No. 31.— 1885.] 



PLUMBAGO* 



201 



the profits, after all preliminary expenses defrayed by the 

 capitalist have been reimbursed. 



The hill in which Mr. De Mel's mine has been opened— 

 Mr. W, A, Fernando having another at a higher elevation 

 than De Mel's, with a depth of 330 feet — seems to be 

 permeated in its whole extent by generally horizontal veins 

 of the richest plumbago, associated with beautifully snow- 

 white crystalline to semi-opaque quartz, the latter occa- 

 sionally showing specks of garnet and bands of soapstone, 

 and Mr. De Mel brings to the surface practically pure plum- 

 bago. As regards the generality of pits, he agrees with 

 the estimate of Mr. W. W. Mitchell (who has probably 

 purchased, prepared and shipped to America as well as 

 Europe, more plumbago than any European merchant who 

 ever resided in Ceylon) that the extraneous matter in .the 

 shape of earth and rock brought to the pit's mouth is equal 

 to one-half of the whole, about 10 to 15 per cent, being the 

 proportion carried to Colombo and separated from the ore in 

 the preparing yards. Mr. Fernando's estimate, however, of 

 foreign matter brought to Colombo, is 5 per cent, for pieces 

 of quartz round which plumbago adheres, and 2J per cent, 

 for minute fragments of silica, iron, &c, mixed with the 

 smaller pieces and dust. Any person who has witnessed 

 and appreciated the difficulty and the expensiveness of the 

 processes whereby small fragments of rock are separated 

 from the lower classes of plumbago in Ceylon, can well 

 imagine the obstacles to profitable separation of the mineral 

 from rock in America where there are no masses, but 

 only scales of the mineral distributed throughout the 

 rock. 



When the Prince of Wales was in Colombo in 1870, 

 Mr. De Mel exhibited what I suppose was the largest mass 

 of pure plumbago ever shown in this or any other country, 

 its weight being only 14 lb. short of 6. cwt. For this unique 

 specimen a sum of £50 was offered. It was subsequently 

 sent to the United States, and is understood to have been 

 placed in the Philadelphia Exhibition, and finally in an 

 American Museum. Finds of plumbago in large masses do 

 not, however, always prove profitable, such masses being 

 sometimes, although pure carbon, of such a rocky-hard consis- 

 tency, that they resist the best tempered saws and yield with 



