CHAPTER XVIII 
MINERALS 
Any notice of the Minerals in the Protectorate must 
necessarily be a short and inadequate one, because up 
to the present date it may roughly be said that, like 
snakes in Ireland, there are none. 
This is not to say that there are no minerals, which 
would be a bold statement to make in a country which 
is as yet so far from being thoroughly explored, and in 
which prospectinghas been done only in the most amateur 
and unsystematic fashion. It is true that the Govern¬ 
ment has in the past had a Department devoted 
entirely to the subject of mines and minerals ; but the 
efforts of the office appeared, of course to the 
uninitiated, to be devoted mainly to devising penalties 
and spoliations for the benefit of anyone who might 
be unfortunate enough to discover a paying deposit. 
At all events, either fear of the results or a patent 
unlikelihood of workable gold has prevented the 
arrival of any quantity of skilled prospectors. It is 
therefore impossible to speak with any certainty as to 
the possibilities of paying minerals outside the settled 
area. In the settled and healthy Highlands it is, 
however, probably safe to say that judging both from 
the volcanic nature of the formation and from the 
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