solved except the sulphur; on the addition of ammonia
a quantity of ferric-hydrate was thrown down, the
liquid above the precipitate assuming a strong blue
colour, and therefore showing the presence of copper
in considerable quantities. I told Mr. Beveridge of my
discovery, and said he had better go back at once to the
spot where that specimen had been found. I would
come up after him.
VII.
Oct. 7th.— Trip to Tumboyonlcon.—Left Kinoram,
and, passing Muruns, mounted a hill some 1500 feet
high, being a fort hill of Tumboyonkon. We slept
in a paddy hut on the top. The ravine where the
copper pyrites has been found is on the other side of
the ridge on whose side we now are. There is no
Dusun name to the place where Mr. Beveridge is, so
I will call it Ravine Palupalu, which in Dusun means
little torrent.
From our hut on the hill the next day we took a
direction by the compass S.S.W., and, cutting our way
through the thick jungle, we toiled up the saddle of a
ridge trending north from Tumboyonkon. Arrived
on the top, we stood at a height of about 3000 feet, and
at once commenced our descent down the almost precipitous
face of a cliff into the ravine Palupalu. But
for the trees, travel in such a country would be impossible,
as the slopes are so extremely steep. The
danger of falling stones from above was very g re a t; one
of my men had his foot badly bruised by a big piece of
ro ck ; he, however, managed to drag himself into camp,
although he did not walk for a week afterwards.'
Before noon we arrived at Mr. Beveridge’s camp, the
distance from Kinoram being about nine miles. Every
one was away at work, and as we descended we had
heard shots fired several times. Mr. Beveridge was at
work down stream, so I went down about three-
quarters of a mile to him, at a spot where an immense
landslip of thousands of tons of rock had fallen into
■ the torrent. The road was of the worst description. I
can only say that in places where we were coming down
waterfalls, our lives hung, not exactly “ on a thread,”
but on a twig the size of one’s finger, or on the hold of
a root or a tuft of grass. Had any of these frail
supports given way, not only broken heads but broken
necks would certainly have been the result. The rock
consists of a green limestone matrix, veined through
and through with calc-spar, and containing much
iron pyrites, which latter, on testing, gives a slight
copper reaction. This is quite distinct from the quartz
containing copper pyrites, of which only one small
specimen has up to the present been found. We can
therefore report considerable quantities of limestone
containing iron pyrites and a very small percentage of
copper.
[Assays for gold and silver have not yet been made.]
The jungle about here is quite destitute of any of the
essentials for making the usual jungle huts. Bamboo,
any kind of large leaves, bark of trees, all are absent;
the only things to be got are rattans and vegetable
resin or dammar. -Even the timber is small, moss-
covered, and of little use.
Oct. 9th.—I have had a very bad leg for some days
past, which is getting worse every ■ day, which I am
afraid will oblige me to go down to Kudat. I had to
sendtoBongon and Kinoram to fetch rice to-day,’and to