1840.] 



Gold Tract in the Kupputgode va^ige. 



43 



of the hammer, I completely flattened it. A few small scattered grains 

 of a greyish white metal occur, but are very rare : one of thesie has a 

 slightly yellowish tinge, resemblinu^ the argentiferous gold, or rather 

 auriferous silver, of Norway. The largest of these metallic substances 

 (No. 4), a flattened water-worn buttou about half the size of a pea, 

 having a purplish black enduit, on being submitted to re-agents^ 

 proved to be almost entir<^ly composed of silver. I should have been 

 inclined to suppose this fragment, from the scarcity of this metal 

 in the rocks of India, to have been adventitious; had not I disi-overed 

 a grey silver ore (No. 5), in a fragment of quartz shortly afterwards. It 

 is by no means improbable that some of the smaller, flattish, grey, 

 metallic looking grains may prove to be platinum, a metal which is often 

 associated with gold. 



Tile pebbles and sand, composing the bed of the rivulet, are derived 

 from the Kupputgode hil's, wiiich form the sides of the valley through 

 which the stream run?, and among which it has its rise, and are ming- 

 led with both fragments of kunkar and hematitic iron ore. The sand 

 is composed chiefly of particles of quartz, variously colomed, com- 

 minuted garnet, and the metallic sands first mentioned. The sur- 

 rounding formation is gneiss, with its associated schist of mica, horn- 

 blende, and greenstone, chloritic and clay slates; passing, in tlieir up- 

 per portions, into silicious and ferrugenous schist, with beds of a lateri- 

 tic rock. Near the base, between Guddak and Dummul, I found thin 

 veins of a white, sub-crystalline marble in the greenstone slate. The 

 whole of these rocks are penetrated by, and appear to owe their eleva- 

 tion to, large dykes of basaltic trap. Granite, too, is seen at no great 

 distance in the plain to the south of the chain. 



In tracing the gold dust to its matrix it will be useful to recollecf, 

 that where these plutonic rocks come in contact with the primary 

 schists, a greater tendency to metallic and silicious developement is 

 almost invariably observed, and it is in veins of quartz, ferrugenous 

 quartz, and their allaviam, that we find gold to exist in the greatest 

 abundance, from the Himalayas'to Cape Comorin, in the Malayan pen- 

 insula, Borneo, Sumatra, Assam, the Birman empire, Hungary, and 

 both Americas. On the peninsula of India, I have only heard of one 

 exception to this rule, which is said to occur in the Madura district ; 

 where, according to Sir Whitelaw Ainslie (Mat. Med. vol. i. p. 514), 

 gold was discovered by the late Mr. Mainwaring, mineralized by means 

 of zinc, constituting a blende which, he thought, resembled somewhat 

 the Schemnitz blende of Hungary. The gold washings, and mines of 

 Mysore, near the Baterine hills, discovered by Captain Warren, those 



