In Rush to Find Gold, Indonesians Defy Dangers

SEKOTONG, Indonesia — On an otherwise verdant and untouched mountain, a patch of orange and blue tarpaulin stood out incongruously near the summit, the telltale sign of an illegal gold mine. The footpath leading there, freshly carved out of the thick bush and pockmarked with stones, suggested that the mine was new.

Women with 50-pound sacks of rocks on their heads clambered down the path, carrying the loads to a nearby village where they would be crushed by hand and by machine, mixed with water and mercury, in a search for specks of gold. At the mine itself, discovered about a week earlier, scores of men were crouching on a steep incline, each digging just below the surface and filling their sacks with stones....

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