the West African coast.

Gold is found in tolerable quantities, even by the Malay easy-going
manner of searching for it, and diamonds and garnets are tolerably
abundant. Gold can be washed with little difficulty from most of the
river beds, and from various alluvial deposits. The metal thus found is
pure, but "rough and shotty." The nearer the mountains the larger the
find. It is of a rich, red color. Iron ore is abundant; but though coal
has been found, it is not of any commercial value. The methods of
mining both for tin and gold are of the most elementary kind, and it is
probable that Perak has still vast metallic treasures to yield up to
scientific exploration and Anglo-Saxon energy.

Rice is the staple food of the inhabitants. Dry rice on the hillsides
was the kind which was formerly exclusively cultivated, but from some
Indians who came from Sumatra to Perak the Malays have learned the mode
of growing the wet variety, and it is now largely practiced. Partly in
consequence of a great lack of agricultural energy, and partly from the
immense quantity of rice required by the non-producing Chinese miners,
Perak imported in 1881 rice to the value of 70,000 pounds.

There is scarcely a tropical product which this magnificent region does
not or may not produce, gutta-percha, india-rubber, sago, tapioca,
palm-oil and fibre, yams, sweet potatoes, cloves, nutmegs, coffee,
tobacco, pepper, gambier, with splendid fruits in perfection--the
banana, bread-fruit, anona, cocoa-nut, mangosteen, durion, jak-fruit,
cashew-nut, guava, bullock's heart, pomegranate, shaddock,
custard-apple, papaya, pine-apple, with countless others. The
indigenous fruits alone are so innumerable, that a description of the
most valuable of them would fill a chapter.