EFFECTS OF DECOMPOSITION. 



twice so thick as a pot of metal, burns extreme- 

 ly. It never cracks, neither gives any sort of 

 taste to the liquor that is boiled in it ; but if it 

 falls to the ground, it is very brittle; yet this is 

 repaired by patching it up : for they piece their 

 broken pots so close, though without any ce- 

 ment, by sewing with iron-wire the broken par- 

 cels together, that in the holes which they pierce 

 with the wire there is not the least breach made, 

 except that which the wire both makes and fills. 

 The passage to this mine is very inconvenient; 

 for they must creep into it for near half a mile 

 through a rock, that is so hard that the passage 

 is not above three feet high ; and so those that 

 draw out the stones, creep all along upon their 

 belly, having a candle fastened in their forehead, 

 and the stone laid on a sort of cushion made for 

 it upon their hips: the stones are commonly 

 two hundred weight. 



O 



" But having mentioned some falls of moun- 

 tains in those parts*, I cannot pass by the ex- 

 traordinary fate of the town of Pleurs, that was 

 about a league from Chavennes, to the north in 

 the same bottom, but on a ground that is a little 

 more raised. The town was half the bigness of 



* Rather of fragments and avalanches ; and the partial ruin of 

 Chiavenna, in the 14th century, by the fall of a cliff: p. 15. 



VOL. II. S 



