Thus it may appear too much to say that Sir G. Anderson is liable for the mismanagement of the colony in toto—for
the total neglect of the public roads. It may appear too much to say,
when you came to the colony you found the roads in good order: they are
now impassable; communication is actually cut off from places of
importance. This is your fault, these are the fruits of your
imbecility; your answer to our petitions for repairs was, ' There is no
money;' and yet at the close of the year you proclaimed and boasted of
a saving of 27,000/. in the treasury! This seems a fearful
contradiction; and the whole public received it as such. The governor
may complain that the public expect loo much ; the public may complain
that the governor does too little.
Upon
these satisfactory terms, governors and their dependents bow each other
out, the colony being a kind of opera stall, a reserved seat for the
governor during the performance of five acts (as we will term his five
years of office); and the fifth act, as usual in tragedies, exposes the
whole plot of the preceding four, and winds up with the customary
disasters.
Now the question is, how long this age of misrule will last.
We
trust the present Government of Ceylon will lay this lesson to heart
and act in a rather more energetic and liberal manner than did its
predecessor twenty-seven years ago. Meantime, it is of some practical
importance to the Colony to have so staunch a believer in its
auriferous wealth as Sir Samuel Baker at headquarters. He is the
special friend of His Grace the Duke of Sutherland (who, by the way,
visited Kandy and Nuwara Eliya in 1875), and of other enterprizing
public men in England who would speedily ensure the development of gold
mines here, provided it were shewn on competent authority that a
paying reef were available. From the article on " Gold" in the latest
issue of the " Encyclopaedia Britannica" we quote some passages of
general interest at this moment:—
The
association and distribution of gold may be considered undjr two
different heads, namely, as it occurs in mineral veins and in alluvial
or other superficial deposits which are derived from the waste of the
former. As regards the first, it is chiefly found in quartz veins or
reefs traversing slaty or crystalline rocks usually talcose or
chloritic schists either alone or in association with iron, copper,
magnetic and arsenical pyrites, galena, specular iron ore, and silver
ores, and more rarely with sulphide of molybdenum, tungstate of
calcium, bismuth, and tellurium minerals. Another more exceptional
association, that with bismuth in calcite from Queensland, was
described by the late Mr. Daintre. In Hungary, the Urals, and northern
Peru, silicates and carbonates of manganese are not uncommonly found in
the gold and silver bearing veins. In the second or alluvial class of
deposits the associated minerals are chiefly those of great density and
hardness, such as platinum, osmiridum, and other metals of the platinum
group, tinstone, chromic, magnetic, and brown iron ' ores, diamond,
ruby, and sapphire, zircon, topaz, garnet, &c, which represent the
more durable original constituents of the rocks whose disintegration
has furnished the detritus. Native lead and zinc have also been
reported among such minerals, but their authenticity is somewhat
doubtful. * * * *
In vein mining, which is more difficult and costly, a larger yield is necessary, but probably 5 dwt., or about £1 in value per ton, will in most places represent paying quantities from quartz containing free gold, i. e., not associated with pyrites. The proportional yield and quantities of the different
