CHAPTER XVIII 



MINERALS 



Any notice of the Minerals in the Protectorate must 

 necessarily be a short and inadequate one, because up 

 to the present date it may roughly be said that, like 

 snakes in Ireland, there are none. 



This is not to say that there are no minerals, which 

 would be a bold statement to make in a country which 

 is as yet so far from being thoroughly explored, and in 

 which prospecting has been doneonlyin the most amateur 

 and unsystematic fashion. It is true that the Govern- 

 ment has in the past had a Department devoted 

 entirely to the subject of mines and minerals ; but the 

 efforts of the office appeared, of course to the 

 uninitiated, to be devoted mainly to devising penalties 

 and spoliations for the benefit of anyone who might 

 be unfortunate enough to discover a paying deposit. 

 At all events, either fear of the results or a patent 

 unlikelihood of workable gold has prevented the 

 arrival of any quantity of skilled prospectors. It is 

 therefore impossible to speak with any certainty as to 

 the possibilities of paying minerals outside the settled 

 area. In the settled and healthy Highlands it is, 

 however, probably safe to say that judging both from 



the volcanic nature of the formation and from the 



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