MINERAL PRODUCTIONS OF THE TENASSERIM PROVINCES, 73$ 
deposits be brought to light; unless some more adventurous 
spirit of enterprise than now prevails in the commercial world, be¬ 
comes manifest to reap the substantial benefits which these pro¬ 
vinces are capable of bestowing. 
Analysis of the gold procured 
from the head waters of the 
Tavoy river gave per state 
ment of the assay master of 
the Calcutta mint. 
grs. 
Gold or 87.895 pr. 
Silver „ 9.241 
base metals 2.864 
cent 
do. 
do,* 
100,000 
-/ 
Equal in the seala of importance with any of the foregoing, and 
with the exception of the metal tin, surpassing in its abundance all 
other products of the provinces, is the mineral— 
Coal. 
The tract of country enclosed within the lltli to the 14th degree 
of north latitude, may be said to form a vast coal bed, or series 
of coal measures, and in that space, principally in localities through 
which the great Tenasserim river and its branches flow, coal has 
been discovered in six different out-crops, widely separated from 
each other and as widely varying in the quality of their deposits. 
Of the whole of the foregoing blit one single locality, situated on 
the great Tenasserim river in lat. 12° 21” N. and long, about 
99” E, and distant from the port of Mergui by water about 
sixty miles, has hitherto claimed the attention of Government in 
the extraction of the coal. The quality of the material thus obtained 
will be evident from the following analysis of it made by order of 
the Bengal coal committee in 1840. 
spec. grav. 1. 27 
Water. 9 
Yolatile matter.46 
Carbon......40 
Ash. ^ 
100 
Notwithstanding this favorable exposition of its quality and 
adoptation to steam purposes, and the cheap rate at which it could 
be laid down for the steamers at Mergui, viz 5| annas per maund, 
the undertaking v r as abandoned shortly after its commencement, 
on the discovery that the coal possessed the dangerous property 
of spontaneous combustion, to which cause the loss of the Steamer 
i( Madagascar” on the coast of China, which had taken her supply 
of fuel from the coal of the Mergui mine, was attributed. 
The experiment of "working this mine, attended with an expense 
to government of some 45 to 50,000 rupees, appears in the lesult 
* Ox* 3| c. grs, worse than standard. 
