Graham, these poor people washed out 2665 ounces of gold (Sir William Wilde says £10,000 worth) by the most primitive methods. The government then sent soldiers to clear the valley (on the ground that the people were assembling for "treasonable purposes"), and assumed the control of the auriferous stream.

Here may be asked and answered the pregnant question: Why are these Irish gold-fields not worked?

Before the Parliamentary Committee on Irish Industries (on May 21, 1885) this question was asked of Professor Edward Hull, LL.D., F.R.S., Director of the Royal Geological Survey of Ireland and Dean of the Faculty of the Royal College of Sciencecertainly a person well qualified to give an intelligent and unbiassed answer, at least an answer unbiassed in favor of Ireland. Professor Hull, referring to the Wicklow district, where these poor people found the gold, answered as follows:

“Question: You see no reason why that gold-mining industry could not be worked at a fair profit?

.

Prof. Hull I think it is very likely that it could. It is said that very large quantities of gold were got there in former times, before it was under the Government. Question: Before 1796 or 1797 ?

Prof Hull: Before the Government took it up. It became Government property, and then it fell off. The peasants, in a fortnight, made over £3000 worth of gold, and then the Government took it and the search was abandoned.”

Then Professor Hull was asked whether he thought it likely that the source of the gold could be discovered, and his answer was: "They have failed to discover the source of the gold in the old rocks, though no doubt that is the source. I think that it is an industry well worth working up. . . . I have no doubt there is a great deal of gold to be got in the same locality that it used to be got in, upon the west of the mountain called Crochan Kinshela. There is a valley there in which the gold was obtained by washing from the alluvial materials; and there is no reason to suppose that there is not as much gold in the alluvial material which has been left behind as there was in that which has been washed."

When the British Government drove the peasants out of this Wicklow Valley, the step was taken, of course, "according to law." The law was made, as usual, for the occasion. An Act of Parliament was passed to enable "the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury to conduct the working of a gold-mine in Wicklow;" and the Government appointed as their agents Messrs. Weaver, Mills, and King.

We learn from this Weaver (Trans. Royal Geological Society, vol. v., part 1), that these agents were instructed to "endeavor to collect all the gold deposited, and thereby to remove every tempta

tion for the assembling of mobs"; and they continued accordingly to work on the auriferous drift "until the depth of covering had become sufficiently thick to preclude the hope of gain from individual trials, conducted without order or regularity," or, in plain words, until they had buried the gold too deep for the people to dig out. While the militia were thus employed, the peasants were occupied in prospecting the neighboring streams; but, naturally, any finds thus made were kept secret. In 1798, the rebellion having broken out, the troops were transferred to Rathdrum Barracks, which they fortified with the mining plant. Up to this time their operations had resulted in a large profit, the washing of the sand left by the peasants having afforded 555 ounces of fine gold. After the rebellion, however, the agents devoted most of their time to a search for the source of the drift gold in the neighboring hills. There were then, as there are to-day, many cogent reasons for adopting this plan, the principal being the frequent occurrence of nuggets with adherent quartz, which proved the existence somewhere of an auriferous quartz lode. Fortunately the Government failed to discover this lode, and the troops were withdrawn, after having taken £3675 worth of gold from the valley.

"Since the departure of the English troops from the valley," Mr. Arthur G. Ryder, manager of the Ovoca Mineral Company (Paper read before Parliamentary Committee, 1885), says: "The peasants have found at least £25,000 worth of nuggets in the same stream, and three separate attempts have been made to discover the lode, but without success. . . . I am, therefore, convinced that the gold district of Crochan Kinshela now presents a most promising field for the profitable employment of capital, and I know that employment is everywhere urgently needed by the impoverished population of Wicklow."

Mr. Ryder says in relation to the auriferous lodes of Connorree, Kilmacoo, etc.: "I have found gold in no less than 15 different ores, clays, etc., from these mines, using the Readwin amalgamation process. As to the stream or placer gold of the district, I am satisfied that did such streams exist in any other country than Ireland, they would soon be heard of all over the world. From part of one small rivulet at least £50,000 worth of gold has been washed in recent years. Even in its present bed, nuggets of 24, 22, 19, etc., ounces have been found; but the dry gulches have never been explored. The lower part of the principal river-course, to which all the streams contribute, is still virgin ground; yet the lower a miner prospects down an auriferous stream, the greater, as a rule, is his success. The whole district is known to be auriferous; yet an infinitesimal portion only of the 'black sand' has been uncovered. None of the improved processes for winning

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gold have ever been adopted here; yet the greatest advances have of late been made in the direction of more effective machinery. Only where the valley is wide and flat and the gold much scattered, have trials been made; yet in its lower course the stream flows through a narrow chasm, where the nuggets are probably concentrated. Both water and fuel are available on the spot, and labor is cheaper, perhaps, than at any other gold-field in the world. The sands of the Rhine are washed for gold, although but one part of gold is found in eight million parts of sand."

Professor W. K. Sullivan, Ph.D., M.R.I.A., President of the Queen's College at Cork, and member of the Senate of the Royal University of Ireland, testified before the Parliamentary Industrial Committee of 1885, in reference to the Ovoca gold-fields: "The working of the streams by the peasants is most unsystematic, but they get an annual sum; it is very difficult to ascertain how much it is exactly, because they do not either like you to see their operations or to give you the gold, for fear it might be seized by the Crown. Gold-mines in Ireland are the property of the Crown. . . . . I have seen the peasants washing for gold and have got specimens of the gold along with the tin which accompanies it."

