The Scotchman’s attention was attracted by the incident, and he, too, shamefacedly recovered his self-control. He endeavored to apologize for his own and Brent’s greedy excitement. Casimiro indicated that no apology was necessary. The effect of gold upon them, in whose integrity and virtue he had high confidence, was but another proof of the danger of allowing such a temptation to remain and attract white men to his country. Both men felt thoroughly uncomfortable as they clambered out of the ditch and proceeded in saner fashion to inspect the marvelous deposit of treasure. They gathered from Casimiro’s explanation that fully two thirds of the sand-filled basin had been carefully gone over within the last few months and all the gold removed down to bed-rock. They found upon examination that the natives had not merely dug trenches through the sand. They had begun the work systematically at one side of the deposit by separating the gold from the sand along a long line. They advanced regularly and slowly in this line, throwing behind them the sand as fast as it had been treated. In this way they had shifted and cleaned two thirds of all the earth in the whole basin. About five hundred men had been engaged in this task, Casimiro said, and he believed they would be able to complete it in three or four months more. They walked all over the deposit, and Fraser examined carefully some samples of the sand that had been worked. “They have done it very thoroughly,” he remarked in considerable surprise. “I don’t discover a trace of free gold in what is left.” Then in calmer frame of mind he entered again the trench which separated the barren from the gold-bearing earth and studied the nature of the deposit more critically. The gold lay almost entirely in the very lowest stratum, resting upon or within five or six inches of the bed-rock which had been the bottom of the river. Casimiro said that in several quite large areas they had found nearly two inches of pure gold, unmixed with sand, lying upon the smooth rock at the bottom of the basin. In five minutes a digger had often scooped up all that a bearer could carry away. So easy and rapid had been the work of taking the gold from its bed and separating it from the gravel, that no less than thirty men on the average had been employed daily merely in carrying the metal from the trenches to the caches, or pits, which had been dug for its reception near by. Casimiro led the way finally to these sunken depositories, only a few hundred feet away upon the bank of the river. Only one mound of earth, beside what seemed to be a large open grave, was visible. The chief said that sixteen other pits had been filled and covered over with earth and _débris_ very carefully so as to leave no trace of their existence. They walked to the side of the excavation still open and looked in.