104 SKETCH OF THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY 
sought for, and in proportion to the enterprize and labour which are 
devoted to the search, we may consider the entire zone as a great 
magazine of tin. It is, in fact, incomparably the greatest on the globe. 
Johore might have seemed to offer an exception to the apparent uni¬ 
versality of the distribution of oxide of tin, if its geological affinity to 
Banka, the fact of tin having from time to time been found in several 
places, and for many years having been got in considerable quantity in 
Malacca, had not afforded the strongest presumption that its want of 
inhabitants and government was the cause of its nonproductiveness. 
The last eighteen months however have placed the matter beyond 
doubt, and given a striking proof at once of the metallic fertility of 
the country, and of the little attention which this branch of industry 
has hitherto met with in the British Settlements. In 1845 Malacca, 
an integral part of Johore and having the same geology as the rest of 
the country, produced about 450 piculs of tin. In the succeeding 
year the interest of some Chinese of capital was excited in the subject, 
and more vigorous and extensive operations were commenced. In 
1846 above 1,400 peculs were procured, the greater part from 39 pits 
in one valley. In 1847 the produce appears to have been from 4,000 
to 5,000 piculs. In 1848 it will probably rise to between 5,000 and 
7,000 piculs, for the government tithe upon it for the year has been 
rented for the unprecedented sum of 8,190 Sp, Dollars, the revenue 
from this source having been in the two preceding years % 1,020 
and % 3,345 respectively. 
Nothing can better shew how entirely the metalliferous character 
of the Peninsula has escaped the mining enterprize of private Euro¬ 
pean capitalists than the fact that in the island of Singapore, where 
we have a line of junction between plutonic and sedimentary rocks 
of above twenty miles in length, where tin was found in former years 
in at least two localities, and where the same iron ore with which it 
is associated in Banka abounds both in the igneous and aqueous rocks, 
no interest has ever been awakened in the subject. 
<1 
In the Peninsula and Banka, tin has hitherto been procured by 
digging pits in alluvial tracts where the ore is found, generally inter¬ 
mixed with quartz particles, in a state resembling sand varying from 
