PART 2.] 
King: Gold-fields of S.-E. Wynad. 
33 
these alluvial Hats are not so frequent, and they are small in extent. There are no traces 
anywhere of their having been searched for gold, except in so far as the patches of surface 
soil alongside the streams, or on the edges of the flats, where auriferous soil could gather, 
may have been searched by the Pauuirs. 
There can hardly be a doubt but that gold in some quantity must lie in these deposits, 
for when they were being laid down, even if the present rainfall existed, it is quite evident 
that the flow of water was sufficiently retarded, possibly by lakes which then occupied the 
places of the present flats, to allow of a great thickness of separate patches of the denuded 
material of Wynad being retained. It is, however, very questionable whether this amount 
, , would be sufficient to repay the washing of such places, for they 
are throughout the year charged with water for the greater part 
of their depth, and they are largely made up of very unstable materials. The cost of exca¬ 
vation, puddling, and pumping engines necessary to keep large works free of water would be 
enormous. In addition to this, it is probable that work could only be carried on in the dry 
season, three months of which are unhealthy for both Europeans and outside natives, parti¬ 
cularly in these low-lying grounds. 
The places where gold washing has been carried on in the area under description are 
No traces of -old washing frequent in the Nambalycode and Moonad Amshams ; but there is 
in northern Amshams. now no tradition of such work ever having been carried on outside 
of these, although in Mr. Sheffield’s Report of 1831 mention is made of places, such as 
Choolyode, purporting to be in the neighbourhood of Sultau’s Battery, where indeed there are 
Pannirs, though these men are not skilled in the use of the washing dish. This apparently 
unsearclied condition of the northern part of the field, and the ignorance of the Pannirs as to 
the use of the murriya would seem to indicate that there should he no expectation of finding 
any gold dust in that part of the country were there not the view that there was possibly 
always sufficient occupation for these men in the well cultivated lands of these northern 
Amshams, while in the Nambalycode country, &c., they were driven by the land-owners to 
search for gold, the land not being so well adapted for agricultural work. 
The next source of Wynad gold is the matrix or the quartz veins, and to a slight extent 
The conditions of gold in tlle 1 ' ooks traversed by these; and here again the natives of 
the matrix. Malabar have been beforehand in mining operations though only 
in a very small way when the enormous extent of veinstone is taken into account. These 
Korumbars have worked the smaller and more easily broken up veins often to a depth of 
60 or 70 feet. The western slopes of many of the hills in the three Amshams already enume¬ 
rated are burrowed like rabbit warrens with pits, often only four or five feet apart, and 
communicating by short galleries. Chulaymullay, one of the conspicuous headlands of the 
Western Ghats near Dayvallah, was once extensively mined in this way. Lieutenant Nicholson 
thus describes what he saw in April 1831: “ After cutting our way for several hours in the 
thickest part of the jungle on the mountains, we came upon the mine in question, consisting 
of three shafts about five feet each in diameter, and ten from each other, forming an 
equilateral triangle, the deepest of them extending to about seventy feet, since a stone 
dropped in took four and a half seconds to reach the bottom. We soon found that this mine 
was not the only one, for, having penetrated as far as we possibly could through tho jungle 
towards the summit of the mountain, we discovered no less than twenty-seven shafts all sunk 
in the same manner and forming a chain of triangles as before described, the disposition of 
which with regard to each other led me to suppose that they have all subterraneous counter¬ 
shafts communicating with each other, and probably extending to a large main shaft which 
I trust may be discovered on the arrival of the pioneers.” The same style of work is to be 
