TIN AND ITS NATIVE LAND. 



2 35 



work up the material in such a way as to eliminate the light 

 sands that are mixed with oxide of tin, till only twenty-five or 

 thirty-five per cent of foreign matter is left. The mineral thus en- 

 riched is melted in little brick furnaces, with the aid of a bellows 

 of bamboo, which is worked by a coolie as if it were a syringe. 

 The white metal as it runs out is cast into the well-known cubic 

 ingots with one side flaring over the edges, so as to give them a 

 pair of ears by which they can be more easily handled. A great 

 deal of metal is certainly wasted in this process ; and a second 

 washing of the refuse would probably be very remunerative. The 

 Chinese and Malays call this lost metal young, tin, which is re- 

 turned to the earth to ripen, because it is not yet old enough to 

 stay in their primitive machines. It is only now, after no one 

 can tell how many centuries since tin has been known and worked 

 in the peninsula, that a rational system of operating the mines is 

 about to be adopted. 



The use of tin dates from extreme antiquity. Homer mentions 

 it as kassiteros, in the descriptions of the arms of his heroes. He- 

 rodotus speaks of the British Islands as the kassitericles. The 

 Phoenicians obtained the tin which they furnished to the ancient 

 world chiefly from those islands, but partly also from Gaul and 

 the Iberian Peninsula. Before the Phoenicians and the Greeks, 

 however, the Chaldeans 

 knew this metal under 

 the name of kastira. The 

 most ancient document 

 in which a mention of it 

 has been found is prob- 

 ably a hymn to the fire, 

 which M. Oppert has 

 translated from the Ac- 

 cadian language, a tongue 

 the knowledge of which 

 has been recently revived 

 from cuneiform docu- 

 ments. Tin was desig- 

 nated in them, five thou- 

 sand years ago, as anahu. 

 The biblical text in the 

 Book of Numbers, in 

 which Moses names tin 



in the enumeration of the metals, is therefore comparatively mod- 

 ern, for it is of fifteen hundred years later date than the hymn to 

 the fire. Even more definite than these texts is an Egyptian 

 statuette in bronze (an alloy of tin) of the age of the pyramids, or 

 3600 years B. c. 



Fig. 2.— Native Chinese Tin-stamping Mill on the 

 Kuantan, Malacca. 



