The villages of gold-seekers about Accra and elsewhere, on the Gold Coast, are the villages of negroes more squalid and wretched than free negroes usually are. The wretchedness of gold-hunters in the rich field of California is by this time a hackneyed theme. Take, now, the picture of a tolerably prosperous gold-seeker in Brazil. He goes into the river with a leathern jacket on, having a leathern bag fastened before him. In his hand he carries a round bowl, of fig-tree wood, about four or five feet in circumference, and one foot deep. He goes into the river at a part where it is not rapid, where it makes a bend, and where it has deep holes. Be pleased to remember that, and do not yet lose sight of what was before said about the heaviness of quartz. The gold-seeker, then, standing in the water, scrapes away with his feet the large stones and the upper layers of sand, and fishes up a bowlful of the older gravel. This he shakes and washes, and removes the upper layer; the gold being the heaviest thing in the bowl, sinks, and when he has got rid of all the other matter, which is after a quarter of an hour's work, or more, he puts into his pouch the residual treasure, which is worth twopence farthing, on an average. He may earn in this way about sevenpence an hour--not bad wages, but, taken in connection with the nature of the work, they do not look exceedingly attractive. Here 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 neighbors. 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 neighborhood are washed away. Or when the whole is swept away together, after the 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 neighbors to each other.