ANXIENT COPPER MINE NEAR d'SJATE. 359 



true blow upon a stake, whilst some appear from the depth of 

 their concavities to have long withstood the use they were put to 

 and every side of them to have been similarly used. The shaft 

 of the working- was filled in with rubble almost to the top, but 

 there were interesting- evidences of the manner in which the ore 

 had been smelted to extract the copper ; and pieces of slag result- 

 ing from this process are to be found in every direction over the 

 face of the country thereabouts, from this and other workings ; I 

 picked up pieces of slag at the roadside and in the beds of streams 

 which I crossed, as well as at the site of the workings. Mr. 

 Massey was able to inform me that he had crushed pieces of this 

 slag and found in them beads of copper of the size of a pin's 

 head and slightly larger. This would of course be too small in 

 amount to be collected by those who worked these mines, the 

 larger amounts having been in some way separated from the slag 

 and collected ; it is, however, evidence of its being slag from 

 these workings, and that they did smelt the ore for copper on the 

 spot. 



At this mine the evidences of smelting still existed in a slab 

 of rock on one side of the entrance to the adit. The slab was 

 continuous with the rock of the hill-side, but some two feet below 

 it a natural cleavage of the stratum had been widened and a 

 rough tube of burnt pipeclay from the river inserted beneath it, 

 and in some way not now evident carried up to the fire on its 

 upper surface behind. A funnel-shaped piece of earthenware 

 piping was attached to this tube under and round the slab, which 

 was probably connected with some kind of primitive bellows, so 

 that a blast could be kept up in the furnace above, and the ore 

 thus reduced. 



Mr. Massey was able to explain this to me from the evidences 

 he found at this mine when he first w^ent there, but most of which 

 had since been destroyed. He showed me the slab which at that 

 time was covered with slag and still show^ed the piping under and 

 round the back of it. 



The funnel-shaped piece of piping described I saw at the Rev. 

 Mr. Winter's house and recognised it as of the same material 

 which is at present used by the Swazi natives living all round 

 there, for the manufacture of their beautiful pots and which 

 abounds in the beds of the spruits. 



Thus the stone hammers demonstrate how the quarrying of 

 the ore-carrying rock was carried out — the slag that this was 

 smelted on the spot — and the earthenware piping how the smelting 

 was performed ; in what age and by what race this mining for 

 copper was conducted is still, however, a matter of much specula- 

 tion and conjecture. 



DECOMPOSITION OF WATER BY ULTRA-VIOLET 



RAYS. — A. Tian, in the current volume of Comples rendiis. 

 pp. 1012-1014, describes the effects of ultra-violet rays upon 

 water. Decomposition into hydrogen and hydrogen peroxide, 

 takes place in the first instance, the latter being then in turn 

 decomposed and oxygen evolved. 



c 



