15 



done with the human hand alone, without any machinery at all as motors — 

 must be a very expensive one. Water power is almost everywhere obtainable — 

 even when not always in the immediate vicinity of the mine — and the creation 

 of dressing establishments on modern sj'stem offers therefore in most cases no 

 great difficulties. 



Complicated engines cost dear, both to buy and to work — in the hands of 

 people who don't know how to attend to them properly — , and the transport of 

 the larger pieces is often a matter of considerable difficulty : it would therefore 

 suit the smaller establishments to employ some plain mechauisms, that could 

 easily be made in the country itself, such as water-wheels, wooden stamping 

 mills, pointed boxes or " spitzlutten," Kittiuger's percussion-tables, hydraulic 

 jiggers &c. 



In working gold ores in larger guantities, amalgamation would mostly be 

 the best method. 



There exist, however, a number of poor gold-mines, which could not afford 

 such an establishment on account of the heavy outlay for machinery and the 

 high price of quicksilver, while they, at the present rate of wages, are able 

 to yield a profit by the washing of the ores. These are especially those mines, 

 which are worked by farmers at times, when they are not occupied with field- 

 labor. There it would best serve the purpose to continue the customary method 

 of washing, and to have the disintegration, that is, the pounding and grinding of 

 the ores done by simple mechanisms. 



METALLUEGY. 



As to the metallurgic treatment of the ores, the old processes are exclusively 

 based on smelting ; wet methods of extraction, amalgamation &c. are only 

 acquisitions of modern times. 



Gold — when not got by washing — is like silver extracted by liquation, lead 

 either by roasting with subsequent reducing smelting, or by a combination of the 

 same with precipitating smelting, copper by a repeated roasting and reducing 

 smelting. 



EOASTNG. 



The roasting is almost everywhere done in a kind of rude kilns (" Yakigama"), 

 built with quarry-stones and clay in a circular shape, about 4-6' in diameter, 

 and about 4' in height, on one side furnished with air-holes. Instead of circu- 

 lar, rectangular kilns are also often used, 5-6' wide aud until 80' long. Calci- 

 nation in heaps is seldom used. The ore-lumps are without further preparation 

 thrown into the kiln on a bedding of fuel, while the slicks, by the aid of brush- 



