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GOLD—ITS NATURAL HISTORY.
ing extensibility, which enables us to employ it in the embellishment
of the works of art at a very moderate expence, are one foundation
for the value that is fet on it. The principal cause, however, of the
high price of gold, is the difficulty of procuring it. And yet there is
more of it produced by nature than is commonly imagined; but it is
generally dispersed through such immense quantities of other matter,
that it cannot be collected without great labour and expence.
The Spanish and Portuguese parts of America, and some parts of
India and Africa, afford the largest quantities of gold. Amazing re
ports have been published of the abundance of this metal in some of
the Spanish possessions in America; but these reports are published in
late accounts of fome newly discovered places where gold has been
found, and the accounts of such new discoveries are commonly am
plified *.
Wherever gold occurs, it is found much more commonly in its
metallic state, and nearly pure, than in the state of an ore. This is
probably a consequence of its having no attraction for sulphur, and
very little for arsenic, and of its resisting the action of the mineral
* Some parts of the new kingdom of Grenada (which is a high inland country east
of the Andes, and in the north end of South America) are rich in gold, which is all
waſh-gold. On a rising ground near Pamplona, fingle labourers have collected in a day
what was equal in value to 1000 pesos, or to 2251.=57 ounces 4 drachms 42 grains.
A late governor of Santa Fe brought with him to Spain a lump of virgin gold estimat
ed to be worth 740l. Sterling. (The weight of it must have been about 189 ounces,
or 23 merks and 5 ounces, even supposing it gold equal in purity to English standard.)
At Cineguilla, in the province of Sonora, the Spaniards found a plain fourteen leagues
in extent, in which they found wash-gold at the depth of only sixteen inches, the grains
of such a size that some of them weighed nine merks, and in such quantities, that in a
ſhort time, with a few labourers, they collected 1000 merks of gold in grains, (equal in
value to 31,2191. 10s. Sterling) even without taking time to waſh the earth that had
been dug, which appeared to be so rich, that persons of skill computed that it might
yield gold to the value of a million of pesos; which is equal to 225,0001. Sterling.
In one place, called the Mine Fecorata, in Cinalod, they found a grain of gold 22 carats
fine, which weighed 16 merks 4 ounces 4 ochavas. It is now deposited in the royal
cabinet at Madrid. This grain is worth 4981251. Sterling.