earn in this way about sevenpence an hour
—not bad wages, but, taken in connexion with
the nature of the work, they do not look
exceedingly attractive. Here there is a safe
income, at any rate—no lottery. A lump of
gold, combined with quartz, like that which
has been dragged from California by its lucky
finder—a lump worth more than three
thousand pounds—is not a prize attainable in river
washing. That lump, its owner says, he got
out of a vein, which vein he comes to Europe
to seek aid in working. Veins of quartz
containing gold, when they occur, directly they
cease to be superficial, cease generally to be
very profitable to their owners. But of that
we shall have to say more presently.

By this time we have had occasion to
observe more than once that gold and quartz
are very friendly neighbours. Now, we will
make use of the fact which we have been
saving up so long, that when granite
decomposes, quartz, the heaviest material is least
easily carried away, and when carried away
is first to be deposited by currents. Gold,
also, is very heavy; in its lightest compound,
it is twelve times heavier than water, and
pure gold is nineteen times heavier; gold,
therefore, when stirred out of its place by
water, will soon settle to the bottom. Very
often gold will not be moved at all, nor even
quartz; so gold and quartz remain, while
substances which formerly existed in their
neighbourhood are washed away. Or when
the whole is swept away together, after
gold has begun sinking, quartz will soon
be sinking too; and so, even in shingle or
alluvial deposits, gold and quartz are apt to
occur as exceedingly close neighbours to each
other.

How the gold forms in those old rocks, we
have no right to say. Be it remembered, that
in newer formations it occurs, although more
sparingly. How the gold forms, we do not
know. In fact, we have no right to say of
gold that it is formed at all. In the present
state of chemistry, gold is considered as an
element, a simple substance, of which other
things are formed, not being itself
compounded out of others. In the present state
of our knowledge, therefore—and the metals
may really be elements—we have nothing to
trouble ourselves about. Gold being one of
the elements (there are somewhere about
forty in all) of which the earth is built, of
course existed from the beginning, and will
be found in the oldest rocks. It exists, like
other elements, in combination. It is
combined with iron, antimony, manganese, copper,
arsenic, and other things. But it is one great
peculiarity of gold that it is not easily oxidised
or rusted; rust being caused in metals by the
action of oxygen contained in our air. When,
therefore, gold, in a compound state, comes to
be superficial, the air acting on the mass will
generally oxidise the other metals, and so act
upon them, more especially where water helps,
that in the lapse of time this superficial gold
will have been purified in the laboratory of
nature, and may be finally picked up in the
pure, or nearly pure, state; or else it may be
washed, equally pure, from the superficial
earth, as is now done in the majority of gold
districts. But deep below the surface, in
quartz veins contained within the bowels of a
mountain—though, to be sure, it is not often
found in such positions—gold exists generally
in a condition far from pure; the chemistry
of the artisan must do what the chemistry of
nature had effected in the other case; and this
involves rather an expensive process.

Surface gold is found, comparatively pure,
in lumps of very various sizes, or in rounded
grains, or in small scales. In this state it is
found in the Ural district, contained in a mass
of coarse gravel, like that found in the
neighbourhood of London; elsewhere, it is contained
in a rough shingle, with much quartz; and
elsewhere, in a more mud-like alluvial deposit.
The water that has washed it out of its first
bed has not been always a mere mountain
torrent, or a river, or a succession of rains.
Gold shingle and sand have been accumulated
in many districts, by the same causes which
produced our local drifts, in which the bones
of the mammoth, the rhinoceros, and other
extinct quadrupeds occur.

The nearly pure gold thus deposited in very
superficial layers, may be readily distinguished
from all other things that have external
resemblance to it. Gold in this state has
always, more or less, its well-known colour,
and the little action of the air upon it causes
its particles to glitter, though they be
distributed only in minute scales through a bed
of sand. But there are other things that
glitter. Scales of mica, to the eye only, very
much resemble gold. But gold is extremely
heavy; twelve or nineteen times heavier
than the same bulk of water; mica is very
light: sand itself being but three times
heavier than water. Let, therefore, sand,
with glittering scales in it, be shaken with
water, and let us watch the order of the
settling. If the scales be gold, they will sink
first, and quickly, to the bottom; if they be
mica, they will take their time, and be among
the last to sink. It is this property of gold
—its weight—which enables us to obtain it by
the process called gold-washing. Earth
containing gold, being agitated in water, the gold
falls to the bottom. Turbid water containing
gold, being poured over a skin, the gold
falls and becomes entangled in the hairs; or
such water being poured over a board with
transverse grooves, the gold is caught in the
depressions. This is the reason why the
Brazilian searcher looks for a depression
in the bottom of the river, and this is
also the origin of those peculiar rich bits
occasionally found in the alluvium of a large
gold-field. Where there has been a hollow,
as the water passed it, gold continually was
arrested there, forming those valuable deposits
which the Brazilians call Caldeiraos.