472 Notes on the Pokree [No. 163. 



now transformed into Dolomite. In a country where mining is more 

 in use and better known than in India, lakhs of rupees would have been 

 spent upon feebler indications of ores than are here seen. When I was 

 at Pokree there was no work going on, but two or three native women 

 washing old heaps of nearly exhausted rubbish. The " Khans" were nearly 

 entirely broken down — that in which Mr. Wilkin put in timber, was yet 

 open for about forty yards, but in all these very slight indications of ore, 

 copper pyrites and blue and green carbonate. Since many hundreds 

 or thousands of years that part of the layer has been alternately ex- 

 posed to the access of air and water, and accordingly the copper pyrites 

 has been transformed into sulphate of copper, which is dissolved and 

 carried off by water. That process is going on still, the waters con- 

 taining enough sulphate of copper to cause, by aid of Hanuman or some 

 other old gentleman, the great wonder of metamorphizing — i. e. covering 

 — iron nails, thrown into the water with copper. The natives showed 

 me two of these nails as perfect miracles. 



It was in this part of the layer where not only the native rulers 

 worked, but also Mr. Wilkin. The slate in it is soft like soap, 

 and very little ore remained," partly as pyrites, partly in sulphate, 

 partly as blue or green carbonate of copper. From Mr. Wilkin's bad 

 success no conclusions ought to be made, or can be made. An experi- 

 ment on ore from Chili or Kamtschatka would be as decisive for the 

 riches of Pokree mine as Mr. Wilkin's was,, and when I heard that a 

 " sahablok" worked 2£ years at Pokree I could scarcely believe it. But 

 I admired Mr. Wilkin's proceedings, when I saw, from Mr. Lushing- 

 ton's report, the means Mr. Wilkin had at his disposal, and the object 

 of his labour. I then acquitted Mr. Wilkin of every fault of which I 

 had accused him in my mind when I saw that, with a sum scarcely suffi- 

 cient to open the spot where the ore can be hoped for and collect mate- 

 rials for buildings, he had to decide upon the riches of a mine at first to 

 be created. The layer dips in h. 23 (15° N. to E.). The work to be com- 

 menced was, a gallery 30 or 40 fathoms below the old mines ; and not 

 the excavation of ores which are a very good addition in smelting better 

 ones, but the smelting of which never would pay. If left to his own 

 judgment, and having the whole sum at disposition, Mr. Wilkin pro- 

 bably would not have produced any ore in the first year and a half, at 

 the end of which he would most probably have been able to show such 



