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Sec. III, Ch. 7: The Emerald

Sec. III, Ch. 7: The Emerald Page of 366 Sec. III, Ch. 7: The Emerald Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
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The Emerald.
The hills bear the appearance of a great rabbit-warren. Everywhere are holes, each with its talus of silver-grey powder streaming down the hillside. The talc occurs in solid white blocks, coloured green, and other tints, and often bright yellow like gold. When climbing the hills the feeling underfoot is that of walking on soft dead wood. Square towers mark the mountain tops. Some were watch towers, whence the watchmen guarded the miners and gazed over the blue sea, looking eagerly for the expected ships of wine and food. Other towers appear to have been magazines.
Some ten miles north of Sikait are the Jebel Zabbara mines. Here the principal shafts are in low spurs, doubled up in syncline and anticline in rapid repetition, and jutting from a mass of schist some 1,200 feet in relative height.
Here, among the ruins of the old houses, are the stone houses and ovens of the Albanian miners who in 1819 were placed by Muhammad Ali under the supervision of Cailliaud, a young French silversmith who earned, later on, a great reputation as traveller and mineralogist in the Soudan with Ibraham Pasha.
Cailliaud's account of his discovery of these mines has been published by the French Academy. Why they were abandoned is nowhere stated, but it was-probably owing to Cailliaud being commanded to accompany the expedition to the Soudan, and to the stoppage of supplies to the miners the moment his presence was removed.
These Albanians did an immense amount of work if they did all that has been done. In one valley the silvery talus cannot amount to less than 20,coo to 25,000 tons. 1 hey made good square-sectioned shafts. Across them are wedged stout boughs of trees. Mr. Floyer descended
Sec. III, Ch. 7: The Emerald Page of 366 Sec. III, Ch. 7: The Emerald
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