102 MINES IN THE C HAP. 11. 



islands in It does not appear that either the Carthagi- 



the Medi- . i > i r> o i 



terranean. mans, when they were in possession of Sicily, 

 Corsica, Majorca, Minorca, or Malta, or their 

 successors in the dominion over them, the Ro- 

 mans, extracted either gold or silver from the soil 

 of those islands; nor*have any indications of 

 those minerals been found in them. 



Some silver and some gold pyrites have been 

 occasionally discovered in Sicily; so that it is 

 barely possible that mines may have been at 

 some remote period worked there, no indications 

 of which are now to be met with. 



We read, indeed, of great sums of money 

 being coined and circulated in Sicily ; but those 

 may be attributed, in some measure, to the vast 

 production of corn, of wine, and other commodi- 

 ties which the island exported, and for which 

 money must have been the principal return ; as 

 Sicily had scarcely any wants beyond those which 

 her own territory supplied. 



The continued wars of which Sicily was the 

 theatre must have greatly contributed to in- 

 crease the quantity of gold and silver within the 

 island, and have furnished the means for coining 

 the money which circulated there. The Athe- 

 nians, when they equipped an army to assist the 

 Leontines against the Lacedemonians in Sicily, 

 are said to have taken with them in ready mo- 

 ney ten thousand talents ; and; afterwards, their 



