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minute, that they float, while others are found as large as peas, and 

 not unfrequently much larger. This operation is superintended by 

 overseers, as the result is of considerable importance. When the 

 whole is finished, the gold is borne home to be dried, and at a con- 

 venient time is taken to the permutation office, where it is weighed, 

 and a fifth is reserved for the Prince. The remainder is smelted by 

 fusion with muriate of mercury, cast into ingots, assayed, and 

 stamped according to its intrinsic value, a certificate of which is 

 given with it ; after a copy of that instrument has been duly entered 

 at the mint-office, the ingots circulate as specie. i. -r;! 



My attention was strongly engaged by the immense debris or re- 

 fuse of old washings, which lay in numberless heaps, and contained 

 various substances that gave me strong hope of finding some inte- 

 resting and valuable spechnens of tourmalines, topazes, and other 

 crystallizations, and also a rich series of rocks, which might form 

 the geognostics of the country. So strongly was I prepossessed with 

 this hope, that I really fancied I had within my reach some of the 

 finest mineral products of Brazil. Early one morning, before the sun 

 became too hot for work, I set out accompanied by two or three men, 

 with iron crows and hammers, whom I had engaged to assist me. We 

 broke up immense quantities of quartzose and granite-like matter in 

 various stages of decomposition, and others of a ferruginous kind, but 

 after pursuing the operation for three whole days, until my hands could 

 no longer wield the hammer, I was obliged to give up the search as 

 fruitless ; not a grain of gold did I find, nor any thing of the nature 

 of crystallization, except some miserable quartz, a little cubic and 

 octaedral pyrites, and some very poor manganese ! In short the sub- 

 stances presented so little novelty, and were in themselves so ordi- 

 nary, that I hesitated whether I should carry them with me to 

 St. Paul's. This disappointment at the first gold mines I had seen, 

 not a little dejected me. 



In company with the Governor and his lady, I now took a surve}"^ 

 of the farm ; we walked and rode through extensive plantations, 



