Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 2.djvu/76

Rh and in consequence of the account he gave, the Governor-General of the province ordered it to be brought down to Bahia. A stout waggon or truck was conveyed to the spot; and after three days' labour, the mass was lifted upon it, and by the force of forty pair of oxen was removed about a hundred yards, as far as the bed of a neighbouring rivulet, but there relinquished. And there it was found again by Mr. Mornay in January 1811; but the river was at that time quite dry, and frequently is so.

The mass is about seven feet in length, its breadth four, with a thickness of about two feet. Its form is very irregular, with various cavities, especially on the under side; but the author estimated its capacity on the spot to be full twenty-eight cubic feet; and hence the weight is conceived to be about 14,000 pounds.

Its colour is that of a dark chesnut, rather glossy on the top and sides; on its underside it is covered with a crust of oxide in thick flakes.

In some of the smaller cavities were imbedded quartz pebbles, too large to be taken out without being broken. The block in situ appeared to be highly magnetic, having its north pole lying in a N.E. direction; but the fragments separated from it were not found by Mr. Mornay to possess magnetic poles. In detaching these fragments he experienced very considerable difficulty, although aided in some measure by a crystalline texture, which gave direction to the fractures, and was visible in all the specimens he could obtain with a sledge-hammer carried for that purpose.

Having dissolved a small portion of this iron, and examined the solution by such re-agents as he happened to possess, he thought that he discovered the presence of nickel, but very doubtfully, and in very small quantity. He also made a similar examination of some fragments from a bed of oxide found where the mass had been originally discovered, and with a similar result as to an apparent trace of nickel.

The surface of the country was at this spot covered with a coarse gravel to the depth of ten or fifteen feet above the level of the rock of granite, which in general prevails.

The latitude of the place was estimated by Mr. Mornay to be 10° 20′ S., and the longitude about 33′ 15″ W. of Bahia.

To the southward were found prismatic fragments, and balls from a few inches to nearly three feet in diameter, supposed to be basalt; and beyond these, at the distance of forty leagues, a range of sandstone hills, from which there extends a sandy plain with occasional elevations, all about twenty fathoms in height, as if they were the remains of some more elevated plain, of which certain parts were more durable from a cement of iron that appears in the beds of most of them. A peculiar aspect is also given to this plain by other smaller hillocks, which are very numerous, and are the nests of the white ants: these are conical in their outline, but almost invariably elliptic at their base.

The soil of the valleys is observed to be impregnated with