GOLD-DIGGING IN THIBET.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 501, 8 May 1869, Page 2

GOLD-DIGGING IN THIBET.

A learned Pundit, of India, who has penetrated the unexplored regions of Thibet, has described the gold-diggings of tha Tipper of tlio Indus : The plain is covered by a Tibetan standing camp, very large and very merry, for as the Pundit approached he heard the singing of the diggers and their families at work. The vast camp is at the height of 10,330 feet above the sea, and is swept by an intensely cold wind. The people wear furs in the winter, and their tents are raised in hollows dug in the earth to keep off the wind. The diggers, nevertheless, prefer to work in the winter, when there are 900 tents, as the frozen soil does not then trouble them by falling in. There is no wood; dried dung only is used as fuel, and the water is so brackish that it is not drunk till it has been frozen and remelted. All Tibetans sleep with their knees drawn to their heads and resting on their knees and elbows, while all their clothing is on their backs, to economise heat. They live on yak's flesh, barley cakes, buttermilk, and tea s:ewed with butter. The Tibetan word for gold is sar, and a sarpon, or gold commissioner, superintends the diggings, with an assistant supervising the turn-out of each field. Anyone may dig on paying an annual tax of two-fifths of an ounce of gold. The price of gold was rather less than £3 an ounce. There were two goldsmiths in the place. The part being worked in August, 18G7, was ' a great excavation from 10 to 200 paces in width, and 25 in depth,' and about a mile in length. The bottom, like the tents, is reached by steps and slopes. The digging is carried on by a long-handled kind of spade and sometimes an iron hoe. A stream runs through the bottom of the excavation, making it a quagmire ; but it is dammed up by the diggers, who allow it to escape down a slope on to a cloth placed on an uneven bottom, which receives the gold. One man carries the gold earth to the channel, and another lets the water, go down. Judging from the number of abandoned diggings the men of Thok Jalung are quite as capricious as those of Australia or California.