376 LA TOUCHE : GEOLOGY OF NORTHERN SHAN STATES. 



Namhsim sandstones would furnish a durable building-stone, but the 

 outcrops of thif3 rock are too far from the railway to make it 

 worth while to open out quarries, unless a larger demand than now 

 _ _ exists were to spring up. The red limestones 



Quarry at Yemeyc. . . , , , . ■, 



of the Nyaungbaw group have been quarried 

 at Yemeye (B 5) near Zebingyi, for use as copings and ornamental 

 string courses in the Government hospital lately built in Rangoon, 

 but the rock was selected more on account of its rich chocolate 

 red colour than for its durability, and it is doubtful whether such 

 a stone, traversed as it is by numerous veins of secondary calcite, 

 will withstand the damp climate of Rangoon. 



Many of the crystalline limestones of the Ruby Mines District 

 M could be used as statuary marble, but this 



rock occurs in such large quantities in the 

 more accessible Sagyin Hills near Mandalay, and at Kyaukse, on 

 the railway south of that place, that there is never likely to be 

 any demand for the marble of the more remote occurrences, and 

 the only use to which it is put is that of metalling the roads. 

 Clays of sufficiently good quality for brick-making may be 

 found almost everywhere, and are largely used 

 in the construction of pagodas, a pit being 

 opened at each site and the bricks burnt on the spot. The Euro- 

 pean houses in Maymyo and other towns are usually built of brick, 

 but the natives never employ this material in the construction of 

 their houses, even the ' palaces ' of the chiefs, and the monasteries, being 

 built of wood and bamboo. The white kaolin-like clays that occur 

 at one or two localities in the Tertiary coal basins, — at Man-Se 

 (H 1) in the Namma coal field, and at Mankiin (I 2) in the Man- 

 se-le field, — might be suitable for making pottery, but hitherto no 

 use has been made of them. 



Salt. 



A considerable quantity of coarse salt is manufactured from the 

 water of a brine well situated at Bawgyo 

 Bawgyo nne wi . ^ ^ ^ valley of the Nam-Tu near 



Hsipaw. The well is sunk on the line of a fault at the base of a, 

 limestone scarp, and the salt is no doubt derived from the red 

 Namyau sandstones, which are faulted down against the Plateau 

 Limestone. The produce is exported and sold among the hill 



