1841. J 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



215 



pleasure, unsuitable to our tastes, our habits, and to the climate of the 

 country we inhabit ; but places should also be assigned to those work- 

 ing drawings of common houses, and modern economical churches, 

 those practical details of machinery, and surveys of parishes, and plans 

 of estates, which would perhaps attract still more scrutiny from some 

 of the frequenters of the proposed exhibition. 



In reducing this plan to practice, several reasons might be alleged 

 ■why the draughtsmen themselves ought to be the managers. They 

 might make it one of their rules to be allowed respectively space for 

 their drawings proportionable to the sums thev subscribe to defray 

 the necessary expenses. On the other hand contributions might also 

 be levied from those whose curiosity led them to visit the collection, 

 by the sale of catalogues, the possession of which might give a right 

 of admission for a certain period. 



The writer of these observations would be glad if they should have 

 any effect in inducing others of the parties interested to join and carry 

 his proposal into effect. Of course he would not be backward in lend- 

 ing his share of assistance so far as was within his limited means, 

 and he should expect to be joined in doing so by some other of the 

 younger members of the profession, who have expressed their concur- 

 rence in the views here expressed. 



G. M. 



ENGINEERING WORKS OF THE ANCIENTS, No. 0. 



In our last we gave an account from Xenophon of the Atbenian 

 silver mines, which, by some inadvertence, was detached from this 

 series of papers, and now we proceed to give what Diodorus Siculus 

 says as to the gold mines of Ethiopia (Book 3.) 



EGYPTIAN OR ETHIOPIAN GOLD MINES. 



In the confines of Egypt and the neighbouring countries of Arabia 

 and Ethiopia there is a place full of rich gold mines, out of which with 

 much cost and pains of many labourers, gold is dug. The soil here 

 uaturally is blaek, but in the body of the earth, run many white veins, 

 shining with white marble, (query quartz), and glistering with all sorts 

 of other briglit metals ; out of which, laborious miners, those appointed 

 overseers, cause the gold to be dug up by the labour of a vast multi- 

 tude of people. For the kings of Egypt condemn to these mines 

 notorious criminals, captives taken in war, persons sometimes falsely 

 accused, or such against whom the king is incensed; and that not only 

 they themselves, but sometimes all their kindred, and relations with 

 them, are sent to work here, both to punish them, and by their labour 

 to advance the profit and gain of the king. There are infinite num- 

 bers upon these accounts thrust down into these mines, all bound in 

 fetters, where they work continually, without being perniitjpd any rest 

 day or night, and so strictly guarded, that there is no possibility or 

 way left to make an escape. For they set over them barbarians, 

 soldiers of various and strange languages, so that it is not possible to 

 corrupt any of the guard, by discoursing one with anotiier, or by gain- 

 ing opportunities ot familiar converse. 



The earth which is hardest and full of gold, they soften by putting 

 fire under it, and then work it out with their hands ; the rocks thus 

 softened, and made more pliant and yielding, several thousands of 

 profligate wretches break it in pieces with hammers and pickaxes. 

