GOLD IN SOUTHERN INDIA. 425
GOLD IN SOUTHERN INDIA. (London " Times," Jany. 20th, 18S8.)
A
meeting of the East India Association was held yesterday afternoon at
Exeter-hall, wh-n a paper on "The Goldfields of Southern India" was
read by Sir Roper Lethbridge, CLE., M.P. The chair was taken by Lord
Harris, and among those present were Sir Richard Meade, K.C.S.I., Mr.
Hyde Clarke, General Lowry, C.B., Mr. C. W. Arathoon, General Wade,
Colonel Byrde, and General R. M. Macdonald.
Sir Roper Lethbridge, in
the course of his paper, pointed out that the great and all-important
difference between the Australian goldfields and those of India was to
be found in the fact that when the former were discovered they had
hardly been trodden by human foot, whereas the latter had been the seat
of a dense population and of a high civilization from time immemorial.
In Australia the English and Californian diggers found the gold much as
nature had left it, not only in the rocky matrix, but cast up and
expressed in the form of nuggets, and permeating great alluvial
deposits or " placers." In India centuries of industrious toil and
minute research had long ago removed all surface gold ; wherever the
old miners could get out the auriferous quartz by quarrying, they had
done so, and the only limits imposed on them had been due to .their
ignorance of those engineering appliances by which mines were drained,
ventilated, &c, as well as of those chemical means by which the
ores were treated. On the other hand, the gold-bearin* rocks of India
seemed to be, on an average, far richer than those of Australia or
America ; and it was now fully established, on official evidence, and
from innumerable private investigations, that many of the auriferous
reefs of Mysore, even at shallow depths, could yield one, two, and even
three ounces per ton on an average of large quantities of crushings. In
the course of the next few weeks the number of stamps at work on the
"Mysore" mine would be exactly doubled, as 30 new stamps were now
almost ready for work. To estimate its value it would be useful to turn
to the experience of Victoria. Between the years i860 and 1876, the
average outturn of all the mines in Victoria (some of course giving
more, some much less) was 11 dwts. 630 grs. per ton, the average for
the year 1876 being 10 dwts. 13*48 grs. per ton, and the average for
1886 a little over 12 dwts. The Black Hill Company, at Ballarat,
ciushed 283,550 tons in 1876, with an average of 2 dwts. 23 grs. per
ton, and paid dividends amounting to ^23.000. And other companies in
Victoria in that year paid dividends on outturns of 2 dwts. 13-4 grs.,
3 dwts. 6-ol grs., and so on. In Mysore labour was far
cheaper, fuel, timber and carriage were more abundant than in Victoria;
and, in fact, as Mr. Brough Smyth said of the Wynaad, " the country
presents the greatest facilities for prosecuting mining operations at
the smallest cost." He added that " the facts will speak more strongly
than words to those acquainted with gold mines. . . . The reefs are
very numerous and they are more than of the average thickness of those
found in other countries; they are of great longitudinal extent, some
being traceable by their outcrops for several miles; they are strong
and persistent and highly auriferous at an elevation of less than 500
ft. above the sea, and they can be traced thence upwards to a height of
nearly 8,000 ft., and near them gold can be washed out of almost every
dish of earth that is dug." AH these were, as Mr. Brough Smyth put it,
plain facts; their absolute accuracy had been abundantly proved since
his time ; and his conclusion, therefore, seemed to him to be entirely
justified—" It must be apparent to all who have given attention to this
question that, sooner or later, gold-mining will be established as an
important industry in Southern India." Eight years had elapsed since
the above words were written, and now at length, with the actual
success of the Mysore Company^ with the rich promise cf a large number
of other mines, with a friendly and prosperous Government determined to
develop the mines by every encouragement
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