CHAP. IT. 



GREECE. 81 



cess of separating the precious metals from the 

 substances with which they were mostly found. 

 It is not extraordinary that the value of quick- 

 silver should not be early known to the miners ; 

 for Callias *, one of the most extensive workers 

 of silver mines in Attica, found cinnabar in his 

 ore, without knowing its value, as the Peruvians 

 sought for silver in the mine of Guancavelica 2 

 long before they discovered the mercury or cin- 

 nabar. The gold and silver obtained by mining 

 among the Greeks have alone been hitherto 

 noticed ; but of the former metal some must 

 have been procured by washing from the sands 

 of the more rapid torrents that descended from 

 the mountains. From the nature of this em- 

 ploymentfrom the insulated and small bodies 

 by which it is carried on from the facility with 

 which the smallest portions of its produce may 

 be disposed of and from the privacy which in 

 times of turbulence its possession requires we 

 cannot expect to find in ancient history, or even 

 in ancient poetry, many relations on this branch of 

 the subject Herodotus 3 describes the river Pac- 

 tolus running by Sardis, " which, in its descentfrom 

 the mountain Tmolus, brings down a quantity of 

 gold dust." The fable of Midas, who, by wash- 

 ing in that river, had acquired the power of 



1 Pliny, xxxiii. 7-> and Theophrastus cle Lapicl, p. 400. 



2 Schneider Zusiitzen zu Ulloa, part ii. sec. 241. 



3 Herodot. book v c 101. 



VOL. I. G 



