90 



general form as the ' marks' of the different mines now in work, 

 and which, no doubt, are their literal and lineal descendants. 

 Thus the Aid or Auld Gang mine of Swaledale, old in the 

 days of the Saxons ; the mines of Greenhow Hill, which sup- 

 plied sheet and pipe lead for our baths and coffins, at York, as 

 well as tribute to the imperial treasury ; the mines of Middleton 

 and Youlgreave (Aldgroove), from which the Lutuda? sent not 

 only lead, but ^exargentate' (that is to say refined) lead from 

 which the silver had been removed, use to this day the pig of 

 the same weight of 1^ cwt., of similar shape, and similar mark 

 to that of 1800 years antiquity.* And just as at the present day, 

 the countryman whose galloway is tired drops the leaden load 

 by the way side, for another day's work, so in ihe days of Rome, 

 the Brigantian lead was thrown down from the tired caballus 

 by the side of the antient mining road, on Matlock Moor in 

 Derbyshire, and Dacre Pasture in Yorkshire. 



This fact of the discovery of the Roman lead, not at the 

 mines, but at a distance of some miles from them on a track 

 leading towards a Roman or rather a Pre-Roman station, is of 

 much importance in Archaeology. For thus we arrive, in the first 

 place, at the conviction of the existence of very antient mining 

 roads not of Roman work, nor probably of Roman but of ear- 

 lier date, leading toward Cataractonium, Isurium, Eburacum, 

 Mancunium, Derventio, or rather to the Brigantian towns or 

 centres of trade, on which the Romans following their wont in 

 Africa, Spain, and Gaul, fixed their attention and established 

 their war camps and their colonies. The politic lords of the 

 world broke up no national industry, set no legionaries to sup- 

 plant the native miners, but stationing a few cohorts on the 

 antient roads, in or close to the mining district, as at Hope and 

 Bainbridge, to controul a rude population, received regularly the 

 fruits of the industry which they might direct, but did not per- 

 sonally share. Viewed in this light, how complete appears the 

 grasp of the Roman treasury on the mining fields of Britain. 



* The modern pig is made near to ^ of a fodder or 17GJ lbs. Three Roman 

 pigs found near Matlock, in 1777, 1783, 1787, weighed 173, 126, and 8i lbs., these 

 being as 1, f, and § of the modern pig. 



