CHAP. x. MIDDLE AGES. QJ3 



attention from the earliest ages of which history 

 makes mention down to the present time, the 

 mines of Almaden and of Guadalcanal. These 

 mines were well known to the Romans, who ex- 

 pended enormous sums on them : they were 

 continued at work by the Moors, and have 

 only ceased to be productive within a very few 

 years. 



The mine of Almaden is of importance to the 

 history of the precious metals, though its chief 

 produce is quicksilver; but that metal has become 

 of such indispensable use in the operation of sepa- 

 rating gold and silver from the ores with which 

 they are mixed, or from the quartz or other earths 

 in which they are commonly enclosed, that with- 

 out it the mines both of the new and the old 

 world would have been less beneficially and ex- 

 tensively worked than they have hitherto been. 



At first the cinnabar or mercury was chiefly 

 used as a paint, but its value for other purposes 

 was very early discovered. Theophrastus, who 

 wrote 300 years before Christ, mentions it as 

 well, as Vertuvius, who was a contemporary of 

 Augustus ; and Pliny, in the following century, 

 expressly speaks of it as the production of Betica 

 in Spain. 



The Romans deemed mercury a poison ; but 

 notwithstanding that opinion their matrons used 

 the cinnabar as a paint for the face, and the artists 

 applied it to their works. Pliny says that the 



VOL. I. T 



