248 MINING IN THE CHAP. X. 



was such as to excite the avarice of a succeeding 

 prelate, who was dissatisfied with his rent, and 

 the tenth of the silver and gold, and by various 

 . steps endeavoured to obtain possession of what 

 had been leased ; and*, at length, in the begin- 

 ning of the sixteenth century, upon the ground 

 that protestantism had been taught among the 

 miners by a missionary, named Kranzeifer, he 

 succeeded in avoiding the lease. The best of 

 the workmen forsook the district, the mines 

 were first contracted and then abandoned, and 

 the prelate lost the income he had derived from 

 the property. Fallen buildings, heaps of scoriae, 

 open shafts, and choked galleries still attest the 

 former prosperity of the mining operations of 

 the district l . 



The mines of Schellgadin are at present the 

 most important. The earliest records respecting 

 them is in the year 1378, when Archbishop 

 Pilgrim the second leased them to farmers for 

 three hundred and twenty pounds rent 2 . In 



1 Vierthaler. Wanderungen durch Salzburg, Berchtesga- 

 den und Osterreich, vol. i. p. 141. 



8 They are said to have been nearly exhausted, so that, 

 being worked by the government, a loss was incurred between 

 1775 and 1780 of about nine thousand pounds. By intro- 

 ducing greater economy, they have been kept at work, and 

 for the first time, in 1790, produced a profit of 250. It 

 appears that the gold is in grains, from the size of a grain of 

 linseed to an almost invisible speck, and from 12 to 14 

 ounces are extracted from fifty tons of ore. Vierthaler, vol. i. 

 p. 145. 



