340 
MINING GEOLOGY 
First Mention of the Ores Zinc in America. Notwithstanding 
the fact that zinc is the last of the common metals to come under 
the complete control of mankind and that as an element, the 
date of its recognition is scarcely 200 years back, some form or 
other of it, as an earth of peculiar composition, is known to have 
been in use in the arts for nearly forty centuries. . The circum¬ 
stance that Greek coinage dating 1000 to 1500 years, B. C., con¬ 
tains a definite proportion, so large as 23 to 25 per cent of zinc 
indicates clearly that it was at this remote time utilized in alloy. 
In this country the zinc industry is so recent in origin that its 
beginnings are still well within the memory of men living yet 
the existence of the metal appears to have been very early known. 
In North America the mention of zinc for the first time now 
appears to be almost if not quite as early as that of lead. Unlike 
the case of the latter metal zinc was never sought for ammuni¬ 
tion, the provision of which was so vital a problem to trapper and 
pioneer in the New World and hence there did not exist 
the great demand for it. The earliest mention of the ore or 
metal is usually regarded as that of John Bradbury, an officer 
who, investigating the resources of this country in the interests 
of England, traveled, in 1810, through the Louisana Purchase 
country, as the region west of the Mississippi river was then called. 
In the same year zinc was described and analysed from the 
Franklin Furnace. 
There appears, however, to be a distinct reference to an Ameri¬ 
can occurrence of zinc very much earlier than any other hereto¬ 
fore specifically noted. In 1655 a French adventurer in the 
service of England, Pierre Radisson by name, and his brother- 
in-law, Medard Grosielliers, visited the Indian tribes dwelling in 
the neighborhood of what is now Dubuque, Iowa, and spent a 
season mainly on Iowa soil. 
In the course of his account of the resources of the region 
Radisson quaintly says that “In their country are mines of 
copper, pewter and lead. There are mountains covered with a 
kind of stone that is transparent and tender and like that of 
Venice.” On the whole his description is remarkably lucid. The 
mention of pewter undoubtedly refers to zinc ore. It will be 
remembered that this term is the old English title for spelter 
