But this country, which for many years was only considered for the produce of its plantations, has been lately discovered to abound with the two minerals which mankind hold in the greatest esteem, and which they exert their utmost art and industry in acquiring, I mean gold and diamonds. Gold was first found in the mountains which lie adjacent to the city of Rio Janeiro. The occasion of its discovery is variously related, but the most common account is, that the Indians lying on the back of the Portuguese settlements, were observed by the soldiers employed in an expedition against them, to make use of this metal for their fish-hooks, and their manner of procuring it being enquired into, it appeared that great quantities of it were annually washed from the hills, and left amongst the sand and gravel, which remained in the vallies after the running off, or evaporation of the water. It is now little more than forty years since any quantities of gold worth notice have been imported to Europe from Brazil, but since that time the annual imports from thence have been continually augmented by the discovery of places in other provinces, where it is to be met with as plentifully as at first about Rio Janeiro. And it is now said that there is a small slender vein of it spread through all the country at about twenty-four feet from the surface, but that this vein is too thin and poor to answer the expence of digging; however, where the rivers or rains have had any course for a considerable time, there gold is always to be collected, the water having separated the metal from the earth, and deposited it b the sands, thereby saving the expences of digging: so that it is esteemed an infallible gain to be able to divert a stream from its channel, and to ransack its bed. From this account of gathering this metal, it should follow that there are properly no gold mines in Brazil; and this the governor of Rio Grande (who being at St. Catherine's, frequently visited Mr. Anson) did most confidently affirm, assuring us that the gold was all collected either from rivers, or from the beds of torrents after floods. It is indeed asserted, that in the mountains large rocks are found abounding with this metal, and I myself have seen the fragment of one of these rocks, with a considerable lump of gold intangled in it; but even in this case the workmen break off the rocks, and do not properly mine into them, and the great expence in subsisting among these mountains, and afterwards in separating the metal from the stone, makes {54} this method of procuring gold to be but rarely put in practice.