64 MINES OF 



CHAP. II. 



their own countries with them, were naturally 

 the first to imbibe the improvements of more 

 advanced stages of society. From that distant 

 time, about fifteen centuries before our Christian 

 era, or perhaps six centuries before the time of 

 Homer, the knowledge of metals in Europe 

 commenced. It is possible that even at earlier 

 periods some might have been found on or near 

 the surface, but it is highly improbable that in 

 that untaught state of society any mines had been 

 explored. 



The Phoenicians, who gave to Europeans the first 

 impulse towards social life, were also the first 

 introducers of the practice of mining. Accord- 

 ingly we learn from Strabo 1 , that Cadmus, a 

 Phoenician, one of the emigrants who arrived in 

 Greece, opened the first mine of copper and gold 

 in the mountain Pangaeus in Thrace, though 

 Herodotus 2 speaks of those mountains as con- 

 taining mines of silver and gold 3 . It is not, 

 however, improbable that the activity of the 

 Phoenicians may have set to work some of the 

 mines in the islands of the Mediterranean Sea, 

 and perhaps in the remote country of Spain, 

 before the arrival of Cadmus. The thirst for 



1 Strabo, xiv. p. 998. 



2 Herodot. book vii. c. 12. 



3 The arrival of Cadmus in Greece is estimated by the 

 Abbe Barthelemy ,, in Anacharsis. to have occurred in the year 

 1594 before Christ,, but by others 1493 before that era. 



