him that he could only have
continued his project at the risk of his life, therefore he gave it up.

In an independent way, the natives obtain gold from earth-washings in
many districts, particularly in the unsubdued regions of Luzon Island,
where it is quite a common occupation. The product is bartered on the
spot to the Chinese ambulant traders for other commodities. Several
times, whilst deer-stalking near the river, a few miles past Montalban
(Rizal), I have fallen in with natives washing the sand from the river
bed in search of gold, and they have shown me some of their findings,
which they preserve in quills.

In other places in Luzon Island gold is procured in very small
quantities by washing the earth from the bottoms of pits dug from 20 to
25 feet deep and 3 feet wide. The extraction of gold from auriferous
rock is also known to the natives. The rock is broken by a stone on
an anvil of the same material. Then the broken pieces are crushed
between roughly-hewn stone rollers put in motion by buffaloes,
the pulverized ore being washed to separate the particles of the
precious metal. I should hardly think the yield was of much account,
as the people engaged in its extraction seemed to be miserably poor.

Gold probably exists in all the largest islands of the Archipelago,
but in a dispersed form; for the fact is, that after centuries of
search, large pockets or veins of it have never been traced to defined
localities, and, so far as discoveries up to the present demonstrate,
this Colony cannot be considered rich in auriferous deposits. Until
the contrary has been proved, I venture to submit the theory that
every gold-bearing reef in these Islands, accessible to man, has been
disintegrated by volcanic action ages ago.

In 1887 a Belgian correspondent wrote to me inquiring about a company
which, he stated, had been formed for working a Philippine mine of
Argentiferous Lead. On investigation I learnt that the mines referred
to were situated at Acsubing, near the village of Consolacion, and at
Panoypoy, close to the village of Talamban in Cebu Island. They became
the property of a Frenchman [156] about the beginning of 1885, and so
far no shipment had been made, although the samples sent to Europe were
said to have yielded an almost incredibly enormous amount of gold (!),
besides being rich in galena (sulphide of lead) and silver. I went to
Cebu Island in June, 1887, and called on the owner in Mandaue with
the objec