60 WA (‘EN D. SMITH 
dredge, capable of handling _half-ton of gravel and sand in a day. 
Not only did the Tagalog. but all the tribes including the wild 
Igorots, pan gold and fron. early every stream in the island. I 
have never yet founda strea 1 which did not carry some gold. This 
gold, won by the natives, usually finds its way into the hands of 
the Chinese traders, and consequently it is difficult to get even an 
estimate of how much is recovered annually, but I believe that one 
thousand ounces a month is a very conservative estimate. 
In the early eighties of this century, there were scores of arrastres 
in operation in Ambos Camarines; but hardly a single one can now 
be seen. This method, with which all mining men are familiar and 
hence need not be described here, was introduced by Spaniards from 
Mexico, probably over two hundred years ago. 
At the present time, there are only one or two arrastres working 
in the district. 
Several attempts at mining on a large scale were made, prior 
to the American occupation, but all were futile. But with the 
inrush of American prospectors and renewed vigor and new hope 
in the country, the outlook for the mining industry became very 
bright. . 
The first modern stamp mill of any size was erected on the 
Benguet consolidated property and began operating in 1906, and 
in 1907, the first large dredge (New Zealand model) was placed on 
the Paracale River. There are now two dredges at work, one 
building and a fourth projected. 
The mills have not been so successful, due to a variety of causes, 
chiefly inadequate capital and poor management. The lodes are 
of many kinds. In Benguet, they are usually quartz fissure veins 
in andesite, while some contact deposits between the sediments and 
andesite and diorite have been noted. The gangue is predomi- 
nately quartz with or without calcite, manganese oxide, and 
thodochrosite. The gold is in some veins free, but is usually found 
in the pyrite in a finely divided condition, so much so that the best 
method of treatment will consist of crushing in cyanide with 
stamps and fine grinding in tube mills. 3 
In Paracale in Ambos Camarines, there is much more free gold 
and a large number of the veins are “stringers,” which are very 
