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monds, it was tacitly agreed that no white man could stoop to such 

 dishonour. The point was soon settled ; for I found it best not to 

 oppose general opinions, nor to enter too minutely on delicate sub- 

 jects ; and it was sometimes expedient for me to seem regardless of 

 what I was most stedfastly looking at. 



In Tejuco there are about nine or ten principal shopkeepers, to 

 whom the establishment itself, and the officers belonging to it, are 

 frequently indebted ; indeed, these men receive the greater part of 

 the money due to the various persons employed in the works, in ex- 

 change chiefly for English commodities of one description or other. 

 The establishment is paid once a year, and for this purpose a sum not 

 jess than 300,000 crusades is sent from Villa Rica, to which may be 

 added 60,000 or 100,000 more, found in the gold mines of the dis- 

 trict. The greater part of this money flowing into the hands of the 

 shopkeepers, as above-stated, is immediately employed in a way in- 

 jurious to the interests of Government ; nor can worse policy be 

 imagined than that of allowing so large an expenditure in a place 

 which offers such temptations. 



Some years ago many gold-mines were washed in this district, but 

 as information was given that diamonds were found in them, they were 

 ordered to be abandoned. At present more equitable measures are 

 adopted, and the proprietors are commencing to work some of them 

 again, under an agreement to give up what diamonds they find*. 



* One Sunday morning during my stay, an owner of a washing came to the house of the 

 Intendant, and brought him two miserable diamonds of bad colour, which did not weigh 

 together above five grains ; and these, hs said, were all which his ten negroes had found in 

 six weeks. In the course of conversation, the Intendant observed that all the smugglers 

 were either imprisoned or dispersed, when the man immediately assumed an appearance of 

 great disgust at the mention of persons of so vile a description, and was liberal in his epithets 

 of abuse on them. — If I durst have enquired how it happened that his negroes in six weeks 

 could find only two bad- coloured diamonds, what emotions would this immaculate miner 

 have manifested i 