Mr. G. Henry Kinahan, member and Vice-President of the Royal Geological Survey of Ireland, M.R.I.A., author of "The Geology of Ireland," says: "I think there is amply sufficient ground for exploring the Wicklow gold-fields. There are many places in Ireland where I believe there are gold-mines. There ought to be deep placers at Wooden Bridge. There has never been any attempt made to work deep placers on the different gold-streams. There are the Gold Valley stream and the Darragh Water, both of which are known to contain placer-gold. Those streams meet at Wooden Bridge, but there never was any trial made there, unless there might have been prehistoric works."

Mr. Kinahan (" Geology of Ireland") says that in all probability the river bed down to the seaboard may be found to contain gold, and there are many considerations which justify this opinion. He says: "It is very desirable that researches of this nature should be encouraged, since discoveries of gold-bearing rocks usually lead to a knowledge of the existence of deposits of other useful metals."

The bed of this Wicklow gold, in the quartz, has never been discovered. All the workings are "placers," or washing process. Mr. Kinahan says: "A lode or quartz reef exists somewhere in Wicklow, because the gold there has always been, more or less, attached to pieces of quartz." And, he adds: "I strongly suspect that the reef exists about where the Government was asked

to make a trial some time ago." This trial, of course, was not made.

Mr. William George Strype, Civil Engineer, Managing Director of the Dublin and Wicklow Manure Company, and Director of several mines in Wicklow, says: "It is a well-known fact that there is a considerable quantity of gold in Wicklow, but no one has, up to the present, succeeded in extracting it with advantage." Professor Hull says: "There is gold in alluvial deposits in several valleys in the County of Wicklow, as the stream at east base of Croghan-Kinshella, Knockmiller, Clonwilliam, Ballintemple, and tributaries of the Aughrim river. Till recently it has been worked in placer mines in Gold Mines Valley."

The placer gold is said, by Gerard Boate, to have been found prior to 1652, in the Moyola river, County Derry. Other gold is said to have been found, before 1820, in the sands of the streams of Slieve-an-Orra, County Antrim; Ballinascorney Gap, County Dublin; Barony of St. Mullins, County Carlow; in the County Wicklow, at Greystones; and in the Vale of Ovoca, with its tributary valleys.

Mr. Kinahan (Royal Geological Survey) says of the Government workings in Wicklow in 1797-8: "All these were shallow workings; the orders given to Weaver, the principal engineer, being to work only to such a depth as would prevent the country people from working them. Since then all workings have been shallow, none exceeding 30 feet in depth, while most of them were only from 12 to 15 feet deep."

Mr. Arthur Ryder says. "Gold is disseminated throughout the whole of the Ovoca district and has been found in large quantities in Gold Mines Valley. I have worked 17 samples of local ores, clays, etc., by the Readwin process, and in 15 of these I found gold, ranging from a trace up to 6 dwts. per ton. I have read of a foreign mine where ores holding 3 dwts. per ton are profitably worked. The "rotten quartz" of Connorree, containing 6 dwts., can be raised for 2s. per 21 cwts. Silver is found in the bluestone and in some of the iron pyrites, and varies from .009 per cent. to .036 per cent. American ores which are worked run as low as .001 per cent."

With regard to the workable silver in Wicklow, the following comparison is made from "Mineral Statistics," an English publication:

In the year 1753 five hundred miners were employed at Cronebane, Wicklow, where a discovery of bluestone was made, and the Rev. Dr. Henry, F.G.S., in his report to Earl Cadogan, writes in that year: "Beneath this (i. e., the bluestone) lies a rich rocky silver ore, which sparkles brightly and yields 75 ounces of pure silver out of a ton of ore, besides a great quantity of pure lead." It is but reasonable to conclude that similar conditions still prevail at Kilmacoo, where, according to Mr. Ryder, C.E., about 800 tons of bluestone are now in sight.

Elsewhere throughout the County Wicklow, according to various authorities, alluvium gold occurs in the higher shallow alluvium of the valleys (placers), in the lower deep alluvium of the valleys (deep placers), in the alluvium of the beds of the high, now dry, supplementary streams of the ancient or primary valleys (dry gulch placers), and in the shelves, or high level flats, on the sides of the valleys (shelf, reef, or bar placers).

In modern times in none of the valleys of the County Wicklow has gold been worked, except in the shallow and dry gulch placers.

"The experiments and calculations made," says Mr. Kinahan, speaking for the Royal Geological Survey of Ireland, "suggest that gold probably exists in the following places: Three miles of untried deep alluvium in the Coolbawn Valley; over a mile of deep alluvium in the Gold Mines Valley; about eight miles of alluvium along the Darrah Water, from Tomnaskela to the Lower Meeting of the Waters; six miles of the Valley of the Ow; three miles of deep alluvium along the Macreddin stream; and from the Ovoca mines to the sea of Arklow, six miles of deep alluvium. Besides the foregoing deep and shallow placers there is the probability of the existence of dry gulch and bar or shelf placers. In connection with the south branch of the Gold Mines Valley, one or two dry gulches were worked by Weaver, who got in them 'large gold.' Elsewhere they, or the bar placers, have not been looked after; yet, in many places there is a possibility, if not a probability, that such golden relics may exist. There are other places in the County Wicklow, such as Ballinglen and the Tinnahela stream, in which gold has not been tried for, although the indications would suggest its existence. Attention, therefore, may be called to them."

Every other mineral treasure in Ireland, and many are unexcelled in the whole world, is in the same deplorable condition as the gold fields. The few hundred landlords who own the country are too idle, too ignorant, or too deeply mortgaged to make the proper investigations or begin practical developments. And where, as in some strange instances, men are found willing to