By THAN HTUN (GEOSCIENCE MYANMAR)
Episode: 7 SIR Henry Hubert Hayden (25th July 1869 - 28th August 1923) was a geologist who worked in the Geological Survey of India and a mountaineer. Hayden was born in Derry and studied at Hilton College in South Africa and then geology at Trinity College, Dublin. He joined the Geological Survey of India on 3rd January 1895. He studied stratigraphy in various parts of the Himalayas, especially the Spiti area, during the course of his work which included being a geologist in the Tirah Expedition Force, 1897-98 and with the Tibet Frontier Commission of 1903 along with Francis Younghusband. H. H. Hayden succeeded Holland as Director in December 1910. Hayden became well-known for his interest in mountain climbing and exploration of unknown regions, and his work on Himalayan, Tibetan, and Afghan geology. Hayden followed Holland’s policy of systematic mapping for mineral development and detailed his officers to various parts of India and Burma for the purpose.
World War I
During the first World War (1914-18), the Survey was disorganised by the loss of several officers who joined the Forces, but the situation was retrieved by recalling the officers later for investigation of minerals required for war purposes, especially tin, and tungsten. Coggin Brown and H. H. Heron made extensive tours in the Tavoy district in Burma and the specimens were chemically analysed in the field by Mahadeo Ram. A useful account of tin-tungsten mineralisation together with a description of the geology and ore deposits of that district was given in a joint contribution by Brown and Heron.
After keeping the vacancies in abeyance for some time, two of them were filled by the promotion of Sethu Rama Rau and Vinayak Rao to the senior grade in September 1919. The expansion of the Geological Survey of India sanctioned earlier was implemented in 1920, and in the same year H. Crookshank, C. T. Teychenne, and E. L. G. Clegg were appointed. During his Directorship, Hayden succeeded in effecting an increase in the cadre of the Geological Survey of India and an improvement in the emoluments of the various posts. He retired from the Survey in June 1921, after nominating E. H. Pascoe as his successor as Director. Hayden was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1915 and died in 1923 from a rock fall while climbing on the Finsteraarhorn in Switzerland.
Burma
During Hayden’s Directorship, G. de P. Cotter was able to make an important contribution to the history of Tertiary sedimentation in Burma and to prove that a typical geosynclinal lay between the Shan Plateau and the Arakan Yoma in Tertiary times and that fluviatile sediments and deltaic deposits led to retreat the sea while at the same time, the area of subsidence kept shifting to the south. Cotter will be remembered for his work on the geotectonics of the Tertiary Irrawaddy basin and the Pegu and Eocene succession in the Minbu district, where he laid the foundation for all subsequent stratigraphical work on the rocks of the main Tertiary basin of Burma. Sethu Rama Rau worked indefatigably for several years to unravel the geology of the Mergui district in Burma, and an account of this was published in 1930 after his death in 1929 while he was still in active service. The geology of the northern portion of the Mergui Archipelago was described by Coggin Brown and A. M. Heron in 1923.
Between 1905-15 Pascoe was engaged in a survey of the oil resources of Burma, Assam, Punjab, and the North-West Frontier Province. In 1913 he was sent to the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Coast, and West Persia and accompanied the Slade Oilfields Commission in the Persian Gulf in 1913-14. Pascoe soon became a recognised authority on the geology of petroleum. His research on the petroleum occurrences of Burma, India, and Mesopotamia was the subject of four comprehensive memoirs, in which he discussed the genesis and mode of occurrence of oil along with a detailed description of the geology of the oilfields and their structural features, and in twelve other papers in the Records of the Geological Survey of India. In one of the latter Pascoe directs attention to a structural feature of fundamental importance to the study of the oilfield in which the folding is asymmetrical, and also to the estimation of the value and prospects of an oilfield.
Tungsten and Tin
H. H. Hayden reported for the year 1918 in Vol. L (1919) including “the Distribution of Ores of Tungsten and Tin in Burma” by Brown and Heron. The significant points of their report could be extracted as follows:-
Since the commencement of the war, the demand for tungsten has resulted in the increased exploitation of the wolfram deposits of Burma, and in extended prospecting for new occurrences of the same mineral. Cassiterite is intimately associated with wolfram and as a consequence has shared in the same activity. We propose to limit our observations strictly to geological and mineralogical data and to give a general idea of the situations, salient characteristics, and mineral associations of the wolfram and cassiterite loads. We hope that these notes will prove helpful to the mining industry and at the same time be useful to geologists who need facts on which to base their speculations on the origin of these ores.
The descriptions represent the state of our knowledge today and are given without prejudice the interpretation of new phenomena, which will doubtless come to light as deeper mining progresses.
Yamethin District
The wolfram-bearing area is situated close to the summit of the peak Byingyi 6,254 feet above the sea, on the borders of the Yamethin district and Loi Long State, Southern Shan States. This occurrence is the most recently discovered in Burma, and, so far as prospecting up to date goes, appears to be of a small extent, though the loads are numerous and carry good values.
Bawlake State, Karenni
This well-known mine, Mawchi, is situated in the southern portion of Bawlake State, Karenni. It has not been examined by either of us. There are at least ten important lodes varying from 2.5 to five feet in thickness. The general strike is N.N.E.-W.S.W. and the dip is either vertical or at high angles to the W.N.W. All the loads are in granite and the capping of the granite hill in which they occur is composed of limestone. The vein stuff in all the lodes is drusy and carries cassiterite, wolfram, arsenical pyrites, pyrite, chalcopyrite, and black tourmaline. Cassiterite and wolfram occur as intimate mixtures and also separately. The country enclosed by the lease is deeply dissected and varies from 1,400 to 4,000 feet above sea level. The lodes are worked by modern methods and successful exploration has been carried out to a greater depth than on any other deposit of the same kind in Burma. The concentrates ore is recovered in an up-to-date mill.
