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CHAPTER XVI.
GOLD ABOUT AXIM, ESPECIALLY AT THE APATIM OR BUJIA CONCESSION.
Any one who has eyes to see can assure himself that Axim is the threshold
of the Gold-region. It abounds in diorite, a rock usually associated with
the best paying lodes. After heavy showers the naked eye can note spangles
of the precious metal in the street-roads. You can pan it out of the
wall-swish. The little stream-beds, bone-dry throughout the hot season,
roll down, during the rains, a quantity of dark arenaceous matter, like
that of Taranaki, New Zealand, and the 'black sand' of Australia, which
collects near the sea in stripes and patches. The people believe that
without it gold never occurs; and, if they collect the common yellow sand,
it is to extract from it the darker material. If the stuff does not answer
the magnet, it is probably schorl (tourmaline), hornblende, or dark
quartz. Strangers have often mistaken this emery-like rock for tin, which
occurs abundantly in the northern region. It is simply titaniferous iron,
iserine, pleonaste, ilmenite [Footnote: Or peroxide of iron, with 8 to 23
per cent, of blue oxide of titanium.] and degraded itabirite, the iron and
quartz formation so called in the Brazil; and it is the same mineral which
I found so general throughout the gold and silver fields of neglected
Midian.
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