492 
FIVE DAYS IN NANING. 
fragments of bluish quartz, thus in every particular resembling 
the gold pits of Jalatong. 
To complete my notes on the mineralogical features of the 
environs of Ayer Panas, I may here mention that beyond 
the hot swamp on the south side of the road and near the 
Ganong hill, there is a block of white quartz and another in 
the flat adjoining. 
In the evening I returned to A lor Gaja. 
FIFTH DAY 
Saturday , 1 3th February . 
This morning I walked to Bukit Paku. We first crossed 
Bukit Kiluna, the hill above Alor Gaja It is covered with 
fine laterite gravel of a reddish brown colour, and so much 
ironmasked as not to be easily distinguishable. Some spe¬ 
cimens however shewed the original rock to be schistose cho¬ 
colate colored clay. We crossed several flats, some of them 
deep swamps, and passed several kampongs and eminences, 
till we arrived at a hill with red soil, on the margin of which 
there is a gold pit which was formerly worked. Sufficient 
gold was not obtained to induce the Malays to open other 
pits. At last we reached Bukit Paku, and at the bottom of 
the hill found a large pit dug in the swamp from which a bluish 
clay stone is extracted. This stone is called batu paku and 
is used all over Naning for whetstones. In the reddish clay 
near the surface there were some small stones, highly ferru¬ 
ginous. 
1 returned the same day to Malacca, and had more leisure 
and light to notice the mineral character of the country bet¬ 
ween it and Alor Gaja, than on the first clay of my excursion. 
Many of the eminences (which are broad si ghtly elevated 
tracts more than hills) seem to be surrounded by the narrow 
winding swamps. The hill of Rumbiah has protruding iron 
masked rocks, and at one place, which the road crosses, much 
quartz in angular fragments. The hill on the slope of which the 
Kampong ofKayu Rumput lhs, has large blocks, some of 
white quartz, and other with' quartz and ironmasked rock 
intermixed. 
A fine rice plain succeeds and we cross Bukit Bangsal 
which has also ironmasked blocks and gravel. 
The low eminence ot Malim shews many laterite rocks. 
The Malays were raising sectile laterite from some deep pits 
here to serve as pedestals for house posts. 
