“There is no particular regulation respecting the dress of the negroes: they work in the clothes most suitable to the nature of their employment, generally in a waistcoat and a pair of drawers, and not naked, as some travellers have stated. Their hours of labour are from a little before sunrise until sunset, half an hour being allowed for breakfast, and two hours at noon. While washing, they change their posture as often as they please, which is very necessary, as the work requires them to place their feet on the edges of the trough, and to stoop considerably. This posture is particularly prejudicial to young growing negroes, as it renders them in-kneed. Four or five times during the day, they all rest, when snuff, of which they are very fond, is given to them.
“The negroes are formed into working parties, called troops, containing 200 each, under the direction of an administrator and inferior officers. Each troop has a clergyman and a surgeon to attend it. With respect to the subsistence of the negroes, although the present governor has in some degree improved it, by allowing a daily portion of fresh beef, which was not allowed by his predecessors, yet I am sorry to observe that it is still poor and scanty; and that in other respects they are more hardly dealt with than those of any other establishment which I visited: notwithstanding this, the owners are all anxious to get their negroes into the service, doubtless from sinister motives.
“The officers are liberally paid, and live in a style of considerable elegance, which a stranger would not be led to expect in so remote a place. Our tables were daily covered with a profusion of excellent viands, served up on fine Wedgewood ware, and the state of their household generally corresponded with this essential part of it. They were ever ready to assist me in my examination of the works, and freely gave me all the necessary information respecting them.
“Having detailed the process of washing for diamonds, I proceed to a general description of the situation in which they are found. The flat pieces of ground on each side the river are equally rich throughout their extent, and hence the officers are enabled to calculate the value of an unworked place, by comparison with the amount found on working with the part adjoining. These known places are left in reserve, and trial is made of more uncertain grounds. The following observation I often heard from the intendant: ‘That piece of ground (speaking of an unworked flat by the side of the river) will yield me ten thousand carats of diamonds, whenever we shall be required to get them in the regular course of working, or when, on any particular occasion, an order from government arrives, demanding an extraordinary and immediate supply.’
“The substances accompanying diamonds, and considered good indications of them, are bright bean-like iron ore, a slaty flint-like substance, approaching Lydian stone, of fine texture, black oxide of iron in great quantities, rounded bits of blue quartz, yellow crystals, and other materials entirely different from anything known to be produced in the adjacent mountains. Diamonds are by no means peculiar to the beds of rivers or deep ravines; they have been found in cavities and watercourses on the summits of the most lofty mountains. I had some conversation with the officers, respecting the matrix of the diamond, not a vestige of which could I trace. They informed me, that they often found diamonds cemented in pudding-stone, accompanied with grains of gold, but that they always broke them out, as they could not enter them in the treasury, or weigh them with matter adhering to them. I obtained a mass of pudding-stone, apparently of very recent formation, cemented by ferruginous matter enveloping many grains of gold; and likewise a few pounds weight of the cascalhao in its unwashed state. This river, and other streams in its vicinity, have been in washing many years, and have produced great quantities of diamonds, which have ever been reputed of the finest quality. They vary in size: some are so small that four or five are required to weigh one grain, consequently sixteen or twenty to the carat: there are seldom found more than two or three stones of from seventeen to twenty carats in the course of a year, and not once in two years is there found throughout the whole washings a stone of thirty carats. During the five days I was here, they were not very successful; the whole quantity found amounted only to forty, the largest of which was only four carats, and of a light green colour.
“From the great quantity of debris, or worked cascalhao, in every part near the river, it is reasonable to calculate that the works have been in operation above forty years; of course there must arrive a period at which they will be exhausted, but there are grounds in the neighbourhood, particularly in the Cerro de St. Antonio, and in the country now inhabited by the Indians, which will probably afford these gems in equal abundance.”
