100 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
The following account of the mining operations of 300 years 
ago is abridged from Carew, the best authority we have on the 
subject. The discovery of the tin lodes, he says, is made by certain 
tin stones lying on the face of the ground. These are termed 
" shoad," as shed from the main lode. They are somewhat round, 
and smoothed by water action. "Where the finding of these 
affordeth a tempting likelihood, the Tynners goe to worke, casting 
up trenches before them, in depth five or six foote more or lesse, 
and three or foure in breadth, gathering up such shoad, as this 
turning of the earth doth offer to their sight." 
The preparation of the ore is also completely described by 
this writer, both for lode and stream tin. In the former case, the 
largest stones were broken first with hammers, and then carried, 
either in waggons or on pack-horses, to a stamping-mill. This 
kind of mill is supposed to have been introduced about this period 
from Germany. It is described "as of great logges of timber, 
bound at the ends with yron, and lifted up and down by a 
wheele, driven with water." From the stamps it passed to the 
crazing- mill, consisting of two grinding -stones working one 
over the other, turned also with a water-wheel. The stamping- 
mill, as formerly introduced and used in connection with the 
crazing-mill, was evidently worked dry ; for Carew says, " Of 
late times they mostly use wet stampers, and so have no need 
of the crazing mils for their best stuffe, but only for the crust 
of their tayles " {i.e. the coarser stuff in which the ore remained 
in the matrix — the "rows" of the modern miner). In stream 
works the stamps may have been unnecessary, as a crazing-mill 
would probably have been sufficient to break down the larger 
to have been found with spear-heads. In a barrow on Mardon Hill, near 
Moretonhampstead, a spear-head of copper was found a few years since. 
(Spence Bate, "On Grimspound." Trans. Plym. Inst., 1873.) Although 
there are no proofs of early copper -mining in Cornwall or Devon, there 
is good evidence that the Romans worked the Parys Mountain, Anglesea, 
for this metal, and it is likely that they followed in the footsteps of previous 
miners. If early copper-raising in Britain be disputed, the suggestion that 
tin was exchanged for copper cannot fairly be objected to. The earliest 
smelters of copper ran the metal into circular cakes, convex below and flat 
above, corresponding with the bronze cakes found near Exeter ; whilst the 
castings found in Anglesea, with inscriptions in Roman characters, were of 
nearly even thickness, but with the edge inclined, as if they had been cast in 
a small frying-pan. The evidence gradually accumulating is strongly in 
favour of bronze-making in Celtic Britain before the advent of the Romans. 
