The art of goldwashing is brought to much greater perfection in Transylvania. In the description of the process adopted in that country, it is said that all the rivers, brooks, and even the pools which the rain forms, produce gold: of these the river Aranyosch is the richest, insomuch that the historians have compared it to the Tagus and Pactolus. Excepting the Wallachians, who live by the rivers, the goldwashers consist chiefly of Gipseys. They can judge with the greatest certitude where to wash to advantage. The apparatus used by them for this work is a crooked board, four or five feet long, by two or three broad, generally provided with a wooden rim on each side; over this board they spread a woollen cloth, and scatter the gold-sand, mixed with water, upon it: the small grains of the metal remain sticking to the cloth, which they afterwards wash in a vessel of water, and then separate the gold by means of the trough. When larger particles of sand are found in their washing, they make deeper channels in the middle of their crooked boards, to stop the small pieces as they roll down: they closely examine these small stones, and some are frequently found to have solid gold fixed in them. Those we have mentioned are the customary professions and occupations of Gipseys, in the different countries and states of Europe. But people must not imagine that their smiths’ shops are continually resounding with the hammer; nor that those of other professions are so attentive to their callings, as to provide even a daily subsistence, not to think of a comfortable maintenance. Their consummate laziness, on the contrary, as before observed, occasions so many idle hours in the day, that their family is often reduced to the greatest distress; for which reason, begging or stealing is by far a more common method, than diligence or assiduous application to business, for quieting the cravings of hunger. If we except soldiers, who are kept in order by the discipline of the corporal, with some of the Transylvanian goldwashers, who apply to music—and, living separate from their own caste, in constant habits of intercourse with people of a better sort, have thereby acquired more civilised manners, and learned the distinction, if not between right and wrong, at least between social honour and disgrace—the remainder are, in the most unlimited sense, arrant thieves. In fact, working at any trade, or employment, seems to be merely a disguise, in order the better to enable them to carry on their thieving practices; as the articles which they prepare for sale in the cities and villages, furnish an excellent excuse for sneaking into houses, to pry where there is any thing which they may appropriate to themselves. This kind of artifice is particularly the province of the women, who have always been reckoned more dextrous than the men in the art of stealing. They commonly take children with them, who are tutored to remain behind, in the outer part