The Gold Industry of British Guiana. 245 
mind, that the flatness of the ground and lack of fall must not be lost sight 
of, as dump-room is one of the essential factors in hydraulic mining. 
Before proceeding to deal with the quartz milling phase of the gold 
industry, it may be well to revert in a few lines to the questiou of power, 
as whether in hydraulicking or other wise this question is one of vital im- 
portance. Although fuel for power purposes is fairly abundant all over 
the country, its distribution, the configuration of the country, and the 
humidity of the soil, all create problems that take some solving and ex- 
penditure. In the first place, as in all tropical countries, not more than 
25°. in every acre is available as efficient fuel ; as a consequence, four or 
five times the normal area has to be covered to obtain a full supply. This 
naturally means abnormal transportation expenses, and wear and tear of 
stock ; the configuration of the country in gullies and ravines further 
increases this difficulty of transportation, and lastly, the excessive 
humidity of the soil imposes heavy burdens on the construction and 
maintenance of roads, all of these culminating in the one unpleasant fact, 
that every half-year of a mine’s existence makes the question of fuel, and 
consequently power, one of increasing difficulty and expense by the 
increase of distances and the impassability of old roads. There are, of 
course, various ways and expedients for mitigating these difficulties ; such 
as the establishment of coumercial power-distributing schemes, or the 
individual erection of hydro-electric power plants. 
Resuming the thread of, this paper. one may well say that for real 
permanent benefits quartz-mining must ever be looked to in any gold 
industry. But, up to the present, local quartz mines have not been a 
conspicuous success although there always was, and is, great promise in 
this direction. The Wariri workings undertaken in 1863 provide our 
first object-lesson. Apart, however, from the intrinsic value of this 
property, it would seem that being located so very near to such a vast extent 
of water as the Cuyuni river and because the Matope Falls provide at that 
point the water to be contended with in the lower levels, these facts would 
always create an active source of annoyance. Power here would have to be 
of a very cheap description to cope with the vast extent of pumping that 
may very well be suspected. 
At Kanzimapoo on the Demerara River, it is clear that there was 
never a sufficient development of ore bodies to justify the erection of a 
milling plant but deep prospections may have, or may yet prove the 
existence of extensive quartz bodies. At this point it may be observed 
that there has been practically no underground prospection for permanent 
quartz bodies in the colony ; underground work, perhaps from a force of 
circumstances, having been more or less of the nature of exploration of 
known veins or outcrops. Again, in the North West District the absence 
of avy well-defined quartz deposits at depth has proved the undoing of 
all enterprises. 
