It is supposed that they must have done so by chatties, and by hand, with the aid of large numbers of people.  As no native iron tools[26] were found in the cases of the two above-mentioned mines, it is evident that they were deliberately abandoned, either from excess of water in them, or some unknown cause.  As the lodes they worked at the depths they reached were rich, it is probable that the miners could no longer contend with the difficulty of removing the large quantities of water.  I am informed by Mr. Plummer that the main lodes where the natives have formerly worked have, in nearly every case, proved successful.  Mr. Plummer has examined other districts in the province, extending more than 100 miles north of Mysore city, and thinks that there is a very large mining future for the Mysore country.  I am informed by one of the mine managers that from the quantity of charcoal found in the old native workings, it is probable that the natives first of all burnt the rock so as to make it the more easy of extraction, just as they now burn granite rock in order the more easily to split off the stone.

As the facts connected with these mines were brought very fully to the notice of the Government at such an early date, it at first sight seems strange that we have to skip over a period of about seventy years till we again meet, in the “Selections” previously quoted from, any further notice of the mines; but the neglect of them was evidently owing to the similar neglect of coffee and other industries, which might have been pushed forward at a much earlier date, and most certainly would have been, had the Government taken pains to see that the information so frequently obtained was published in an available and readable form, instead of being buried in the various offices of the State.  That more efforts were not made in this direction was probably owing to the fact that the Government officers did not perceive the widespread effect that the introduction of European capital would have on the agriculture of the country, and, consequently, on the finances of the State—­a subject referred to in my introductory chapter, and to which I shall again allude in the chapter on Coorg—­while they were under the erroneous impression that Europeans would probably be a cause of annoyance to the Government and the people.  We find a characteristic survival of the last idea in the “Selections,” and in Clause X. of the conditions under which, in 1873, the first leave to mine was granted by the Government of Mysore, it is declared that, “In the event of the grantee causing annoyance or obstruction to any class of the people, or to the officers of Government, the chief commissioner reserves the power of annulling the mining right thus granted.”  But such apprehensions, I need hardly say, have long since passed away, and certainly within my long experience they never existed in Southern India in the case of the planters who, as a body, have always been encouraged by the State, and have always got on well with it and the people, though, of course, as in all countries, there are occasionally individuals who cannot bring themselves into harmony with any person, or condition of things.