over the mouth of the cave, and crowd the banks of the brook. Above, the precipice has a slight declination, and a rough, uneven surface, so that naked feet and hands with care may ascend it to a narrow ledge, and this ledge, though in some places less than the width of a man's foot, serves as a path to a natural parapet, in which one armed man might conceal himself and defend the ascent against an army. By a path with like various alternations the margin of the summit is reached, where a full view of the region below is spread out before the eye of the spectator. At the base of the western mountains the Salwen is seen plunging down its mighty waters to Martaban and Maulmain, where they are joined by the Gyaing, that bounds the prospect on the south and east ; while little islands of forest trees, each concealing beneath its shade a quiet hamlet, dimple the whole plain; and babbling brooks thread their wandering ways like veins of silver, or mark the courses of their hidden waters by the emerald hue of their banks. Turning from the prospect below, and climbing upward on men's shoulders, a gap in the rocks above is reached; then descending a few yards, the spectator is astonished to find himself on the edge of a large basin, like the crater of an extinct volcano. Around, and beyond, on the opposite side of the gulph, for miles in extent, dark precipitous crags, of every imaginable and unimaginable form, fling down their tall shadows a thousand feet about the place of entrance, enclosing an area of several square miles. "It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile Of every gentle wind whose breath can teach Down a steep descent of one or two hundred feet, an uneven plain is reached, covered with a luxuriant forest. This impregnable natural fortress has been a place of refuge for the Karens during many generations. While the Burmans, the Siamese, and Talaings, were contending in the plains below, the Karens, in this eyrie home, peeped out on the belligerents from behind their battlements in perfect security; for besides the place where I ascended, there is only one other possible place of ascent, and that still more difficult, so that half a dozen men could always defend it from any force that could be brought against it. The Karen guide said that none but Karens had ever before ascended the precipice, or en tered within its precincts. Indeed, that there was here one of the largest, strongest, and most remarkable castles that nature ever built, had never been imagined. Its chief weakness is the lack of water, yet it is far from being wholly destitute of that. About a mile from the entrance, a gradual ascent of an hundred feet leads to the summit of a precipitous glen, and on descending it about two hundred feet by natural steps in the craggy rocks, a small stream of water is seen gushing from the face of a precipice, which the guide said he thought resembled the rock struck by Moses in the Arabian desert. This affords a never failing supply of several quarts, and sometimes gallons of pure water, every hour in the year; but as this is the only spring as yet discovered, the place does not afford a sufficient supply for a large body of people. The arts of civilization could, however, overcome this difficulty by sinking a shaft to the subterranean brook that flows out beneath. In the days of the Burman emperor Alompra, before his successes in these provinces, a large number of Karens were besieged here by the Siamese, and tradition says that nearly the whole perished for the want of food and water. From the sufferings of that period, or a previous one, the place has ac quired the name of "DONGYANG"-the Weeping City. The whole range is named " Zwa-kabin," the Mooring of the Ship, from a tradition, which says that in ancient times the whole world was covered with water, and the only survivors of the human race were in a ship which floated hither, where the highest point of the range, being above water, the ship was moored to it. Since the reign of Alompra, the Karens seem to have made special efforts to plant fruit trees in this their last refuge from an invading army. Jack, and mango trees abound, and pine apples are numerous. The opposite-leafed mango which bears a fruit like a plum, the Heritiera, whose agreeable sub-acid fruit is borne in bunches like large grapes, and the edible Zalacca, with its bunches ofred echinated fruit, are also com mon, and a few trees are seen of the Indian Sandoricum, which bears a fruit valued by the natives, as large as an apple, but internally more like a mangosteen, and is often called by Europeans the wild mangosteen. The Karens have also been mindful to make provision for their betel, an article regarded by them almost as essential as food. There are two species of areca-nuts, and the piper betel-vine is scattered every where. They have also provided materials for mats, having planted in large quantities a species of Pandanus, screw-pine, the leaves of which are used to make mats throughout the Provinces. Nor is the place destitute of large timber trees, apparently indigenous. There are one or two species of acacia, Boodh's cocoanut, and two species of Wood-oil trees, one of which produces the oil from which torches