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to the cavity. These machines are calculated to raise a great deal 

 of water, but they are liable to be thrown out of repair. In many 

 cases hand-pumps would serve the purpose better, being made at 

 little trouble or expense, easily repaired, and always ready at an 

 honr^s notice. They are here utterly unknown. 



In the operation of getting gold, the heavy work is assigned to the 

 male negroes, and the lighter labour to the females. The cascalhao, 

 dug from these pits by the former, is carried away by the latter in 

 gamellas, or bowls, to be washed. When a sufficient quantity has 

 been procured, the men proceed to that process, which they per- 

 form much in the way already described in treating of St. Paiirs. 

 I perceived, however, that here they did not, in the first instance, 

 attempt to separate the gold from the black oxide of iron, but emp- 

 tied their gamellas into a larger vessel, by rinsing them in the water 

 Avhich it contained. The substance deposited in this vessel was de- 

 livered out, in small portions of about a pound each, to the most 

 skilful washers, as the operation of washing, or, as it was termed, 

 purifying it, required great niceness and dexterity. Some of the 

 grains of gold were so fine as to float on the surface, and of course 

 were liable to be washed away in these repeated changes of water ; 

 to prevent which the negroes bruised a few handfuls of herbs on a 

 stone, and mixed the juice in small proportions with the water in 

 their gamellas. Whether this liquid did in reality tend to precipi- 

 tate the gold, I could not positively ascertain, but the negroes cer- 

 tainly used it with the greatest confidence. 



There is another mode of separating the gold from the cascalhao, 

 called canoe-washing, which is "extremely interesting. The canoes 

 are made in the following manner : Two ten or twelve inch planks, 

 about twelve or fifteen feet in length, are laid on the ground, form- 

 ing an inclined plane, sloping about one inch in twelve : two other 

 planks of similar dimensions are fixed in the same direction at the 

 lower end, forming a second inclined plane, with a fall of six inches 

 from the former. On their sides are boards placed edge-wise, and 



