Analyses of Ancient Alloys. 99 



material with which it was mixed. In Macedonia, where lead mines 

 were worked in the time of Philip, the father of Alexander, large 

 heaps of slag are found so far above the level of the rivers of the 

 country, that the furnaces in which they wore produced must have 

 been worked either by bellows moved by human labour, or by the 

 force of the prevailing winds alone.* We are also told, that the 

 Peruvians were in the habit of melting their ores by the simple ap- 

 plication of fire, or when they were of a very refractory nature, by 

 means of furnaces so constructed on high ground as to yield a draught 

 without the aid of bellows, a machine with which they were totally 

 unacquainted. t 



The boles of Derbyshire, many of which from the pigs of Roman 

 lead found in their vicinity, may be presumed to be of great antiquity, 

 were worked in nearly a similar manner, and continued to be thus 

 carried on during several centuries, as this method of smelting was, 

 according to Childroy, not quite extinct in the seventeenth century, 

 who, in speaking of the Peak, says : — " The lead-stones in the Peak, 

 lie but just within the ground, next to the upper crust of the earth. 

 They melt the lead on the top of the hills that lie open to the west 

 wind ; making their fires to melt it as soon as the west wind be- 

 gins to blow, which wind, by long experience, they find to hold 

 longest of all others. But for what reason I know not, since I should 

 think lead were the easiest of all metals to melt, they make their 

 fires extraordinary great. "J 



Discoveries made by various travellers in llussia, during the last 

 century, throw considerable light on the subject of mining and me- 

 tallurgy as anciently jiractised in that part of the world. The 

 remains of numerous mines have been traced by Gmelin, Lepechin 

 and Pallas, on the southern and eastern borders of the Ural Moun- 

 tains ; and in them were found hammers and chisels of copper, as 

 well as various instruments of the same metal, of which the uses are 

 at present unknown. From the absence of any remains of masonry 

 in the neighbourhood, these excavations are inferred to have been 

 made by a nomadic people, probably the Scythians; and from no 

 iron tools having been found in any of them, we may conclude that 

 these operations were carried on before the conquest of Siberia by 

 the Tartars, who effected the subjugation of that part of Asia, about 

 150 years before our era.§ Sledges made of large stones, to which 

 handles had been attached, were also discovered, together with boars' 

 fangs, with which the gold appears to have been collected, and 

 leathern bags or pockets in which it was preserved. With such im- 

 perfect tools, the progress made must necessarily have been exceed- 

 ingly slow, and in one instance, after reaching a band of rock and 



* Watson's Chemical Essays, iii., 265. 



t Alonso Barhu. — Treatise on Metals, French translation, i., 272. 



X Childrey's Britain, 1661. 



§ Histoire G6n6alogique des Tartares. 



G 2 



