ASAM AND THE NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. 415 



prompting the Singfos of the place to deny that we could get water 

 near at hand, we were obliged to follow their advice and move on to the 

 Toonghoot rivulet, where the jungle was so thick that it was necessary to 

 clear a space for our encamping ground. We found by the barometer, 

 that we had ascended considerably during the day, as we were now one 

 thousand and seventy-one feet above Kasan, (one thousand nine-hundred 

 and eleven feet above the sea.) 



The path led through much jungle as before, and the ascents and 

 descents were inconsiderable, till we arrived at the brow of the ridge 

 overlooking the Dapha. The height commands an extensive view, but 

 heavy clouds hung low in the atmosphere and hid the summits of the 

 hills. There was a very steep descent, followed by steppes of narrow 

 plains, where the fields are of the Dapha villages. We halted at Kumkii, 

 a village of eight or ten large houses, one of which we were permitted 

 to occupy. The hills crossed appeared to be sandstone. We passed 

 during the day, one of those beds of white mud of which there are 

 several of frequent occurrence in this neighbourhood, resorted to by 

 cattle and wild beasts of all kinds, which eagerly devour it. The most 

 remarkable one is at SicpJcong, on the Sort Diking, where there is a bed 

 of coal in the middle of the river, and the jungles are full of an odor of petro- 

 leum. I went to see it. There were two beds, one at a little higher level 

 than the other, but both on the plains, filled with liquid mud of various 

 degrees of consistence. One was twenty or thirty feet across, and the 

 other larger. In the middle, where bubbles of air are seen constantly 

 rising to the surface, the mud is nearly white, and is there in a more liquid 

 state — -on the edges green petroleum is seen floating, but it is not put 

 to any use by the Singfos — neither is the coal. 



Heavy rain compelled us to halt the next day, and we received 

 a supply of rice, amounting to twenty or thirty seers, which the 



