affording any indications on which they can depend), they work horizontally, supporting the shaft with timbers; but to persons acquainted with the berg-werken of Germany or Hungary, these pits would hardly appear to merit the appellation of mines.* In Siberia however, as in Sumatra, the hills yield their gold by slightly working them.  Sand is commonly met with at the depth of three or four fathoms, and beneath this a stratum of napal or steatite, which is considered as a sign that the metal is near; but the least fallible mark is a red stone, called batu kawi, lying in detached pieces.  It is mostly found in red and white clay, and often adhering to small stones, as well as in homogeneous lumps.  The gold is separated from the clay by means of water poured on a hollow board, in the management of which the persons employed are remarkably expert.

(Footnote.  It has been observed to me that it is not so much the want of windlasses or machines (substitutes for which they are ready enough at contriving) that prevents excavation to a great depth as the apprehension of earthquakes, the effect of which has frequently been to overwhelm them before they could escape even from their shallow mines.)

In these perpendicular mines the water is drawn off by hand in pails or buckets.  In the horizontal they make two shafts or entries in a direction parallel to each other, as far as they mean to extend the work, and there connect them by a cross trench.  One of these, by a difference in their respective levels, serves as a drain to carry off the water, whilst the other is kept dry.  They work in parties of from four or five to forty or fifty in number; the proprietor of the ground receiving one half of the produce and the undertakers the other; and it does not appear that the prince receives any established royalty.  The hill people affect a kind of independence or equality which they express by the term of sama rata.

It may well be imagined that mines of this description are very numerous, and in the common estimation of the natives they amount to no fewer than twelve hundred in the dominions of Menangkabau.  A considerable proportion of their produce (perhaps one half) never comes into the hands of Europeans but is conveyed to the eastern side of the island, and yet I have been assured on good authority that from ten to twelve thousand ounces have annually been received, on public and private account, at Padang alone; at Nalabu about two thousand, Natal eight hundred, and Moco-moco six hundred.  The quality of the gold collected in the Padang districts is inferior to that purchased at Natal and Moco-moco, in consequence of the practice of blending together the unequal produce of such a variety of mines which in other parts it is customary to keep distinct.  The gold from the former is of the fineness of from nineteen to twenty-one, and from the latter places is generally of from twenty-two to twenty-three carats.  The finest that has passed