The Mines of Peru.—There are great numbers of very rich mines which the waters of the ocean have invaded. The disposition of the ground, which from the summit of the Cordilleras goes continually shelving to the South Sea, renders such events more common at Peru than in other places. This has been in some instances remedied. Joseph Salcedo, about 1660, discovered, near Puna, the mine of Laycacoto. It was so rich that they often cut the silver with a chisel. It was at last overflowed with water; but in 1740, Diego de Bacua associated with others to divert the springs. The labours which this difficult undertaking required, were not finished till 1754. The mine yields as much as it did at first. But mines still richer have been discovered; such as that of Potosi, which was found in the same country where the Incas worked that of Parco. An Indian, named Hualpa, in 1545, pursuing some deer, in order to climb certain steep rocks, had hold of a bush, the roots of which loosened from the earth, and brought to view an ingot of silver. The indian had recourse to it for his own use. The change in his fortunes was remarked by one of his countrymen, and he discovered to him the secret. The two friends could not keep their counsel and enjoy their good fortune. They quarrelled; on which the indiscreet confidant discovered the whole to his master Villaroel, a Spaniard. Upon this the mine was worked, and a great number of others were found in its vicinity, the principal of which are in the northern part of the mountain, and their direction is from north to south. The fame of Potosi soon spread abroad; and there was quickly built at the foot of the mountain a town, consisting of 60,000 Indians, and 10,000 Spaniards. The sterility of the soil did not prevent its being immediately peopled. Corn, fruit, flocks, American stuffs, and European luxuries, arrived from every quarter. In 1738 these mines produced annually near £978,000, without reckoning the silver which was not registered, and what had been carried off by fraud. From that time the produce has been so much diminished, that not above one-eighth part of the coin which was formerly struck, is now made. At all the mines of Peru, the Spaniards, in purifying their gold and silver, use mercury, with which they are supplied from Guanca Velica. The common opinion is, that this mine was discovered in 1564. The trade of mercury was then free; it became an exclusive trade in 1571. At this period all the mines of mercury were shut; and that of Guanca Velica alone was worked; the property of which the king reserved to himself. It is not found to diminish. The mine is dug in the very large mountain of Potosi, sixty leagues from Lima. In its profound abyss are seen streets, squares, and a chapel, where the mysteries of religion on all festivals are celebrated. Millions of flambeaus are continually kept to enlighten it. The mine of Guanca Velica generally affects those who work in it with convulsions; and the other mines, which are not less unhealthy, are all worked by the Peruvians. These unfortunate victims of an insatiable avarice are crowded all together, and plunged naked into these abysses, the greatest part of which are deep, and all excessively cold. Tyranny has invented this refinement in cruelty, to render it impossible for any thing to escape its restless vigilance. If there are any wretches who long survive such barbarity, it is the use of cocoa that preserves them.
We shall incorporate in this chapter, the following interesting account of Volcanic Eruptions of Mud and Salt, in the Island of Java; by T. S. Goad, Esq. of the Honourable Company’s Bengal Civil Service.
“Having received (says the writer) an extraordinary account of a natural phenomenon in the plains of Grobogan, fifty pals (or miles) north-east of Solo, a party, of which I was one, set off from Solo on the eighth of September, 1815, to examine it.
“On approaching the village of Kuhoo, we saw, between two trees in a plain, an appearance like the surf breaking over rocks, with a strong spray falling to leeward. The spot was completely surrounded by huts, for the manufacture of salt, and at a distance looked like a large village. Alighting, we went to the Bludugs, as the Javanese call them. They are situated in the village of Kuhoo, and by Europeans are called by that name. We found them to be on an elevated plain of mud, about two miles in circumference, in the centre of which immense bodies of salt mud were thrown up, to the height of from ten to fifteen feet, in the form of large globes, which, bursting, emitted volumes of dense white smoke. These large globes or bubbles, of which there were two, continued throwing up, and bursting seven or eight times in a minute At times they throw up two or three tons of mud. We got to leeward of the smoke, and found it to smell like the washing of a gun-barrel.