Amherst (Moulmein) District
Specimens of wolfram have been procured from the neighbourhood of Ye, near the boundary between the Tavoy and Amherst districts, and it is also said to occur in the Dorna range, on the Siam frontier, but no exploration has taken place.
Alluvial cassiterite has been worked in Belugyun Island and the Seludaung Range, which divides the coastal plain of the Amherst district from the valley of the Winyaw, a tributary of the Atran. The deposits are on the lower slopes of the ridges of argillaceous quartzite and grey slate, which form the backbone of the island. These rocks are penetrated by veins of (a) coarse pegmatite consisting of quartz, feldspar, and tourmaline, with a little muscovite and garnet, (b) fine-grained and foliated tourmaline-granite and (c) drusy white quartz.
Tavoy District
The Tavoy district has an area of 5,308 square miles. The official lists of the year 1917 show that mixed concentrates were exported from 132 concessions.
The Coastal Range: The greater part of the Tavoyan coastline is formed by a high granite ridge that rises from the sea a few miles to the north of Ye in the Amherst district. The wolfram mine of Medaw Kanbay is situated on its eastern flank a few miles north of the point where it is breached by the narrow tideway known as the Heinze Basin. Medaw Kanbay yields a concentrate particularly free from the tin. Granite occurs in the high range to the westward.
The Kanbauk Mines: The Kanbauk (Burma) Wolfram Mines, Limited, lie in a narrow valley in the Mergui sediments filled in with thick alluvial and detrital deposits. The valley, which leads into the main channel of the Heinze Basin from the south, is surrounded on the east, south and west by high granite walls. At Kanbauk proper, the main lode series strikes approximately E. and W. and dips about 60° to the south. The concentrates from Kanbauk contain a high proportion of cassiterite, while sulphides of iron, copper, lead, and zinc occur in the deeper parts of the lodes; pyrite is very common. Native bismuth has also been found in situ. Placer deposits of cassiterite occur on the flatter ground near the shores of the Heinze Basin. The Kechaung and Pachaung mines produce a clean wolfram concentrate.
The Frontier Range: The range which divides the Tavoy district from Siam and which rises to heights of over 3,000 feet in the latitude of the Heinze Basin consists of intrusive granite of ordinary type. Zimba mine has several lodes in granite near its contact with sedimentary rocks of the Mergui Series.
The Bolintaung Baukchaung Range: This is a band of intrusive granite from one to three miles wide which runs in a north-westerly direction for seven miles from the Bolintaung peak before it joins the main Sinbo-Sinma massif. The Kalonta mine lies on a small granite boss of its own, two miles up the Talaingya chaung from the main intrusion. The concentrate carries a little more tin than the Byaukchaung materials and it is interesting to note that bismuthinite has been found in situ.
Kyaukanya Peneichaung Ridge: About halfway between Kyaukanya and Peneichaung the well-known Kadando lode crosses the Maungmeshaung valley close to a small granite exposure in the stream itself. It contains wolfram with large quantities of pyrite, chalcopyrite, and pyrrhotite, and yields beautiful specimens showing wolfram cut by the two latter sulphides. The Pagaye mine has a large number of wolfram-bearing pegmatites and associated quartz lodes strike approximately N.35°W.-S.35°E. with a vertical dip, in argillites of the Mergui series.
Hermyingyi mine: The Hermyingyi mine is situated on the southernmost of the Central Range. In 1917 Hermyingyi pro duced 1051 tons of ore and in 1916 that was 765 tons of concentrates. The actual geological conditions, rock compositions, and mineral associations of Hermyingyi are much the same as those of the other larger mines in a similar situation. We regard the Hermyingyi occurrence as a small granite boss, which has not suffered extensive denudation and is probably connected underground with the main intrusion to the south.
The Central Range: This intrusion commences as a rounded mass of granite, three-quarters of a mile in diameter about a mile to the S.S.E. of Hermyingyi. The intrusion forms the high ridge visible from Tavoy and contains the peaks Pya Taung (3,575 feet), Khat Taung (3,545 feet), Nwalabo (5,063 feet) and the high massif of Southern Paungdaw, which has one peak of 5,133 feet above sea level. Both sides of the intrusion are steep. The Wagon mine is situated South of the Taungpila group. The Thingandon concession contains a number of lodes and patches of detrital ground. The workings on the lode main granite are known as the Heinda Mines.
Mergui District
The chief wolfram deposits of the Mergui district are near Palauk in the north, and at Tagu near the Great Tenasserim River about 70 miles from its mouth. The Palauk concessions lie partly in granite and partly on Mergui sediments, but the lodes worked are all in the latter. The significant concessions are Spider Island, Palauk, Tagu, Wunna, Mawton, Yengan, Maliwun, Karathuri, Thabawleik, Lenya, and Pakchan rivers. The granite is identical to that of Tavoy. Alluvial cassiterite workings are widely distributed over the Mergui district, mostly held under “Native Method” leases. Perhaps the bestknown centres are Karathuri on the coast and Thabawleik on the Little Tenasserim river, and there are numerous blocks on the Lenya and Pakchan rivers.
References: J. Coggin Brown & A. M. Heron, 1919: Distribution of Ores of Tungsten and Tin in Burma”, Record of Geological Survey of India, Vol. L.
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