822 
SI^TCH OF THE FROCKS* OF MINING 
of a former standing, or who had taken private advances from the 
Kongsey, were now called on for payment of these out of their in¬ 
dividual shares. In most instances therefore the miners received no 
money in hand, and often the amount of their share Mas not suffi- 
cient for the payment of the old debts, which successively accumu¬ 
lated to an amount that they could never be expected to pay. In 
this manner those sums have gradually accumulated, which are now 
found in the books of Kongsies, and which, to use their own phrase, 
have changed into air. The mode of settlement just described ap¬ 
plies chiefly to the large or kolong mines of the western peninsula : 
in the smaller kolongs of Lumut above mentioned, and in the small 
mines where one person was the principal, the settlement was ne¬ 
cessarily modified, and one miner or chief miner received the amount 
of the entire produce, in as far as he alone had received advances 
from die Kongsy. 
As in many cases the payment allowed to the miners was not 
sufficient to induce them to carry on the labour of the mines, a cus¬ 
tom was introduced in late periods of granting them gratuitous ad¬ 
vances, in cases where the collection of the ore was comparatively 
difficult, in opening new mines, or in the preparatory labour to the 
business of mining. These gratuitous advances were designated by 
a Chinese term Tshu-yctp , which signifies present or gratuity, and 
they may be considered as private promises or contracts, entered 
into between the miner and the Kongsy. 
The Tshu-i/ap was of very different kinds. In some cases the 
Kongsy engaged to supply the miners, gratis, with rice (and some¬ 
times with the other necessaries above enumerated) during- the pe¬ 
riod that they were employed in making an aqueduct; in others it 
was stipulated that the miners should receive the gratuitous supplies 
from the commencement of their labours at a mine, to the time 
they had penetrated the eirfch to the layer containing the ore. In 
other cases this gratuity was conditional, and the miners engaged 
to return the advance if the mine proved favourable, but not if defi¬ 
cient in ore. 
I have endeavoured at different places to obtain from the hooks 
of the Kongsies the annual amount of the gratuitous supplies for a 
number of ascending years, in order to calculate as near as possi¬ 
ble the real price of the tin produced in a certain period of time, 
but on account of the reasons already mentioned, I have procured 
only imperfect statements: it must however betaken into eonsidera- 
