OF CORNWALL. 163 
near three miles from the town of St. Auftel fouthward to the fea. 
On each tide, and at the head above St. Auftel are many hills, be- 
twixt which there are little valleys which all difcharge their waters, 
and whatever elfe they receive from the higher grounds, into St. 
Auftel moor; whence it happens that the ground of this moor is all 
adventitious for about three fathoms deep, the fhodes and ftreams 
from the hills on each ftde being here collected and ranged into 
floors, according to their weight, and the fucceftive dates of their 
coming thither. The uppermoft coat conftfts of thin layers of 
earth, clay, and pebbly gravel, about five feet deep ; the next Jlra- 
tum is about fix feet deep, more ftony, the ftones pebbly-formed, 
with a gravelly land intermixed : thele two coverings being removed, 
they find great numbers of tin-ftones from the bignefs of a goofe- 
egg, and fometimes larger, down to the fize of the fineft fand. 
The tin is inferted in a Jlratum of loole fmoothed ftones, from a 
foot diameter downwards to the fmalleft pebble. From the prefent 
furface of the ground down to the folid rock or karn, is eighteen 
feet deep at a medium : in the folid rock there is no tin. This 
ftream-tin is of the pureft kind, and great part of it, without any 
other management than being wafhed upon the Ipot, brings 1 3 parts 
for twenty at the melting-houfe*. In one of the workings here were 
lately found, about eight feet under the furface, two flabs, or fmall 
blocks of melted tin, of about twenty-eight pounds weight each, 
of a fhape very different from that which for many years has ob- 
tained in Cornwall ; and as they have no ftamp on them, probably 
as old as tne time when the Jews had engrofled the tin manufacture 
in the time of King John. They have femicircular handles or loops 
to them, as if to fling and carry them more conveniently on horfe- 
back : they are much corroded by the lharp waters in which they 
have layn, a kind of ruft or fcurf-like incruftation inclofing the tin. 
Probably there were fome Jewilli melting-houfes near the place, 
and when thele houles were plundered and deftroyed, fome of the 
blocks remained in the rubbifh, and by the floods, which this valley 
is fo fubjeCt to, walked downwards, and covered where they were 
found. Their lhape and dimenfions may be feen Plate XX. Fig. xix. 
A is the upper-part, B the under-part of this ancient block of tin. 
In the ftream-works in St. Stephen’s Branel, they alfo find now 
and then fome fmall lumps of melted tin, two inches fquare and 
under : what I have feen of this kind cuts with difficulty, and more 
harfh and gritty than the common melted tin, owing to this per- 
haps, that the ancient melters had not then difcovered how to flux 
Upon delivering twenty pounds of this tin- to deliver to the owner’s order thirteen pounds of 
0re at the melting-houfe, the melter will contract melted tin at the coynage. 
their 
