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96 GOLD.
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Proximately
it is occasionally derived from rocks belonging to various formations
which range from Permian through tertiary periods up to recent alluvial
deposits. To some of the facts under this last heading which will be
found in the following detailed accounts, I would invite particular
attention, as they are ofi considerable interest when placed in
comparison with similar facts in other gold-producing countries.
Gold-washing,
as practised in India, affords an example, I believe, of human
degradation. The colonies of washers who are found plying their trade
in most of the areas where, geologically speaking, the occurrence of
gold is possible, must be regarded as the remnants of a people
possessing special knowledge }• for although the former may have some
acquaintance with the appearance of the rocks in the neighbourhood of
which gold occurs, still, so far as I could ascertain from a close
examination of the operations of two gold-washers who were in my
sendee for about three months, such acquaintance, if possessed, is
rarely availed of. Indeed I doubt if they ever look upon the rocks as
being really the source from whence the gold has been derived. They
know of its occurrence in the sands and alluvial soils, but whence it
ultimately came from they do not trouble to consider.
But
it cannot always have been so, for their earliest progenitors must have
ascertained the existence of the gold by the application of
experimental research
* I have often been struck with the traditional knowledge of such subjects as materia medico, possessed by individuals of semi-savage tribes, who never seem to discover a new
idea for themselves, nor to modify in the slightest degree, when
uninfluenced by superior races, their method of performing any one
single act in their domestic economy.
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