432 



spread over the bottom, is made at the side of the 

 pit. One of the miners reraains inside the pit, 

 whose office it is to fill the hsuskets with the ore, 

 and work the Paholu. The ore, as it comes op, 

 is thrown to the women who sit around the pit, 

 and whose office it is to separate it from the stone 

 and cloy with which it is intermingled. This 

 they dexterously effect hy breaking the lumps 

 between their fingers, and twirling them rapidly 

 round on wooden platlers^ hy which method the 

 separation of the different particles is speedily 

 ensured. 



The ore, collected dining the day, is carried 

 every evening to a running stream in the vicinity, 

 in order that the force of the current may disen- 

 gage any of the finer panicles of sand still adher- 

 ing to it. After having been dried it is carried 

 to the smelting houf?e, where lOOtb of ore yields 

 from 75 to 70lh of metal. If the miner he a poor 

 man, he receives a ticket for every forty pounds 

 of tin delivered ; if an officer, he gets one only 

 for every fifty. "These tickets are afterwards 

 exchanged by the king's overseer, at the rate of 

 five tickals of silver for one Coping, weighing 

 624lh, English. The surplus 30, or 35 *Th, goes 

 to the smelter, who is a Chinese that rents this 

 privilege from the King." 



In no part of the |)eninsula does the stratum 

 of tin present any great thickness, the vein being 

 exhausted rn two or three days, when the pit is 

 abandoned and a fresh one opened. It appears, 

 however, probable that there are layers of the 

 ore at a greater depth, strata of clay and stone 



* WliAt b the iurpjuE here altudcd to by CaptMin liglit l« not v^ty clcai-; 



