CHAP. X. MIDDLE AGES. 



Rothhausberg, three centuries ago, the valleys 

 swarmed with inhabitants depending on the 

 mines of gold ; but within the last century the 

 decline in the product has been great. The net 

 profit to the archbishop about 177^ was near 

 four thousand pounds yearly, but from 1795 to 

 1800 scarcely six hundred pounds. On an 

 average of twenty-two years, from 1778 to 1800, 

 the produce was thirty-five pounds of gold and 

 three hundred and forty pounds of silver. These 

 mines in ancient times had received the title of 

 the "Throne of Pluto." If they deserved that 

 name three hundred years ago, the produce must 

 have been much greater, or the ideas of those 

 who conferred it must have been of a very con- 

 tracted kind with respect to mineral wealth 1 . 



If we may trust to an author who visited this 

 district in 1784, the Romans must have ori- 

 ginally worked these mines, and having suffered 

 them to go to decay, they were again put in 

 activity. Hacquet says 2 , that in the mining 

 archives he found this passage, " Aurifodmce 

 Romanorum in campo humido versus septentrio- 

 nem per multos annos desertcz jacuere ; anno 719 

 iterum cceptce sunt" 



The discovery of America and of the mines it 

 contained seems to have kindled a most vehe- 

 ment passion for exploring the bowels of the 



1 Vierthaler, vol. i. p. 239. 2 Hacquet, p. 112. 



