pply has been introduced by all the companies now
pumping it up from depths of 200 feet from the bottoms of abandoned
shafts. There was a remarkable confirmation of the connection between
cholera and water supply and sanitation one year, and the first company
which paid attention to these points had no cholera amongst its people,
while most of the other mines had more or less of the disease. I may
mention here a fact to which I have alluded in my chapter on coffee
planting in Mysore--namely, that Europeans in Mysore have been so little
liable to cholera that in sixty years there has only been one death from
it amongst the European officials of the province, and one doubtful case
amongst the planters.

As regards mining and the extraction of gold, there is little to be said.
I inspected the works and the rock drills. These work through the agency
of compressed air, and at a cost of 15 rupees a day for coal for each
drill, the same tool which is used in drilling by hand. It is doubtful
whether hand-drilling is not cheaper, but the latter is far slower, and
hence does not pay as well, rapid progress being absolutely essential.
When working with rock drills, a shaft can be sunk 10 to 20 feet a month,
against 7 to 8 feet by hand, and a level may on the average be driven 45
to 50 feet a month by rock drills against 10 or 12 feet by hand. When,
however, a large surface for operating on is exposed, hand-drilling may be
profitably employed. This is interesting as illustrating the fact that
where labour is cheap machines seldom pay, and this is particularly worth
mentioning for the benefit of those who have thought that it would be
useful to introduce agricultural machinery into India. After looking at
the rock drills I inspected the gold extraction works. The processes here
need not detain us long. The quartz is first broken by stone-breakers
like those used in England. The broken stone is then placed in an iron
trough (battery box), and is pounded by iron stampers, which of course are
worked by machinery. In front of this trough is a fine sieve. Water is
incessantly run into the trough, and as it overflows, carries with it all
the quartz which has been pounded sufficiently to pass through the sieve.
The water, mingled with this finely powdered quartz, then falls on to a
sloping plate of copper coated with quicksilver, which amalgamates with,
and so detains, the gold. The deposit thus formed is scraped off the
sheets of copper at