ugh a forest led us,
in fifteen minutes, over the mountain-spur, Malanguit, which again
projected itself right across our path into the sea, to the mouth
of the Paracale. The long bridge here was so rotten that we were
obliged to lead the horses over at wide intervals apart; and on the
further side lies the place called Paracale, from which my companions
continued their journey across Mauban to Manila.

[Red lead.] Paracale and Mambulao are two localities well known to
all mineralogists, from the red lead ore occurring there. On the
following morning I returned to Longos; which consists of only a few
miserable huts inhabited by gold-washers, who go about almost naked,
probably because they are laboring during the greater part of the
day in the water; but they are also very poor.

[Gold mining.] The soil is composed of rubbish, decomposed fragments of
crystalline rock, rich in broken pieces of quartz. The workmen make
holes in the ground two and one-half feet long, two and one-half
broad, and to thirty feet deep. At three feet below the surface
the rock is generally found to contain gold, the value increasing
down to eighteen feet of depth, and then again diminishing, though
these proportions are very uncertain, and there is much fruitless
search. The rock is carried out of the holes in baskets, on ladders
of bamboo, and the water in small pails; but in the rainy season the
holes cannot possibly be kept free from water, as they are situated
on the slope of the mountain, and are filled quicker than they can
be emptied. The want of apparatus for discharging water also accounts
for the fact that the pits are not dug deeper.

[A primitive rock breaker.] The breaking of the auriferous rock is
effected with two stones; of which one serves as anvil, and the other
as hammer. The former, which is slightly hollowed in the center, is
laid flat upon the ground; and the latter, four by eight by eight
inches in dimensions, and therefore of about twenty-five pounds
weight, is made fast with rattan to the top of a slender young tree,
which lies in a sloping position in a fork, and at its opposite end is
firmly fixed in the ground. The workman with a jerk forces the stone
that serves for hammer down upon the auriferous rock, and allows it
to be again carried upwards by the elasticity of the young tree.

[An arrastre.] The crushing of the broken rock is effected with
an apparatus equally crude. A thick stake rises from the center
of