But whereas the Nile-peoples pounded the stone in mortars and
washed the dust on sloping boards, here the matrix must be laboriously
levigated. A handful of broken quartz is placed upon the 'cankey-stone,'
with which the gudewife grinds her 'mealies.' It is a slightly hollowed
slab of granite or hard conglomerate, some two feet square, sloping away
from the worker, and standing upon a rude tripod of tree-branches secured
by a lashing of 'tie-tie.' The stuff is then rubbed with a hand-stone not
unlike a baker's roll, and a slight deviation is given to it as it moves
'fore and aft.' The reduced stone is caught in a calabash placed at the
lower end of the slab. This is usually night-work, and all the dark hours
will be wasted in grinding down a cubic foot of stone.
The late M. Bonnat had probably read Mr. Andrew Swanzy's evidence before
the House of Commons in 1816: 'Gold is procured in every part of the
country; it appears more like an impregnation of the soil than a mine.'
His long captivity at Kumasi, where to a certain extent he learned the Oji
speech, familiarised him with the native processes; and thus a Frenchman
taught Englishmen to work gold in a golden land where they have been
domiciled--true _faineants_--for nearly three centuries.
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