382 BOOK IX. 



in slags, the uppermost containing little metal, the middle more, and the 

 lowest much, he puts these away separately, each in its own place, in 

 order that to each heap, when it is re-smelted, he may add the proper 

 fluxes, and can put in as much lead as is demanded for the metal in the 

 slag ; when the slag is re-melted, if it emits much odour, there is some 

 metal in it ; if it emits no odour, then it contains none. He puts the cakes 

 of melted pyrites away separately, as they were nearest in the forehearth to 

 the metal, and contain a little more of it than the slags ; from all these 

 cakes a conical mound is built up, by always placing the widest of them 

 at the bottom. The hooked bar has a hook on the end, hence its name ; 

 otherwise it is similar to other bars. 



Afterward the master closes up the tap-hole and fills the furnace with 

 the same materials I described above, and again, the ores having been melted, 

 he opens the tap-hole, and with a hooked bar extracts the slags and the cakes 

 melted from pyrites, which have run down into the forehearth. He repeats 

 the same operation until a certain and definite part of the ore has been 

 smelted, and the day's work is at an end ; if the ore was rich the work is 

 finished in eight hours ; if poor, it takes a longer time. But if the ore was 

 so rich as to be smelted in less than eight hours, another operation is in the 

 meanwhile combined with the first, and both are performed in the space of ten 

 hours. When all the ore has been smelted, he throws into the furnace a 

 basket full of litharge or hearth-lead, so that the metal which has remained 

 in the accretions may run out with these when melted. When he has finally 

 drawn out of the forehearth the slags and the cakes melted from pyrites, 

 he takes out, with a ladle, the lead alloyed with gold or silver and pours it into 

 little iron or copper pans, three palms wide and as many digits deep, but 

 first lined on the inside with lute and dried by warming, lest the glowing molten 

 substances should break through. The iron ladle is two palms wide, and in 

 other respects it is similar to the others, all of which have a sufficiently long 

 iron shaft, so that the fire should not burn the wooden part of the handle. 

 When the alloy has been poured out of the forehearth, the smelter foreman 

 and the mine captain weigh the cakes. 



Then the master breaks out the whole of the mouth of the furnace with a 

 crowbar, and with that other hooked bar, the rabble and the five-toothed rake, 

 he extracts the accretions and the charcoal. This crowbar is not unlike 

 the other hooked one, but larger and wider ; the handle of the rabble is six feet 

 long and is half of iron and half of wood. The furnace having cooled, the 

 master chips off the accretions chnging to the walls with a rectangular 

 spatula six digits long, a palm broad, and sharp on the front edge ; it has 

 a round handle four feet long, half of it being of iron and half of wood. This 

 is the first method of smelting ores. 



Because they generally consist of unequal constituents, some of which melt 

 rapidly and others slowly, the ores rich in gold and silver cannot be smelted as 

 rapidly or as easily by the other methods as they can by the first method, for 

 three important reasons. The first reason is that, as often as the closed 

 tap-hole of the furnace is opened with a tapping-bar, so often can the 



