DISTRIBUTION OF MINERALS IN SARAWAK 1£ 



la connection with the consumption of gold in the Territory, 

 it may be remarked that none of the savage tribes of this part 

 of Borneo seem ever to have made use of this metal not with- 

 standing their intercourse with Malays, and in a less degree with 

 the Chinese, during at least several centuries past. I have never 

 known an instance of a Sea-Dyak or Land-Dyak, a Kyan or 

 Bakatan seeking gold on his own account, and manufacturing it 

 into any description of ornament, however rude. 



When we endeavour to trace out the origin of the gold in Sa- 

 rawak, we find the immediate source of the metal, in the gravels 

 and alluvial clays and in some of the clay-shales, which so thickly 

 mask the older formations in N. W. Borneo, and out of these 

 beds it is being swept continually by running water. It is evi- 

 dent however, that so far we have traced the source but a single 

 step back ; and the conclusion at which I have arrived, from ob- 

 servation of a considerable number of sections in different parts of 

 the country, is that the auriferous strata of Sarawak Proper 

 are derived immediately from the waste of siliceous and porphy- 

 tic dykes, associated with the system of antimony and arsenic- 

 lodes developed in that locality. Similar strata however in other 

 localities ( the Batang Lupar washings for instance ) appear 

 rather to have been rearranged more than once ; so much so, in 

 fact, that the original home of the srold they bear can no longer 

 be guessed with any approach to certainty : and the only clue to 

 the problem is to be found in the circumstance that invariably 

 in these latter districts there is evidence of considerable meta- 

 morphic action among the constituent rocks of the several locali- 

 ties. It is highly probable that much of this gold originally lay 

 in quartz rock, as is the case in many places in Sumatra and in the 

 Malay Peninsula, and may be the case to a limited extent in the less 

 known parts of Sarawak; but even if auriferous reefs are dis- 

 covered at a future day in accessible situations, it is more than 

 doubtful whether they will afford a field for the European specula- 

 tion, especially since an analysis of a quantity of the auriferous 

 veinstone at Bau, by a competent European metallurgist, has 

 failed to give such a result as to tempt further operations. 



Silver and 'Arsenic: — Some years ago a lode of native 

 arsenic was worked at Bidi in conjunction with the antimony at 

 the same spot, but the mine was subsequently abandoned as the 

 ore scarcely repaid the cost of export. Realgar and Orpiment 

 were observed, but not in quantity ; the former is found iu traces 

 in the Upper Rejang, a district wholly unexplored by Europeans, 

 and in the Baram. Argentiferous arsenical ore also occurred at 

 Bidi, and an attempt was made to extract the Silver and gold 



