304 BOOK VIII. 



and a breadth of a foot and a half ; it is connected with a transverse launder, 

 which then extends to a setthng pit outside the building. A boy with 

 a shovel or a ladle takes the impure concentrates or impure tin-stone from a 

 heap, and throws them into the head of the strake or spreads them over it. 

 A washer with a wooden scrubber then agitates them in the strake, whereby 

 the mud mixed with water flows away into the transverse launder, and the 

 concentrates or the trn-stone settle on the strake. Since sometimes the 

 concentrates or fine tin-stone flow down together with the mud into the 

 transverse launder, a second washer closes it, after a distance of about six feet, 

 with a cross-board and frequently stirs the mud with a shovel, in order that 

 when mixed with water it may flow out into the settling-pit ; and there 

 remains in the launder only the concentrates or tin-stone. The tin-stuff 

 of Schlackenwald and Erbisdroff is washed in this kind of a strake once 

 or twice ; those of Altenberg three or four times ; those of Geyer often 

 seven times ; for in the ore at Schlackenwald and Erbisdorff the tin-stone 

 particles are of a fair size, and are crushed with stamps ; at Altenberg they 

 are of much smaller size, and in the broken ore at Geyer only a few particles 

 of tin-stone can be seen occasionallj^ 



This method of washmg was first devised by the miners who treated 

 tin ore, whence it passed on from the works of the tin workers to those of the 

 silver workers and others ; this system is even more reliable than 

 washing in jigging-sieves. Near this ordinary strake there is generally a 

 canvas strake. 



In modern times two ordinary strakes, similarly made, are generally 

 joined together ; the head of one is three feet distant from that of the other, 

 while the bodies are four feet distant from each other, and there is only one 

 cross launder under the two strakes. One boy shovels, from the heap into the 

 head of each, the concentrates or tin-stone mixed with mud. There are 

 two washers, one of whom sits at the right side of one strake, and the 

 other at the left of the other strake, and each pursues his task, using the 

 following sort of implement. Under each strake is a siU, from a socket in 

 which a round pole rises, and is held by half an iron ring in a beam of the 

 building, so that it may revolve ; this pole is nine feet long and a palm 

 thick. Penetrating the pole is a small round piece of wood, three palms 

 long and as many digits thick, to which is afiixed a small board two feet 

 long and five digits wide, in an opening of which one end of a small axle 

 revolves, and to this axle is fixed the handle of a little scrubber. The other 

 end of this axle turns in an opening of a second board, which is likewise fixed 

 to a small round piece of wood ; this round piece, like the first one, is three 

 palms long and as many digits thick, and is used by the washer as a handle. 

 The little scrubber is made of a stick three feet long, to the end of which is 

 fixed a small tablet of wood a foot long, six digits broad, and a digit and a 

 half thick. The washer constantly moves the handle of this implement 

 with one hand ; in this way the little scrubber stirs the concentrates or 

 the fine tin-stone mixed with mud in the head of the strake, and the mud, on 

 being stirred, flows on to the strake. In the other hand he holds a second 



