625 
NOTICES OF THE GEOLOGY OF THE EAST COAST 
OF JOHORE. 
In the Journal of my voyage along this coast* I have mentioned 
that Tanjong Pungai is the first point to the north after passing 
Point Romania. It is the seaward extremity of a low hill range 
worn by the waves into a sharp ridge, and presenting on the side 
at present exposed to the action of the sea, a cliff rising over a 
beach which is covered with rounded blocks, mostly with smooth 
blackish brown surfaces. The greater number have a strongly shin¬ 
ing lustre, between metallic and pitchy, and these consist, in large 
measure, of hydrous peroxide of iron, at least at and near the surface. 
Having in almost every development of lateritic and other ferrugin¬ 
ous rocks which I had previously examined on the southern and 
western coasts of the Peninsula, detected some traces of their having 
previously existed as common sedimentary strata, and from this, 
combined with the mode in which the plutonic rocks occur, ascer¬ 
tained, beyond all doubt, the real origin of laterite,'}' and deduced a 
general hypothesis for the Peninsula, J it was satisfactory to find the 
first point on the eastern coast offering a test of a new and strikingly 
beautiful character. At first sight nothing presented itself but the Cy¬ 
clopean pavement of black shining blocks of ore. On walking across 
these, or rather leaping and climbing from block to block, and careful¬ 
ly examining each of them, I soon found some which, instead of con¬ 
sisting altogether of the black ore, had foliated talcose patches, well 
baked and running into it; and, what removed all doubt, the fresh 
rock of the beach on which the blocks rest, was, in several places, ex¬ 
posed between them. It consists of a talcose sandstone, more or less 
distinctly foliated as the minute talc plates are abundant or the reverse, 
and running N.W. y W„ , S.E. y E. in layers nearly vertical but 
with a slight N. Easterly dip. In some places it is so little affect¬ 
ed by the iron as scarcely to be distinguished from a common soft 
unaltered sandstone. At other places it is minutely reticulated with 
veins of iron ore, and it is also frequently entirely converted into 
quartz. In some places the talc is seen preserved in films in the 
middle of the quartz, and the quartz in folise alternating with unal¬ 
tered folice, in the same way as at Tanjong Tuan (Cape Rachado) on 
* Preceding article p. 621. 
f See Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for July 1847 p. 679. 
t See a general explanation of this in a Sketch of the Physical Geography 
and Geology of the Malay Peninsula , ante p. 96-100. 
