It is well known that California was prepared for agriculture and viticulture by 'hydraulicking' and other mining operations. It will be the same with the Gold Coast, whose present condition is that of the Lincolnshire fens and the Batavian swamps in the days of the Romans. Let us only have a little patience, and with patience perseverance, which, 'dear my Lord, keeps honour bright.' The water-jet will soon clear away the bush, washing down the tallest trees; it will level the ground and will warp up the swamp till the surface assumes regular raised lines. We run no risk of covering the face of earth with unproductive clay. Here the ground is wanted only as a base for vegetation; sun and rain do all the rest. And thus we may hope that these luxuriant wastes will be turned into fields of bustling activity, and will tell the tale of Cameron and me to a late posterity. But gold is not the only metal yielded by the Gold Coast. I have already alluded in the preceding pages to sundry silver-lodes said to have been worked by the old Hollanders. As is well known, there is no African gold without silver, and this fact renders the legend credible. Even in these dullest of dull days 63,337_l_. worth was the export of 1880. Iron is everywhere, the land is stained red with its oxide; and manganese with cobalt has been observed. I have mentioned that at Akankon my companion showed me a large vein of cinnabar. Copper occurs in small quantities with tin. This metal is found in large veins streaking the granite, according to M. Dahse, who gave me a fine specimen containing some ten and a half per cent. of metal. He has found as much as twelve per cent., when at home 2 to 2-1/2 per cent. pays. [Footnote: 'The present percentage of block-tin derived from all the tin-ore ... of Cornwall is estimated at 2 per cent., or nearly 45 lbs. to the ton of ore.'--Davies, p. 391.] The aspect of the land is diamantiferous; [Footnote: I hear with the greatest pleasure that a syndicate has been formed for working the diamond-diggings of Golconda, a measure advocated by me for many years. Suffice to say here that the Hindus rarely went below 60 feet, because they could not unwater the mine, and that the Brazilian finds his precious stones 280 feet below the surface. Moreover the Indian is the only true diamond: the Brazilian is a good and the Cape a bad natural imitation.] and it has been noticed that a crystal believed to be a diamond has been found in auriferous gravel. In these granitic, gneissose, and quartzose formations topazes, amethysts and sapphires, garnets and rubies, will probably occur, as in the similar rocks of the great Brazilian mining-grounds. The seed-pearl of the Coast-oyster may be developed into a tolerable likeness of the far-famed pear-shaped _Margarita_ of Arabian Katifah, which was bought by Tavernier for the sum, then enormous, of 110,000_l_.