PEGU MOUNTAINS

Burmese Bago Yoma mountain range of south-central Myanmar (Burma), extending 270 miles (435 km) northsouth between the Irrawaddy and Sittang rivers and ending in a ridge at Yangn (Rangoon). The range averages about 2,000 feet (600 m) in elevation, reaching its highest point in the north at Popa Hill (4,984 feet ), an extinct volcano . Teak and other tropical hardwoods are extracted in the eastern Pegu Mountains. Ethnic minorities (hill tribes) practice shifting cultivation in these mountains, growing upland rice, corn (maize), and millet. During the 1960s the Pegu Mountains were a refuge for communist insurgents.