Colonial success very often depends upon the ability of its administrative body in directing all available force to this one end: the increase of its wealth. Bureaucracy is a cancer which paralyzes all life and motion that it finds within reach of its tentacles.
Old England has understood this for a long time, ever since, from the island once fruitless and barren, she spread her wings and flew to the conquest of the World's markets.
When will certain other nations comprehend that antiquity and past glory, instead of offering the precious fruit of experience, has brought upon them a palsied decrepitude?
When wilt thou understand this, my Italy, risen as thou art to the third maturity of thy civilization and glory?
I set myself at once, with a good will, to the extraction of gold, and engaged the services of a few Malays and Chinese coolies, who were expert enough, to assist me in my work.
The method we followed was a very primitive one. We filled some round wooden bowls with the water and sand, then by gently stirring the mass, particles of tin and gold were separated from the sand and went to the bottom. This deposit carefully gathered up was passed into other bowls full of water, into which we threw a well-pounded leaf of the sla più.
The juice of these leaves possesses a chemical property which I cannot explain but it draws up to the surface the sand still sticking to the metals, leaving them quite pure.
But the yellow tempter was not at all profuse in his favours and the golden metal came in very small quantities. I did not lose courage, however, and persevered for a long time without any change of luck. I even tried to trace out the auriferous bed from whence the waters of the stream transported the metals. I made innumerable attempts to find it, but in vain, and the day came when I was constrained to confess to myself that alluvial mining for me was a failure.
After all my hopes and dreams it was a melancholy confession to make but it was evident that I must turn in another direction if I wished for fortune, so I settled my account with the workmen and dismissed them.