CHAP. X. 



MIDDLE AGES. 263 



that have been long disused. They bear evident 

 marks of a different origin. Some of these pits 

 are round, and are, with great appearance of 

 probability, attributed to the Romans. Others 

 of them are square, and are supposed to have 

 been formed in later ages by the Moors, who 

 ruled in Spain, who seem to have followed, in 

 the excavations, the same form as they generally 

 adopted in their buildings 1 . 



Malus the elder was sent by Henry the 

 Fourth, in the latter years of his reign, to exa- 

 mine the state of the ancient mines in the 

 Pyrennees. In his report on the subject, it is 

 affirmed that ..they are as rich as those of Potosi ; 

 and, strange as it may appear, in an age when 

 absolute personal slavery had been long abolished, 

 recommended that slaves should be employed 

 to perform the labour. The king, who was then 

 keenly alive to all kinds of mining-projects, 

 gave orders to commence opening and working 

 these ancient pits ; but the sudden death of the 

 monarch put a stop to the undertaking. 



Gaston de Foix, brother to Charles, King of 

 Navarre, is said to have worked some of those 

 mines to such advantage as enabled him to sur- 

 pass in his expenditure that of all the monarchs 

 of his day. Gobet remarks, that in his time 



1 Gobet, Les Anciens Mineralogistes de France, vol. ii. 

 p. 122. 



