Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore: With chapters on coffee planting in Coorg, the Mysore representative assembly, the Indian congress, caste and the Indian silver question, being the 38 years' experiences of a Mysore planterElliot, Robert H. (Robert Henry)
History
Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore: With chapters on coffee planting in Coorg, the Mysore representative assembly, the Indian congress, caste and the Indian silver question, being the 38 years' experiences of a Mysore planter
Elliot, Robert H. (Robert Henry)
Caste -- India; Coffee; Karnataka (India) -- Description and travel; Karnataka (India) -- Politics and government
After the attention of Lieutenant Warren was called to the subject, he
seems to have taken some trouble in investigating it, and having heard a
vague report that gold had been found in the earth somewhere near a small
hill about nine miles east of Budiakote, offered a reward for information
regarding this, and shortly afterwards a ryot of the village offered to
show him the place, which was close to his village. He visited the spot
in question on February 17th, 1802, "when the women of the village were
assembled, and, each being provided with a small broom and vaning basket,
and hollow board to receive the earth, they went to a jungle on the west
of the village. Here they entered some small nullahs, or rather breaks in
the ground, and removing the gravel with their hands, they swept the earth
underneath into their vaning baskets, by the help of which they further
cleared it of the smaller stones and threw it into the hollow board above
mentioned. Having thus got enough earth together, they adjourned to a tank
and placed the hollow boards containing the earth in the water, but just
deep enough for it to overflow when resting on the ground, and no more.
Then they stirred the earth with the hand, but keeping it over the centre
of the board, so that the metal should fall into the depression by its own
weight, and the earth wash over the edges. After a few minutes' stirring,
they put the metallic matter thus freed of earth into a piece of broken
pot, but only after examining it for gold, which they did by inclining the
board and passing water over the metallic sediment which adhered to it.
They thus drove the light particles before the water, leaving the heavier
metal behind just at the edge where it could easily be seen, however small
the quantity." Lieutenant Warren, having afterwards heard that gold was
extracted from mines near Marikoppa, three miles from Ooregum, visited
four of the mines, the descent into which was made by means of small foot
holes which had been made in their sides. The first was two feet in
breadth and four in length with a depth of about thirty feet, and in
distance fifty feet (of galleries I presume), the others were from thirty
to forty-five feet deep. "The miners extracted the stones (how we are not
informed) and they were passed from hand to hand in baskets by the miners
who were stationed at different points for the purpose of banking the
stones. The women then took them to a large rock, and pounded them to
dust. The latter was then taken to a well and washed by the same process
as that used when washing the earth for gold, when about an equal quantity
of gold was found to that procured from an equal quantity of the
auriferous earth."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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