240 MINING IN THE CHAP x. 



the gold from the silver and from the lead by 

 means of aquafortis had been taught to the 

 miners by an Armenian. 



" These mines," he says, " yield so much 

 gold and silver, that the Emperor of Turkey 

 draws from them eighteen thousand ducats a 

 month, and in some months it has amounted 

 to thirty thousand ducats. Within the last fif- 

 teen years the produce has declined, and the 

 duties to the emperor have not exceeded four- 

 teen thousand ducats. The persons who carried 

 on the operations had formerly enriched them- 

 selves more than they were thought to do at 

 present 1 ." 



Austria. It is highly probable that the mines of Hun- 

 gary were those which were first worked in 

 what are now the dominions of the house of 

 Austria, though at that time it was an inde- 

 pendent kingdom, extending over the ancient 

 Dacia, now Transylvania, and Walachia over 

 Upper Mcesia, now Servia and over the two 



1 See Les Anciens Mineralogistes du Royaume de France, 

 par M. Gobet, vol. i. p. 53. 



If the remarking on mines in recent times seems to be in- 

 consistent with the title of this chapter, it must be pleaded 

 as an apology, that M. Gobet expresses an opinion that these 

 mines had been formerly worked by the first Mahometan 

 invaders, though the ground of that opinion does not appear. 

 The author felt unwilling to omit any notice that came in his 

 way respecting mines in Turkey, concerning which so little 

 has been made known by any European authors. 