 There is one workman who is the overseer of the whole work, who 

 marks out the stone, and shows the labourers the way and manner 

 how he would have it done. Those that are the strongest amongst 

 them, that are appointed to this slavery, provided with sharp iron 

 pickaxes, cleave the marble shining rock by mere force and strength, 

 and not by art of sleight of hand. They undermine not the rock in a 

 direct line, but follow the bright shining vein of the mine. They 

 carry lamps fastened to their foreheads to give them light, being other- 

 wise in perfect darkness in the various windings and turnings wrought 

 in the mine ; and having their bodies appearing sometimes of one 

 colour and sometimes of another (according to the nature of the mine 

 where they work). They throw the lumps and pieces of the stone 

 cut out of the rock upon the floor. And thus thev are employed con- 

 timially without intermission, at the very nod of the overseer or task- 

 master, who lashes them severely besides. And there are little boys 

 that attend upon the labourers in the mines, and with great labour and 

 toil gather up the lumps and pieces hewn out of the rock as they are 

 cast upon the ground, and carry them forth and lay them upon the 

 bank. Those that are about thirty years of age take a piece of the 

 rock of such a certain quantity, and pound it in a stone mortar with 

 iron pestles till it be as small as a pea, then those little stones so 

 pounded are taken from them by the women and older men who cast 

 them into mills that stand together near at hand there in a long row, 

 and two or three of them being employed at one mill, they grind it so 



long till it be as small as fine meal, according to the pattern given 

 them. No care at all is taken of the bodies of these poor creatures, 

 so that they have not a rag so much as to cover their nakedness, and 

 no man that sees them can choose but irmst commiserate their sad and 

 deplorable condition. For though they are sick, maimed or lamed, no 

 rest nor intermission in tlie least is allowed them, neither the weak- 

 ness of old age nor the infirmities of women are any plea to excuse 

 them ; but all are driven to their work with blows and cudgelling, till 

 at length overborne with the intolerable weight of their misery, they 

 drop down dead in the midst of their insufferable labours; so that 

 these miserable crea'ures always expect worse to come than that 

 which they at present endure, and therefore long for death as far more 

 desirable than life. 



At length the masters of the work take stone thus ground to powder, 

 and carry it away in order to the perfecting of it. They spread the 

 mineral so ground upon a broad board somewhat hollow and lying 

 shelving, and pouring water upon it, rub it and cleanse it, and so aU 

 the earthy and drossy parts being separated from the rest by the water, 

 it runs off the board, and the gold by reason of its weight remains be- 

 hind. Then washing it several times again, they first rub it lightly 

 with their hands, afterwards they draw up the earthy and drossy mat- 

 ter with slender sponges gently applied to the powdered dust, till it 

 be clean pure gold. At last other workmen take it away by weight 

 and measure, and they put it into earthen urns, and according to the 

 quantity of the gold in every urn, they mix it with some lead, grains 

 of salt, a little tin, and barley bran; then covering the pot close, and 

 carefully daubing them with clay, they put them in a furnace where 

 they abide five days and niglits together ; then after a convenient time 

 that they have stood to cool, nothing of the other matter is to be found 

 in the pots, but only pure refined gold, some little diminished in the 

 weight. 



And thus is gold prepared in the borders of Egypt, and perfected 

 and completed with so many and so great toils and vexations. And 

 therefore I cannot but conclude that nature itself teaches us, that as 

 gold is got with labo\ir and toil, so it is kept with difficulty, creates 

 everywhere the greatest cares, and the use of it is mixed both with 

 pleasure and sorrow. Yet the invention of those metals is very an- 

 cient, being found out, and made use of by the ancient kingS: 



Assyrian Engineem.vg. 



Keeping Diodorus Siculus as our guide, we now come to such notes 

 as he has left of Assyrian engineering. (Book Second.) 



WALLS OF NINEVEH. 



Ninus (1950 B. C.) is styled the builder of Nineveh, having pro- 

 vided money and treasure and other things necessary for the purpose, 

 he built a city near the river Euphrates, very famous for its walls and 

 fortifications, of a long form ; for on both sides it ran out in length 

 above a hundred and fifty furlongs ; but the two lesser angles were 

 only ninety furlongs a piece; so that the circumference of the whole 

 was four hundred and fourscore furlongs. And the founder was not 

 herein deceived, for none ever built the like, either as to the largeness 

 of its circumference, or the stateliness of its walls; for the wall was a 

 hundred feet in height, and so broad that three chariots might be 

 driven together upon it abreast. There were fifteen hundred turrets 

 upon the walls each of them two hundred feet high. 



BABYLON. 



Semiramis, the wife of Ninus, was the founder of Babylon. To this 

 end having provided architects, artists, and all other necessaries for 

 the work, she got together two millions of men out of all parts of the 

 empire to be employed in the building of the city. It was so built 

 that the river Euphrates ran through the middle of it, and she com- 

 passed it round with a wall of three hundred and sixty furlongs ia 

 circuit, and adorned with many stately turrets; and such was the state 

 and grandeur of the work, that the walls were of that breadth that six 

 chariots abreast might be driven together upon them. Their height 

 was such as exceeded all men's belief that heard of it (as Ctesias 

 Cnidius relates). But Clitarchus, and those who afterwards went over 

 with Alexander into Asia, have written that the walls were in circuit 

 three hundred and sixty-five furlongs; the queen making them ol that 

 compass, to the end that the furlongs should be as many in number as 

 the days of the year. The walls were of brick cemented with asphalte; 

 in height, as Ctesias says, fifty fathoms ; but as some of the later 

 writers report, but fifty cubits oiily, and that the breadth was but little 

 more than what would allow two- chariots to be driven afront. There 

 were two hundred and fifty turrets in height and thickness proportion- 

 able to the largeness of the wall. It is not to be wondered at that 

 there were so few towers upon a wall of so great circuit, seeing th-at 

 in many places round the city, there were deep morasses; so that it 



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