on the granite hills and slopes, 

 and is worked by the Chinese with considerable vigor, almost 

 always on the hills ; it is also plentiful in the beds of the rivers 

 which flow between the granite and the limestone cliffs, and it is 

 a peculiar circumstance that very little alluvial galena is found in 

 these same streams, a phenomenon which seems to indicate that 

 the surface changes in the rocks have not been the result of river 

 denudation and the watermarks on the limestone hills have not 



