Which Indeed Is Not Much To Be Wondered At,
For, Instead Of Opening Some Untried Place, They Continue To Dig And Wash
In The Same Spot Where They Had Dug And Washed For Years; And Where, Of
Course, But Few Large Grains Could Be Left.
The washing the sands of the streams is by far the easiest way of
obtaining the gold-dust; but in most places the sands have been so
narrowly searched before, that unless the stream takes some new course,
the gold is found but in small quantities.
While some of the party are
busied in washing the sands, others employ themselves farther up the
torrent, where the rapidity of the stream has carried away all the clay,
sand, &c. and left nothing but small pebbles. The search among these is a
very troublesome task. I have seen women who have had the skin worn off
the tops of their fingers in this employment. Sometimes, however, they
are rewarded by finding pieces of gold, which they call _sanoo birro_,
"gold-stones," that amply repay them for their trouble. A woman and her
daughter, inhabitants of Kamalia, found in one day two pieces of this
kind; one of five drachms, and the other of three drachms, weight. But
the most certain and profitable way of washing is practised in the height
of the dry season, by digging a deep pit, like a draw-well, near some
hill which has previously been discovered to contain gold. The pit is dug
with small spades or corn hoes, and the earth is drawn up in large
calabashes.
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