Having just returned from spending Christmas and New Year in Borneo, I
came across the following details in a book "The Experiences of a Hunter
and Naturalist in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo" by William T. Hornaday
published c1880.

They might be of interest to somebody.

"About 8pm we reached Busau, twenty-six miles from Kuching, and landed.
Here we were at the terminus of the Borneo Company's tram-way system,
from which the antimony mined in the vicinity and the quicksilver from
Tegora is shipped down the river. Leaving our luggage to be pushed after
us on a tram-car, we set out in the black darkness and walked on the
tram-way four miles to Paku."

"After coffee, with Mr. Everett accompanying us, we set out and walked
four miles northwest to see the Chinese gold-washings at Bau. There was
a good path all the way, through the second growth of jungle, and the
scenery was highly interesting.

Bau takes its name from a peak close to the washings, from the northern
base of which a remarkable pinnacle rises like a gigantic pillar with
the top broken off and its precipitous face smooth and bare.

There are two Chinese companies working gold at Bau, and we visited the
works of both. Both pursue the same wasteful plan. The gold occurs in
very fine particles in a low hill of decomposed porphyry, mixed with a
small proportion of blue limestone, manganese, etc. In appearance it
resembles yellow clay. A large reservoir affords a good head of water,
and, as fast as the hill is dug down, the earth is thrown into the
sluices, some of which are nearly a mile long, and washed away. Three or
four times a year they turn off the water and wash up the residuum by
hand. It is a very wasteful process, and the Chinawomen do a very fair
business in washing out the dirt at the lower end of the sluices.

The two gold companies have separate villages and two sets of shops,
both well built and neatly kept."

"After leaving the cave, we went on higher up the gorge to some of the
remarkable well-like crevices which exist in the hills. They are simply
holes running down through the limestone, with ragged uneven sides, very
often of no greater diameter than a common well, three or four feet, and
sometimes sixty to seventy feet deep. Sometimes gold is found in the
loose dirt at the bottom, and when this is the case they are worked by
the Malays. In order to get down one of these holes and up again, the
prospector puts sticks across the opening, jamming the end firmly into
the cracks in the sides, thus forming a ladder reaching to the bottom.
There is usually a cavern at the bottom of each crevice, and it would
seem that the whole hill is a mass of huge rocks, cracked and seamed
throughout."

"On the way to Tegora, I met Mr. Harvey, a handsome, manly-looking young
Englishman, one of the officers in charge of the mines, who introduced
himself directly and greeted me very cordially. We met again in the
evening at the dinner-table, and he proved to be a very jolly and
hospitable host.

On reaching the mines, I found Mr. H.H. Everett, brother of our Paku
naturalist, weighing out bags of cinnabar dust, and close beside him on
the ground stood about sixty flasks of mercury ready for shipment to
London. A "flask" is a malleable iron bottle with a screw top, which
holds seventy-five pounds of mercury.

The cinnabar ore comes out of a very steep, double-peaked hill composed
of semi-metamorphic rock, rising to an elevation of about one thousand
feet above the sea, and six hundred and fifty feet above the level of
the adjacent swamp. Mr. Everett, with the most cheerful resignation and
truly guide-like patience, took me into each of the four "levels" that
have been mined into the hill, one above another, and gave me all the
facts in the case as we proceeded. The lowest level was a new one, and
the tunnel had not yet reached the ore. The other three had penetrated
quite to the heart of the hill and on reaching the paying ore it had
been mined in every direction, forming a great cavern at the end of each
tunnel. The miners are all Chinamen who work out the ore and sell it to
the Company according to the assay. The ore was then very poor, and
although the rock contained only four per cent. of mercury it was worked
as a matter of necessity and at a loss, while all concerned hoped
constantly for something better. In one of the levels Mr. Everett showed
me a very rich pocket, which had yielded ore almost as heavy as mercury,
being ninety per cent. pure metal.

The Tegora mines were opened in 1868. The first ore taken out was
stamped, by which process about one-fourth of the metal was lost in the
washing. Now it is smelted, and the vapour containing the metal is
passed through a flue or shaft about one thousand feet long, which leads
off up the steep side of the hill The mercury is gradually condensed
upon the sides of the flue, which after a time is cleaned out by men
sent into it. The cleaners often get badly salivated, so much so that
they are sometimes utterly helpless from the sores which break out upon
different parts of their bodies. We saw two poor follows who were
helpless from salivation; and Mr. Everett himself was also badly off
from an overdose of mercury.

The officers of the Borneo Company are very comfortably housed close to
the mine, and in the evening at dinner we were most hospitably
entertained by four of them, Messrs. Everett, Harvey, Gray and Beecher.
Every one was in good spirits, and we had a very merry time until a late
hour."



--
Dave Williams  - [log in to unmask]

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