s
purpose, but the intrinsic value is there all the same.

Besides precious stones, Ceylon produces gold, quicksilver, plumbago
of the finest quality, and magnetic iron ore. Plumbago has at various
times formed quite an item in the exports of the island. The supply of
this article in the neighborhood of Ratnapura is practically
inexhaustible. It is found in large, detached masses of fine quality,
five or six feet below the surface of the ground. There is always a
sure market for plumbago, and it seems singular that a more organized
effort is not made to obtain it for export. The Colonial Blue Book
shows that in 1840 there were only about one thousand hundredweight
packages of plumbago or graphite exported from Ceylon. Each year since
has seen a large increase of these figures, until in 1891 there were
over four hundred thousand hundredweight packages sent from the
island, or say two hundred thousand tons. This aggregate, we are told,
will soon be largely increased by adopting American and European
machinery in mining the crude article. Some of these mines have
reached a depth of six and seven hundred feet. Plumbago mining may not
present the charm which attaches to the digging for rubies and
sapphires, but in the long run the cash results are far more
satisfactory. Even iron would pay better than gems, and it exists here
in inexhaustible quantities, particularly in the western and central
provinces, cropping out at the surface in great purity. The natives
have for centuries been in the habit of smelting this ore, and of
making it into such tools as they required. They are excellent
imitators in metal as well as in wood. In the Colombo Museum there is
a sample of the gun-barrels (really effective arms) which the natives
were accustomed to make, with such primitive tools as they possessed,
out of this home-smelted magnetic ore. The iron implements, which are
successfully wrought into various forms by the rude process of the
natives, are equal in temper to the very best Swedish work, showing
that the raw metal must be of a superior sort.

Long ago, the Chinese exported from this island large quantities of
kaolin (terra alba), for the manufacture of fine pottery, and it is an
article which is still abundant and easily procured here.

A considerable number of Tamils and Moormen are employed by dealers in
Colombo to examine the river-beds in mountain districts in search of
precious stones, and there are also certain indivi