CHAP. XXV. 



BRASIL. 265 



cooler portion of mankind to be on the whole a 

 losing pursuit. 



It has not been deemed necessary to enter into 

 any inquiry respecting the experiments making by 

 companies formed in England for procuring gold 

 from Brasil. The operations had produced no 

 effect on the period under our consideration. 

 According to the accounts printed in the Quar- 

 terly Mining Review, the produce of gold within 

 the last year seems to have been very considerably 

 more than the same districts had previously fur- 

 nished. 



No data present themselves from which to form a 

 judgment either of the proportion of the expendi- 

 ture to the proceeds, or of the probability of the 

 products increasing or diminishing in future. Dr. 

 Walsh, who visited Brasil in 1829> states that in 

 the first six months of that year the works at 

 Gongo Saco had yielded two thousand and thirty- 

 seven pounds of gold L . This would amount to 

 between eighty and ninety thousand pounds ster- 

 ling. The persons employed in those works ap- 

 pear to be one hundred and eighty Englishmen, 

 and six hundred other individuals, chiefly slaves 

 and their families who had been purchased by the 

 association. A few years will probably enable the 

 public as well as the adventurers to determine how 

 far the undertaking is likely to be profitable or 



1 Walsh's Travels in Brasil, vol. ii. p. 212. 



