10 MINING DISTRICTS OF LOWER PERAK. 



and the main rivers proper means of communication. 



A good deal has already been done, and well done, to that 

 effect, and it throws great credit on the Government of the State. 

 The Kinta River is cleared, or very nearly so, as far as Kota 

 Baru. In a very short time it will be accessible to a steam- 

 launch as far as Batu Gajah. The good effect of such work 

 has already manifested itself not only through a greater influx 

 of mining population, but also in a commercial point of view. 



Excellent roads will soon join the two important districts of 

 Gopeng and Papan to Sungei Kinta which is the great artery 

 of the country, and give them a new impulse. 



A deal of good might also be done if the Government took 

 in hand the draining of certain districts, which, until then, can 

 only be superficially worked. 



The great fault with Chinamen, and especially Malays, does 

 not lie so much in their defective method of working as in 

 their inability to organise a proper draining system that will 

 carry away the surface water. 



The disastrous consequence is that most of the mines are 

 only half worked out, but sufficiently however to render it 

 impossible and unprofitable to others to resume the Avorks at a 

 future period. Considerable quantities of ore are consequently 

 abandoned and lost for ever. 



The Government would amply recover such expenditure, 

 for the working out of the country is a work of time and not 

 of a few years as will be shown by the following figures. The 

 total area of the eight mining districts in Lower Perak can be 

 estimated at 1,200 square miles, or 768,000 acres, and it can 

 safely be stated that one acre in one hundred is actual alluvial 

 mining ground, offering thus a total " surface utile " of 7,680 

 acres, which, under very ordinary circumstances, will afford 

 profitable work to 25,000 miners for the next hundred years. 



28th February, 1881. 



