CHAP. XXV.
BRASIL.
265
cooler portion of mankind to be on the whole alosing pursuit.
It has not been deemed necessary to enter intoany inquiry respecting the experiments making bycompanies formed in England for procuring goldfrom Brasil . The operations had produced noeffect on the period under our consideration.According to the accounts printed in the Quar-terly Mining Review, the pi’oduce of gold withinthe last year seems to have been very considerablymore than the same districts had previously fur-nished.
No data present themselves from which to form ajudgment either of the proportion of the expendi-ture to the proceeds, or of the probability of theproducts increasing or diminishing in future. Dr.Walsh, who visited Brasil in 1829, states that inthe first six months of that year the works atGongo Saco had yielded two thousand and thirty-seven pounds of gold 1 . This would amount tobetween eighty and ninety thousand pounds ster-ling. The persons employed in those works ap-pear to be one hundred and eighty Englishmen,and six hundred other individuals, chiefly slavesand their families who had been purchased by theassociation. A few years will probably enable thepublic as well as the adventurers to determine howfar the undertaking is likely to be profitable or