are manufactured. Ratans are indigenous and abundant, and there are numerous little forests of the gigantic bamboo, the largest species known, and peculiar to this country. Here too is game for the sportsman, and meat for the hunter. In short, Dongyang is the most delightful place for an anchorite that ever was formed, and one can scarcely visit it without wishing himself a dervise or a monk. During the rains the whole plain is under water, excepting a small sprinkling of islands on which the villages are located; and boats can sail from Maulmain to the very foot of the precipice; and as if formed by some genii-architect for the purpose of seclusion and defence, this castellated pile, though forming to the eye in the distance a part of a continuous range, is really for all purposes of access quite isolated. On the north, as adverted to above, it is connected by a low ledge to the north-west portion of the range, and on the south and east a long narrow ravine is interposed between it and the southern section, through which a path is trocden by the Karens to the villages beyond the mountains. Its form appears to the eye nearly like that of an equilateral triangle, with its sides about two miles long; and on a chart that was made by Lieut. Nalloth, of the Childers, that survey ed this part of the country seven or eight years ago, the base of this site is represented as of a triangular shape, with sides of from two to three miles long, but the whole space inclosed, is there depicted as a vast succession of limestone peaks. SIAM HILL. There is some magnificent scenery in the Southern Provinces. Tavoy stands in an alluvial bottom, and is hidden in the distance by the tall palms, and glossy-green jacks, and yellowflowered cassias, and twenty other flowering trees unknown to song, which overshadow its humble dwellings; but Siam Hill is a conspicuous knoll, a hundred feet high, six miles long by half a mile wide, in the paddy fields half a mile east of Tavoy. Here, after emerging from the shrubbery that obstructs the view, there suddenly opens out before the spectator a prospect of indescribable beauty, "like a sleeping child too blessed to wake." At his feet lie spread out the level paddy fields, divided into numerous one-acre lots by little mounds raised around them to retain the water, so as to suggest a gigantic chess board. On the south a silver stream, fringed with the dark foliage of wild fig trees, and the thick straggling bushes of a species of Hibiscus, covered with large yellow and red flowers, is seen pursuing its tortuous course beneath the shadows of Mount Burney, which rises twelve hundred feet above its southern bank. On the east," hills peep o'er hills," like the seats of a vast amphitheatre, bounded by Ox's Hump, rising in a most picturesque outline four thousand feet above the plains. Yonder, at the distance of fourteen miles, is seen a foaming cascade making a fearful leap from a gorge half way up the highest mountains. Green forests are diversified with white lichen-covered precipices, while here and there a whitened pagoda lifts its conical head above the summit of an isolated hill, or the smoke of a solitary hamlet is seen curling up in the midst of Wood-oil tree forests or Liquid meber groves. "The Palm-tree waveth high, And fair the Betel springs; And, to the Indian maid. The Bulbul sweetly sings. Wi' its tassels on the lea, GEOLOGY. Crawford collected, and Buckland examined, a series of geological specimens of every rock seen from the delta of the Irrawaddy to the mountains north of Sagaing; from which it appears that the Tertiary formation rests upon the transition, or mountain limestone, and the intervening coal measures of Europe are wanting. So far as the geology of these provinces is known, there is an exact correspondence on this point. We have Alluvium, Diluvium, Tertiary, transition or mountain limestone, the Grauwacke formation, and Primitive, as in Burmah; and to complete the correspondence, we have a calcarious sandstone, which appears to be of the same age with a sandstone, that Prof. Buckland referred with doubt to the New Red Sandstone formation. UNSTRATIFIED ROCKS. GRANITE. We step on shore at Amherst on granite, we meet with it on Double Island, Callagouk, and the islands opposite Yay, and from the mouth of Yay river to Tavoy Point the coast is one unbroken chain of granite. Beyond the Point this rock again appears, but is lost on the main land below the mouth of Pai river. There is also granite on King's Island, and probably on some of the islands north of it. This granite wherever I have observed it, is composed of quartz, mica, and felspar, the latter usually white; and sometimes in crystals an inch long, constituting porphyritic granite. On traversing the provinces in the latitude of Tavoy, another granite range is seen about fifteen miles east of Tavoy river, which rises in some places two or three thousand feet high, and which I have traced in a S. S. E. direction to the vicinity of Mergui, and to the N. N. W. beyond the Burman villages, where granite appears crossing the river. This, however, is rarely, if ever, porphyritic, but the crystals of mica are often of considerable size, and the felspar frequently soft, B |