Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Valley Of The Tuy Has Its 'gold Mine,' Like Almost Every Part
Of America Inhabited By Whites, And
Backed by primitive mountains.
I was assured, that in 1780, foreign gold-gatherers had been
engaged in picking up grains
Of that metal, and had established a
place for washing the sand in the Quebrada del Oro. An overseer of
a neighbouring plantation had followed these indications; and after
his death, a waistcoat with gold buttons being found among his
clothes, this gold, according to the logic of the people here,
could only have proceeded from a vein, which the falling in of the
earth had rendered invisible. In vain I objected, that I could not,
by the mere view of the soil, without digging a large trench in the
direction of the vein, judge of the existence of the mine; I was
compelled to yield to the desire of my hosts. For twenty years past
the overseer's waistcoat had been the subject of conversation in
the country. Gold extracted from the bosom of the earth is far more
alluring in the eyes of the vulgar, than that which is the produce
of agricultural industry, favoured by the fertility of the soil,
and the mildness of the climate.
North-west of the Hacienda del Tuy, in the northern range of the
chain of the coast, we find a deep ravine, called the Quebrada
Seca, because the torrent, by which it was formed, loses its waters
through the crevices of the rock, before it reaches the extremity
of the ravine.
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