Arrabona - Múzeumi közlemények 3. (Győr, 1961)

A. Uzsoki: On Some Methods of Gold-Washing

angefertigtem Tuch — „guba" genannt — bedeckt. In der Kleinen Ungarischen Tiefebene ist der den Goldwaschtisch bedeckende Stoff dem der Rheingegend ähnlich. Längs der Drau und Mur sind geriefte Goldwaschtische in Verwendung, wie in Baden. A. Uzsoki ON SOME METHODS OF GOLD-WASHING The paper reviews a part of the methods used in gold-chimming from Antiquity up to our day, relying on pertinent literature, in order to furnish comparative material for the historical research of gold-washing in Hungary. Gold-chimming may be reduced to the Bronze Age, archaeological finds are proving, however, that man has got acquainted with gold in the Aeneolithic Age already. He has found it along the rivers and brooks, at the places where water came to the surface or met some barrier. This secondary occurrence of gold has conducted him to chimming, as it were. This fact is borne out also by the circumstances under which the most recent gold- and platinum-fields were discovered. In Antiquity gold has been chimmed on slanting stone tables in the Nubian Wad'i Eshuranib, south of Egypt. The expedition of the ancient Greek Argonauts to Kolchis for the Golden Fleece is in fact the souvenir of gold-washing in the form of a saga. Strabon already recognized its identity with the gathering of gold from the Caucasian brooks with a woolfell. Gallián Celts have washed gold in troughs, whereas Salassians partitioned the Duria river into small canals in order to gather its gold. Pliny describes the gold-chimming of the Romans in Hispánia in detail. Having loosened the rocks by fire, they washed the blasted rubble down to the foot of the mountain, and led it to boarded pipes. They placed ulex, the thorny shrub of the Atlantic flora in the conduit at intervals, catching up the grains of gold thereby. Then they dried and burnt the shrub, chimming the gold out of the ashes afterwards. The panning out of the Romans in Dacia is testified by traces on the surface, water conduits and troughs used for gold-chimming. The method of gold-washing used in the twelfth century along the Rhine is described by Theophilus Presbiter. The gold of the Rhine has been panned out on washing tables, with a technique applied up to the recent times. Having dealt with the methods of the African Negroes in gold-chimming, the paper outlines those applied in America, especially in California and Brasilia. In Asia the outfit of the gold-chimmers along the Amur and the method of the Chinese settlers in Borneo are especially interesting. The paper mentions the European rocking methods too, namely those of Portugal, the Rhine region, Baden and Macedonia; then it deals with the various techniques of the Carpathian basin in detail. In Transylvania a wash-board covered with cloth or its woollen vafiety, the „guba", were generally used. Along the Danube, the Small Plain (in North-Eastern Hungary) was the territory where a cloth-covered washboard has been familiar, similar to that of the Rhine region. On the other hand, the regions along the Drave and the Mura preferred a grooved washboard for panning out, a table analogous to that used in Baden. A. Uzsoki 176