TRAVELS IN BRAZIL. 



185 



impoverished, so that but few gold-washers are 

 employed in it, and the work mostly left to free 

 negroes for a daily payment of a patacca. This 

 manner of obtaining gold from a public mine, is 

 called Minerar a talha aherta. 



After we had inspected all the operations of this 

 mine, or rather trench, by which only the coarser 

 part of the metal is obtained, and the rest carried 

 to the rivers, and thus the real formation of the 

 gold injudiciously covered or destroyed, we pro- 

 ceeded to examine the geognostic particulars of 

 the Morro de Villa Rica. This mountain runs in 

 the direction from W. to E. along the valley of the 

 Ribeirao do Giro Preto, to the village of Passagem, 

 an extent of nearly two leagues, and seems, as the 

 formation on both banks in the bottom of the 

 valley proves, to have been formerly connected 

 with the lofly Itacolumi, but to have been subse- 

 quently separated from it by the power of the 

 waters ; it is covered here and there with low wood, 

 and to the very summits with grass and bushes ; 

 its ridge is pretty even, and the mountain on the 

 side towards the city less steep. The superstruc- 

 ture*, an iron-stone flotz, which is called in this 

 country Tapanho-acangai (or simply Canga), is 



* See Note 3. page 200. 



t Tapanho-acanga signifies (not in one of the African lan- 

 guages, but in the Lingua Geral,) a negro's head, from the re- 

 semblance of which to the stone, which is often encrusted on 

 the surface as haBmatite^ the name is derived. 



