360 ADDITION TO GOLD AND SILVER CHAP. xiv. 



various small quantities from Saxony, Prussia, 

 and Hanover. The mines in those territories 

 in the long period of the dark ages were 

 slightly and irregularly worked, were subject to 

 frequent and sometimes long interruptions, and 

 in their best times never yielded such supplies 

 as they have afforded in more recent years. 

 The silver in the same twenty years which the 

 mines of the old continent produced was nearly 

 on an annual average as follows, viz. Russia 

 ,150,000, Austria 200,000, Saxony 100,000, 

 Prussia and Hanover, including the small share 

 of Brunswick in the Hartz, 110,000, and all 

 the other mines about 40,000. It will be seen 

 in the tenth chapter of this inquiry, that the 

 mines in Germany, excepting those in Saxony, 

 were very little worked or even known till the 

 latter end of the period from 800 to 1500; 

 that their greatest produce was but a few 

 years before the termination of the period ; 

 and if we take the annual average quantity 

 of the precious metals yielded between 800 

 and 1500 at a seventh or an eighth of the 

 average of that yielded between 1780 and 1800, 

 when the Russian mines were in active opera- 

 tion, we cannot be very far from the truth, and 

 an approximation to it is all that is attainable in 

 the present state of our knowledge on this ob- 

 scure subject. If the former calculation assumed 

 in this inquiry be tolerably accurate, that one part 



