THE MINING AND SMELTING MAGAZINE. JUNE, 1862. Gold Mining at Clogau, North Wales. "Put forth thy hand, reach at the glorious gold!" Pt. II, HENRY VI, Act 1. THE bare existence of gold in various parts of our islands has been the subject of remark from the time of the invasion of the Romans. In most of the places which acquired a notoriety for its occurrence it was found only as spangles or dust in the alluvium of stream works, as at Pentuan, &c., in Cornwall; Croghan Kinshela, in Ireland; Lead-hills, in Scotland. In a few instances it had graced part of a solid vein-as near South Molton: in others it was, in all likelihood, merely represented by those frequent deceivers of the ignorant, pyrites and mica. But during the last twenty years, and this is going back some time before men's eyes were opened by the discoveries in California, a remarkable character has attached itself to a portion of North Wales as a gold-containing district; and even whilst it remained doubtful whether any commercial importance could be ascribed to its presence, the facts were not the less interesting to the mineralogist. Who the Cadmus was that first, on the hills of Merionethshire, exclaimed with Shakespeare's Timon "What is here? "Gold? yellow, glittering, precious gold ?" appears to be already uncertain,-precedence being claimed by several persons. But the first account in print was, I believe, the paper of Mr. Arthur Dean, communicated to the British Association in 1844, in which, not satisfied with stating the few meagre facts known at the time, the author generalized fearlessly, and evolved a complete net-work of lodes, as Germanic writers say, out of the depths of his internal consciousness. VOL. 1. 25 as a Soon after this, in 1846, I had the opportunity of minutely examining some of the more notable lodes near Dolgelly, in the district which had most attracted attention. The Cwm-heisian mine, originally opened to work some lead veins, had just been sold gold mine" for 14,0007., neither buyer nor seller having made the slightest approximation to an estimate of the length, breadth, or depth of the auriferous ground, or of its fair average yield. The assays and experiments made by Mr. Clement, who was called in to act as metallurgist, showed that the specimens contained a proportion of gold which would be considered highly profitable in the old gold mining districts of Salzburg, of Hungary, and of America. Great expense was incurred by Mr. Bruin, the new owner, not in working the ground, or in erecting apparatus under the advice of men who were practised in gold mining, but in following out the contrivances of ingenious schemers; and the result was a very early suspension of all operations. The historical sketch of what has occurred since 1846, in connexion with the gold in the Dolgelly district, might be extended to great length, and not without profit to intending speculators; but I have only glanced at it for the purpose of showing the early date of the original discovery, and the unwise course of action of the adventurers, which has been repeated over and over again by others, down to the present moment. Let me only state, briefly, that after the astounding harvests of gold in California and Australia, and the stirring up of the Exhibition, in 1851, a quicker pulse began to beat in the veins of lessees and explorers and proprietors connected with North Wales, which in 1854 and 1855 broke into a violent yellow fever, and swept over the region between Cader Idris and Snowdon, a "rush " of sharebrokers, miners, tradesmen, swindlers, and inventors, who kept the country in a not unpleasant excitement for about a couple of years. The track of the inundation may still be traced by the curious in the shape of deserted water-wheels, cast-iron balls -massive beyond the dreams of Armstrong or of Whitworth,— unpaid inn bills, and ruinous buildings. Quicker than it arose, the whole affair collapsed; some might call it a bubble, but that I cannot do, seeing that during this time gold was discovered, generally visible too, in a number of different veins, and that the true value of it was never fairly tested. Many thousands of pounds were "expended." In what? Certainly not in miner's work, for there were only two or three instances in which the rock was attacked, but rather in surface erections,—in contrivances patented by people who had never seen a well-provided gold mine, and in transactions for the passage of money from one hand to another. And whilst several hundreds (perhaps one might say thousands) of pounds worth of gold were carried off as specimens, or ostensibly for assays and trials on the grand scale, respectable people in the very town of Dolgelly doubted the existence of the gold in toto,-and Her Majesty, the proprietress of the royal metal, was simply robbed of every tittle of her dues. A period of bankruptcy and destruction of character followed, in * The seller of the mine was the late Mr. James Harvey, who deserves to be mentioned as an enthusiastic amateur of mines, and especially as a firm believer in the ultimate success of gold mining around Dolgelly. |