Ceylon. Such is our present impression. Dr. Gygax, a Swiss by birth and a
man who had travelled much, was well qualified for the task he
undertook, in every way, except by an idiomatic knowledge of the
English language. Some passages in his report are very amusing, but
they are easily enough understood, even where he uses the initials S.
O. to indicate a point of the compass. We read South East—his mother
German leading the geologist to give the initial letter of Osl. We
can even fully understand and sympathize with his feelings when he
descants on the folly and apathy of the natives of Saffragam in wasting
nine shillings' worth of labour and charcoal to produce two shillings'
worth of iron; their process being primitive and barbarous to such an
extent, that even the experience of a thousand years had not " teached
" them to use iron tools. He writes:—
"I
must beg leave to accept my apologies for having entered on a field
which does not properly belong to my researches, but it is a pitiful
sight to see the poor helpless people with all the riches of nature
around them," [but turning those riches to no profitable account]. We
have supplied the ellipsis, and we hope the day may come when the "
pitiful sight" will give way to a scene of well-directed and profitable
industry; when the echoes of the Peak should resound to the snortings
of the Iron horse careering over sleepers, made from the iron which
extends in rich abundance from Balangoda far down into the wilds of
Bintenne.
Dr.
Gygax, in the first of his three reports, begins with the beginning and
describes the isolated elevation on which Colombo stands, conspicuous
over the flat country and paddy-fields which stretch away around it.
This elevation has on its surface from 20 to 40 feet of cabook or
laterite (so useful as a substitute for bricks, and as the basis of a
rich soil). Below the cabook appears a mass of hornblende rock, with
masses and dykes of yellow granite. Differing from Gardner and
others, who consider cabook as a mere result of decomposing gneiss, Dr.
Gygax looked on it as an " ancient alluvial deposit, raised and changed
in its physical characters by the rising up of the yellow granite." The
" hornblende rock," he continues, " is in some places rich in minerals,
as common quartz, rock-crystal, amethyste, fluorspar, calcspar,
apatite, feldspar, garnet, prehnite, chiastolith, iron pyrites,
magnetic iron pyrite, molyth-dena, &c. The yellow granite contains
about the same minerals, but singularly changed in their colour and
crystallization." Much the same characteristics were found as far up as
Awissawella, where iron ore occurs in detached masses or embedded in
the yellow granite, but increasing towards Ratnapura. Dr Gygax, as a
general rule, would pay little attention to minerals found in the
yellow granite, which he considers "an analagon of basalt,"
representing in the plu-tonic formations of Ceylon what basalt is in
volcanic formations. Near Balangoda Dr. Gygax first fell in with rose
quartz, but curiously enough it suggested no idea to his mind of the
presence of gold. " The road," he says, " goes over a red decomposed
granite with large quantities of quartz. Some large pieces of quartz on
the road are beautifully rose-coloured. Some pieces have been brought
down to Colombo, cut and sold by the Moormen as ring-stones. Large
plates of it could perhaps be obtained, and might be turned to some use
as small tables." He is of opinion that the red granite, where it
occurs, receives its colour from "small strata filled up with manganese
and peroxide of iron."
Describing
the great variety of minerals found in a stratum of grey granite, he
thus notices iron pyrites : " in oblong Hat knells along the
stratification of the rock, a few crystallized in very complicated
forms; pale nearly silver-white, different from that of the dolomite,
which renders an analysis of both desirable." In this same formation
Dr. Gygax saw "an innumerable quantity of rubies of a fine rose colour,
but all splittcd and falling to powder." lie is of opinion, however, that lower down in the rock, rich and profitable ruby
mines might be found, like that mentioned by Sir A. Burnes as existing
near Khonduz. He has never, he says, set any value on the secondary
deposits of
