0EE6 OF ti> 215 



and in Lyme and Jackson, N. H. At the last mentioned 

 place, where this ore was discovered by Dr. C. T. Jackson, 

 there are sufficient indications to warrant ex\ loration. 



GENERAL REMARKS ON TIN AND TIN ORES. 



The principal tin mines now worked, are those of Cornwall, Banca 

 and Malacca, Saxony, and Austria. 



The Cornwall mines are supposed to have been worked long befora 

 the Christian era. Herodotus, 450 years before Christ, is believed to 

 allude to the tin islands of Britain under the cabalisticname Cassiterides 

 derived from the Greek kassiteros, signifying tin.* The Phoenician^ 

 are allowed to have traded with Cornubia, (as Cornwall was called, it 

 is supposed from the horn shape of this western extremity of England.) 

 The Greeks residing at Marseilles were the next to visit Cornwall, or 

 the isles adjacent, to purchase tin ; and after them came the Romans, 

 whose merchants were long foiled in their attempts to discover the tin 

 market of their predecessors. 



Camden says: " It is plain that the ancient Britons dealt in tin mines 

 from the testimony of Diodorus Siculus, who lived in the reign of Augus- 

 tus and Timaus, the historian in Pliny, who tells us that the Britons 

 fetched tin out of the Isle of Icta, (the Isle of Wight,) in their little 

 wicker boats covered with leather. The import of the passage in 

 Diodorus, is that the Britons who lived in those parts dug tin out of a 

 rocky sort of ground, and carried it in carts at low water to certain 

 neighboring islands ; and that from thence the merchants first trans- 

 ported it to Gaul, and afterwards on horseback in thirty days to the 

 springs of Eridanus, or the city of Narbona, as to a common mart. 

 yEthicus too, another ancient writer, intimates the same thing, and adds 

 that he had himself given directions to the workmen." In the opinion 

 of the learned author of the Britannica here quoted, and others who have 

 followed him, the Saxons seem not to have meddled with the mines, or 

 according to tradition, to have employed the Saracens ; for- the inhabi- 

 tants of Cornwall to this day call a mine that is given over working 

 Attal-Sarasin, that is, the leavings of the Saracens. t 



The Cornwall veins, or lodes, mostly run east and west, with a dip — 

 hade, in the provincial dialect — varying from north to south ; yet they are 

 very irregular, sometimes crossing each other, and sometimes a prom- 

 ising vein abruptly narrows or disappears ; or again they spread out into 

 a kind of bed or jioor. The veins are considered worth working when 

 but three inches wide. The gangue is mostly quartz, with some chlo- 



Where are the principal tin mines ? What is said of the Cornwall 

 veins'? 



* This term and the stannum of the Romans, or plumbum candidum, 

 are supposed to include the white compounds of lead and other metals; 

 and it has even been doubted whether the metal tin was ordinarily 

 included. 



t Manuf in Metals ; London, 1834, hi, 2. 



