Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/280

276

lack of water, except that of the river miles away and that caught during the few rainfalls.

Most of the mining is done by individuals called 'garimpeiros,' who either work for themselves or on shares with the owner of the claim. In Bahia, the number of owners hiring laborers to work their claims is not more than half a dozen.

The miners are almost entirely blacks or of mixed race. The greater part of them live in near-by towns, but many have quarters built beneath an overhanging ledge, from which they have removed the diamond-bearing material.

Their food consists chiefly of native beans with jerked beef and an abundance of mandioca meal, which takes the place of bread, with now and then fresh meat, a much prized boiled dinner or a piece of salt fish. Drinking water is in abundance everywhere. Native rum can be had very cheap, yet the number addicted to intemperance is very small, wonderfully so for a mining region.

Many times provisions are advanced by the grocer until a find is made, when all is paid up, and if there is a balance such high-priced articles as beer, American canned oysters, lobsters, etc., are indulged in as long as the money lasts.

The health of the region leaves much to be desired. Because of the great quantities of semi-stagnant water on every hand, every facility is given to create anopheles mosquitoes, with the result that malaria in it? worst types is always in abundance.

By far the greater part of the successful mining is still done by antiquated methods which have the advantage that they require little capital for an outfit. A miner's tools consist of a short-handled hoe