42 



Gold Tract in the Kupptitgode' range. 



III. — A cursory Notice of the Gold Tract in the Kupputgode range — 

 Manganese Mines near Wodoorli — and Flnt excavations in the 

 Southern Mahraita Country— the Conmdum Pits of the western part 

 of Mysore, and the D i am 07id Mines of Kurnool. — By Lieut, T. J. 

 Newbold, 22d Light lifantry. 



Gold tract in the Ktippntgode ra?jire.— Passing recently through 

 the Southern Mahiatta Country, I was informed at D rwar by 

 Mr. Pelly, A&sistant Collector, and by Triniulrow, a brahmin 

 youth, whose acquirements, and thirst after knowledge, do in- 

 finite credit to the tuition of the talented president of the Bom- 

 bay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society— the Rev. Dr. Wilson — 

 that gold had been lately discovered in the Kupputgode range, near 

 the eastern frontier. I determined on visiting tie spot, more especially 

 as my intelligent friend Trimulrow, who has the merit of having first 

 brought to the notice of Government the existence of gold in the 

 particular locality of Doni, had not been able to witness personally 

 the actual extraction of the gold from the sands of the rivulet, whence 

 the specimens of the metal were brouglit him. Doni, I found to be a 

 Bmall village, about two or three miles south of the fort of Dummul, 

 situated on the right bank of the rivulet, in whose sands the gold is 

 found, immediately opposite. Although \he jalgars (gold wsshers), 

 were not at work, in consequence of the rivulets not having been lately 

 flooded, I caused some of the natives on the spot to wash tv\o or three 

 baskets of the sand in my presence; and, after about five minutes 

 labour, succeeded in obtaining five or six particles of gold dust. The 

 process of washing has been often described, and does not differ much 

 from that I have seen practised by the Chinese gold vi'ashers at the 

 foot of mount Ophir, exchanging the conical vessel for a hollowed 

 board: after the lighter particles of the sand are washed off, the gold 

 dust remains mingled with a heavy black sand (No. 1), most of the 

 particles of which are strongly affected by the magnet, and which does 

 not differ from the granular magnetic iron ore of mineralogists: others 

 are feebly magnetic ; these, from their behaviour with fluxes before the 

 blow-pipe, and their gunpowder-like appearance, I take to be mena^ 

 chanite (No. 2), probably derived from the decomposition of the dykes 

 of basaltic trap, or the greenstone and hornblende rocks in the vicinity. 



Along with the menachanite, and among the sand in which the gold 

 was found, occur comminuted fragments of fibrous malachite ; one (No. 3) 

 a little larger than the rest, contained an irregularly shaped fragment 

 of native copper; Avhich, from its dark rough surface, 1 thought at 

 first was hematite, but, in endeavouring to break it with a smart blow 



