TO NEAPOLIS. 47 
by Belon, in, his journey from Mount ^thos to chap 
Constantinople, after his excursion to the gold i 
and silver mines at Siderocnpsa', the Chrysites coia and 
of the Antients. Belon is the only person who Mili7. of 
has published an account of those mines, once ^''<^^'^'""« 
the celebrated resources of the Macedonian 
power. They are two days' journey from 
Salonica. The Turkish Government sometimes 
made a clear profit by them of thirty thousand 
gx)ld ducats annually. When Belon visited 
them, there were about five or six hundred 
furnaces, for smelting, dispersed up and down 
the mountain. The ores consisted of auriferous 
Pyrites, and of galena, the sulphur et of lead. The 
bellows were worked by water-wheels ; and 
the method of separating the gold from the 
silver was the same as that now practised in 
Hungary, by means of nitrous acid*. This is 
the sum and substance of all the observations 
made by Belon upon the spot; except as to 
(3) Voy. les Observations de plusieurs Singularitez, &c. trouv^es 
en Grece, liv. i. c. 50. feuille 44. Paris, 1555. 
(4) Indeed the whole description given by Belon is so applicable to 
the process used at Cremnitz, that it is evident they must have had 
a common origin. They use the same term, Lechs, to express the 
result of the crude ftision : and Belon says, the names given at Sidero- 
eapsa to metallic bodies were neither Grecian nor Turkish; but that 
the inhabitants borrowed them of the Germans, or, as he calls them, 
jilinans ,- (j. d. Alemanni. 
