120 BOOK V. 



overcame the hardness of the Alps by the use of vinegar and fire. Even 

 if a vein is a very wide one, as tin veins usually are, miners excavate into the 

 small streaks, and into those hollows they put dry wood ajid place amongst 

 them at frequent intervals sticks, all sides of which are shaved down fan- 

 shaped, which easily take light, and when once they have taken fire com- 

 municate it to the other bundles of wood, which easily ignite. 



A — Kindled logs. B — Sticks shaved down fan-shaped. C — ^Tunnel. 



While the heated veins and rock are giving forth a foetid vapour and the 

 shafts or tunnels are emitting fumes, the miners and other workmen do not 

 go down in the mines lest the stench affect their health or actually kill them, 

 as I will explain in greater detail when I come to speak of the evils which 

 affect miners. The Bergmeister, in order to prevent workmen from being 

 suffocated, gives no one permission to break veins or rock by fire in shafts or 

 tunnels where it is possible for the poisonous vapour and smoke to permeate 

 the veins or stringers and pass through into the neighbouring mines, which 

 have no hard veins or rock. As for that part of a vein or the surface of the 

 rock which the fire has separated from the remaining mass, if it is overhead, 

 the miners dislodge it with a crowbar, or if it still has some degree of hardness, 

 they thrust a smaller crowbar into the cracks and so break it down, but if 



