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and sometimes united in small veins of quartz. 

 Most of the torrents that traverse the mountains 

 bear along with them grains of gold. The poor 

 inhabitants of Villa de Cura and San Juan have 

 sometimes gained thirty piastres a day by wash- 

 ing the sand ; but most commonly, in spite of 

 their industry, they do not in a week find parti- 

 cles of gold of the value of two piastres, and 

 therefore few persons devote themselves to this 

 uncertain occupation. Here, however, as in 

 every place, where native gold and auriferous 

 pyrites are disseminated in the rock, or, by the 

 destruction of the rocks, are deposited in allu- 

 vial lands, the people conceive the most exag- 

 gerated ideas of the metallic riches of the soil. 

 But the success of the workings, which depends 

 less on the abundance of the ore in a vast space 

 of land, than on it's accumulation in one point, 

 has not justified these favourable prepossessions. 

 The mountains of Chacoa, bordered by the 

 ravine of Tucutunemo, rises seven hundred feet 

 above the village of San Juan, It is formed of 

 gneiss, which, especially in the superior strata, 

 passes into mica-slate. We saw the remains of 

 an ancient mine, known by the name of Real 

 de Santa Barbara. The works were directed to 

 a stratum of cellular quartz *, full of polyedric 



granite rocks, as if they were of contemporaneous formation, 

 are gold, tin, titanium, and cobalt. 



* This stratum of quartz, and the gneiss in which it is 



t2 



