About the beginning of December, when the harvest is over and the streams and torrents have greatly subsided, the mansa or chief of the town appoints a day to begin sanoo koo (gold-washing), and the women are sure to have themselves in readiness by the time appointed.  A hoe or spade for digging up the sand, two or three calabashes for washing it in, and a few quills for containing the gold dust, are all the implements necessary for the purpose.  On the morning of their departure a bullock is killed for the first day’s entertainment, and a number of prayers and charms are used to insure success, for a failure on that day is thought a bad omen.

The mansa of Kamalia, with fourteen of his people, were, I remember, so much disappointed in their first day’s washing that very few of them had resolution to persevere, and the few that did had but very indifferent success:  which indeed is not much to be wondered at, for instead of opening some untried place they continued to dig and wash in the same spot where they had dug and washed for years, and where, of course, but few large grains could be left.

The washing of the sands of the streams is by far the easiest way of obtaining the gold dust; but in most places the sands have been so narrowly searched before, that unless the stream takes some new course the gold is found but in small quantities.  While some of the party are busied in washing the sands, others employ themselves farther up the torrent, where the rapidity of the stream has carried away all the clay, sand, etc., and left nothing but small pebbles.  The search among these is a very troublesome task.  I have seen women who have had the skin worn off the tops of their fingers in this employment.  Sometimes, however, they are rewarded by finding pieces of gold, which they call sanoo birro (gold stones), that amply repay them for their trouble.  A woman and her daughter, inhabitants of Kamalia, found in one day two pieces of this kind; one of five drachms and the other of three drachms weight.  But the most certain and profitable mode of washing is practised in the height of the dry season, by digging a deep pit, like a draw-well, near some hill which has previously been discovered to contain gold.  The pit is dug with small spades or corn-hoes, and the earth is drawn up in large calabashes.  As the negroes dig through the different strata of clay or sand, a calabash or two of each is washed by way of experiment; and in this manner the labourers proceed, until they come to a stratum containing gold, or until they are obstructed by rocks, or inundated by water.  In general, when they come to a stratum of fine reddish sand, with small black specks therein, they find gold in some proportion or other, and send up large calabashes full of the sand for the women to wash; for though the pit is dug by the men, the gold is always washed by the women, who are accustomed from their infancy to a similar operation in separating the husks of corn from the meal.