122 ON THE TOPOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY 



Pico Gallo, is in every respect uiidistingiiishable from one collected by myself in the 

 canon of the Cenobi southwest of the peak. Besides this, we found a bluish-gray 

 g'ranitoid rock, very fine grained, without mica ; and another, of coarser grain, Avith 

 comparatively large cr^^stals of white feldspar. Quartz veins are not confined to the 

 mctamorphic rocks. In this region, as on the JN^izao, there are segregations of that 

 mineral forming well-marked seams, often of considerable extent. On the Magna it 

 is usually white and milky, though in one case it was found of a greenish white. 



Dajao is a little settlement on the end of a long spur from the Pico Gallo — a 

 dozen houses, scattered in little dells or flats on the hill sides, from the banks of the 

 Mao River to the toj) of the ridge. The little conimiuiity is made up of people, 

 almost all ramifications of one family, who show, perhaps as markedly as any, the 

 strong Indian type which still lingers in the fastnesses of the hills. An innocent, 

 peaceful tribe they are, intelligent far beyond the average of their countrymen of the 

 same social level, and, strange to say (in the woods of this country), almost all have 

 some sort of a rudimentary education transmitted from one to another, for schools 

 do not exist ; and a better field for the true missionary, the schoolmaster, could 

 probably hardly be found. He would be welcomed with open arms, and bright-eyed 

 youngsters enough could be found to keep a pretty active man busy. It must not 

 be understood that this applies solely to Dajao. Twenty other communities of these 

 mountaineers — equally intelligent, equally desirous to be taught, and equally needy — 

 are scattered through the hills. More real good could be accomplished by sending 

 to each a schoolmaster, than by sending fifty missionaries to the South Seas or to the 

 Indians of the Plains. 



But this is not geology. Half way between this place and the crossing of the 

 Magna is the Jicome Creek which descends from the direction of the peak and runs 

 aljout half of its course in the slates, the upper half in the second belt of the Syeii- 

 itcs. Near the mouth are varions beds, some of earthy brown slate, others of greenish 

 talcose material, both abounding in specks and microscopic crystals of pyrites. These 

 shade into each other, while again the latter become more magnesian, greenish in 

 color and loses the pyrites. Again, this last assumes the more usual type of a white 

 rock, evidently talcoid, though but slightly so, and jDrofusely mottled with great 

 stains of oxide of iron so as sometimes to become entirely red. In these shales the 

 seams of quartz are not rare, and vaiy from white, either translucent or opaque and 

 very compact, to spongy masses stained by iron as if originally filled with pyrites 

 which had decomjiosed. These latter are invariably auriferous and may one day 

 pay a profitable i-eturn to the miner. Fiu'ther up the stream, as before mentioned, its 

 course runs through the eruptive rocks. In one place, a fine-grained dark gray syen- 



