88 MINES IN 



CHAP. II. 



value l . The mines there were also celebrated 

 for the quality of their iron. It was used for 

 making the best weapons, and hence, " Noricus 

 ensis," among the Romans, was as much synony- 

 mous for a good sword as a Toledo or Andrea 

 Ferrara blade in other times. In this sense it is 

 used by Horace, book i. ode xvi. v. 9. Gaul was 

 scarcely productive of metallic wealth before the 

 reign of Augustus. The Tarbelli, a people at 

 the foot of the Pyrenees, are noticed by Strabo 2 , 

 as working mines of gold, silver, brass, and iron. 

 The gold was found near the surface, and in so 

 pure a state as scarcely to require smelting. 

 Some of it was also procured by washing the 

 sand of the rivers, but was less pure. The other 

 metals were found in their respective ores. 



There seems no reason to believe that the 

 mines in Hungary were worked at any period 

 before the Christian era 3 . The earliest accounts 

 of them do not go higher than the years between 

 745 and 770 from the birth of Christ, except an 

 assertion of Agricola, a German physician of great 

 celebrity for his knowledge of metals, who wrote 

 about 1550, and says, the mines of Kremnitz 



1 Strabo, iv. cap. 6. 



2 Idem, book iv. p. 290. ; also Caesar de Bello Gallico, 

 iii. 21. 



3 Ferber uber die Gebirge und Bergwerke in Ungarn. 

 Berlin, 1781. 



