The Tuy valley has its 'gold mine', as do nearly all the places near mountains inhabited by white Europeans. I was assured that in 1780 foreign gold seekers had been seen extracting gold nuggets and had set up a place for washing the sand. The overseer of a nearby plantation had followed their tracks and after his death a jacket with gold buttons was found among his belongings, which according to popular logic meant that they came from the gold seam, later covered by a rock fall. It was no use my saying that from simply looking at the ground, without opening up a deep gallery, I would not be able to decide if there once had been a mine there - I had to yield to my host's entreaties. For twenty years the overseer's jacket had been the talking-point of the area. Gold dug out from the ground has; in the people's eyes, a special lure unrelated to the diligent farmer harvesting a fertile land under a gentle climate.