THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE 283 



Even beardless young men, eighteen and twenty years old, 

 with little muscular development of their bodies (they are 

 quite naked excepting drawers) ascend with this great load 

 from nearly the same depth. A strong man, who is not 

 accustomed to this labour, perspires most profusely, with 

 merely carrying up his own body. With this very severe 

 labour, they live entirely on boiled beans and bread. They 

 would prefer having bread alone; but their masters, finding 

 that they cannot work so hard upon this, treat them like 

 horses, and make them eat the beans. Their pay is here 

 rather more than at the mines of Jajuel, being from 24 to 28 

 shillings per month. They leave the mine only once in three 

 weeks ; when they stay with their families for two days. One 

 of the rules of this mine sounds very harsh, but answers 

 pretty well for the master. The only method of stealing gold 

 is to secrete pieces of the ore, and take them out as occasion 

 may offer. Whenever the major-domo finds a lump thus 

 hidden, its full value is stopped out of the wages of all the 

 men ; who thus, without they all combine, are obliged to keep 

 watch over each other. 



When the ore is brought to the mill, it is ground into an 

 impalpable powder; the process of washing removes all the 

 lighter particles, and amalgamation finally secures the gold- 

 dust. The washing, when described, sounds a very simple 

 process; but it is beautiful to see how the exact adaptation of 

 the current of water to the specific gravity of the gold, so 

 easily separates the powdered matrix from the metal. The 

 mud which passes from the mills is collected into pools, where 

 it subsides, and every now and then is cleared out, and thrown 

 into a common heap. A great deal of chemical action then 

 commences, salts of various kinds effloresce on the surface, 

 and the mass becomes hard. After having been left for a year 

 or two, and then rewashed, it yields gold; and this process 

 may be repeated even six or seven times; but the gold each 

 time becomes less in quantity, and the intervals required (as 

 the inhabitants say, to generate the metal) are longer. There 

 can be no doubt that the chemical action, already mentioned, 

 each time liberates fresh gold from some combination. The 

 discovery of a method to effect this before the first grinding, 

 would without doubt raise the value of gold-ores many fold. 



