S04 On the Gold of the Coast of Guinea. 



time, and by their detritus the gneiss which forms broad bed? 

 on their lower flanks. In the rainy seasons, torrents descend 

 from these mountains, carrying with them stones and gravel, 

 which being torn from the higher rocks present the same ele- 

 ments. These mountains are filled with mines of gold and iron. 

 The first of these metals seems to have been sought for by Ne^ 

 groes from time immemorial : as to the latter, they do not know 

 how to use it, and it is not the interest of Europeans to teach 

 them: gold is found in them in a primitive state in narrow 

 stripes, and it is found as usual between two layers of a granite^ 

 finer, more compact, and more highly coloured than the rest 

 of the rock : the Negroes have not yet thought of working the 

 latter, but it is probable that avarice will compel them to do so, 

 uow that the slave-trade is abolished, and that the excess of po- 

 pulation is forced to provide for itself: for, notwithstanding the 

 enormous exportation of human beings being stopped, they have 

 still their helots : these are Negroes who are slaves either from 

 being taken in war, from being insolvent debtors, from having 

 lost their personal liberty at play, or from being sold by their 

 parents*. As to malefactors and rebels, they are uniformly sold 

 to Europeans. 



The Negroes, therefore, work only the auriferous sands and the 

 gneiss or schistous beds and banks of granite, which constitute 

 the base of their mountains, and which being friable are easily 

 dug into. If they attack the sides, they dig a fosse in the first 

 place from twenty to thirty feet in depth, on an indeterminate 

 breadth, until they begin to be alarmed for the crumbling down 

 of the earth ; the gold, as being heavier than quartz, scliorl, and 

 feldspar, the constituent principles of primitive granite, has been 

 deeper seated in their common fall : they begin to find it, how- 

 ever, at the depth of three feet : they had no idea of using props 

 of wood until they were taught by Europeans, and nothing in 

 the world could induce them to make a regular pit, or bury 

 themselves under ground. In proportion as they advance in the 

 work, the lumps are put into pouches fixed round their waists, 

 and some miners get very rich, as they only pay the king a fixed 

 and daily allowance. In 1790, the king of Assianti had six 

 hundred slaves at work for him, each of whom engaged to sup* 

 ply him with half an ounce pc?- diem, and some of them had so 

 rauch good sense as to form a sort of company, and throw into a 

 joint stock the fruits of their labours. The earth thrown up 

 during the digging is laid in heaps on the edges of the fosse, 

 where other miners, their wives and children, receive it in bags 

 and carry it to the nearest river on their heads, for the Negro 



* This case is extremely rare. 



