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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



veins charged with tin, intersecting the granitic masses. The 

 washings of these veins, mingled with alluvial sands, have been 

 carried down by the rivers and spread by them through the floods 

 of the ages over the bottom-lands of the country. Taking advan- 

 tage of this work of Nature, man, instead of quarrying in the 

 mountain for the vein and having to blast the incasing rock, has 

 only to look in the flats for the mineral. 



The mines were worked by the Chinese, no European operator 

 having been as yet established in the country. It did not take 

 long to witness the extremely simple process by which the ore is 



Fig. 1— Sungei Lembing Tin-Mining District, Peninsula or Malacca.* 



extracted. After clearing off the ground, the surface and subsoil 

 are removed for one, two, or three metres, till the mineral, tin- 

 bearing bed is exposed ; this is sometimes several metres thick. 

 The mineral is carried in baskets, as we have seen, up the cocoa- 

 trunk ladders, to a wooden flume which is washed by a current of 

 water. As the mine grows deeper this labor, with the rudiment- 

 ary means at the disposition of the Chinese, is made extremely 

 difficult by the inflow of water. The washing of the tin-bearing 

 earth is done by coolies, who witli a rake remove the stones and 



* The illustrations in this article are views in the lands of the British "Pahang Cor- 

 poration," which has been formed to work the mines in Pahang, eastern Malacca. 



