Working veins.—Throughout
South-East Wynaad and at several places in the low country of Malabar
the quartz veins have been worked by the natives. The appearance cf the
workings indicate the following methods of getting out stone:—
(1) Quarrying on the outcrop of the veins (surface workings).
(2) Vertical shafts.
(3) Adits.
(4) Vertical shafts with adits therefrom.
(5) Shafts on the underlie.
Quarrying
on the outcrop of the veins was undoubtedly followed in the first
instance. Gold was seen in the stone, and blocks were broken in order
to procure fragments with gold visible. It is belived that no stone was
crushed which did not show gold,
Subsequently
vertical shafts were sunk, but by what tribe is not known. Many of them
are well formed, always round, and as deep as seventy feet or more.
Some are in solid quartz, others in country rock intersected by "
leaders" and thin veins of quartz. How the miners could possibly have
sunk such shafts in hard dense quartz with the tools they had is hard
to guess. They are plumb and the sides are quite smooth. It is not
uncommon to find a number of shafts very close together, not more than
a- few feet apart. The adits in most cases were evidently constructed
long subsequent to the sinking of the vertical shafts; where the latter
are found on the summit of a hill, they are undercut by adits; and in
some places care has been taken to block up the shafts so as to prevent
stones and earth falling in on the miners below. It is unreasonable to
suppose that several vertical shafts would have been sunk close
together after the adit was driven. They could not have served any
useful purpose. And the miners who constructed the adits did not
generally sink vertical shafts in following the reefs downwards from
their adits; they sunk shafts on the underlie or foot-wall, and these
are to be seen in various places.
Towards
the north-west another system was employed. In mining on the steep
slope of a hill a vertical shaft was sunk to the depth of six or eight
feet so as to cut the reef, and an adit was driven therefrom. With what
object this method was adopted is not known ; but it may be supposed
that in some situations difficulties were found in protecting an open
cutting from the rains. A cutting necessary to get a " face" in the
solid rock would present surfaces which would be to some extent
affected by the rains; whereas by sinking a shaft (at all times easily
protected) the miners were able to penetrate the hill with safety,
though the additional labor involved in getting out stone would be
great. There are, as already slated, not a few shafts sunk on the
underlie in several localities near Devala. The reefs were mined in
this manner, it is almost certain, by the same class of miners as made
the adits.
It
was not unusual for them to penetrate to the depth of sixty or seventy
feet, but where the reefs were flat or had a low dip, these underlie
shafts were only inclined adits, rising where they worked at the casing
of the hanging wall and falling again as they followed the foot-wall.
In
what manner soever the auriferous quartz was procured the
after-treatment was in all cases nearly the same. The quartz broken
into small pieces was given to the women to grind. Each woman was
provided with a niuller or hand-stone, and fragments of quartz were
either ground on a suitable piece of stone in situ or on a large fiat stone procured for the purpose. The pounded stone was subsequently washed in the murriya and the gold got by amalgamation with mercury.
The
auriferous stone was sometimes roasted. Whether merely to effect its
disintegration more easily and rapidly, or whether from a knowledge
that the pyrites in it were auriferous, has not been quite
satisfactorily ascertained.
It is probable, however, that some of the miners knew that the pyrites
