ON THE TRACK OF THE " OLD MEN." 
223 
ON THE TEACK OF THE " OLD MEN," 
DARTMOOR 
Part II. 
BY ROBERT BURN ARD 9 
(Read 21st March, 1889.) 
The earliest miners on Dartmoor were the tin streamers. Stream- 
stones of tin, consisting of rounded nodules of very pure tin oxide, 
must from their weight have attracted the attention of man when 
emerging from the Stone Age into that of the Bronze. As 
knowledge grew, and the demand for tin increased, he dug down 
deeper into the earth, forming open shallow pits, or traced the tin 
in deep open trenches. Later on he commenced to tunnel and 
sink shafts, and as his skill in devising means for unwatering and 
ventilating the mine developed, these became longer and deeper. 
The earliest smelting furnaces were simple in their construction, 
but, owing to the purity of the ore, tolerably effective. A few 
fairly-shaped stones to form the hearth, luted with clay, and a 
blast from inflated skins or bellows of rude construction, excited 
sufficient heat in the peat or wood charcoal to reduce the ore to a 
metallic condition. These small and simple furnaces, put together 
with no condition of permanency, easily disappeared and made 
way for a more perfect and durable arrangement. 
Pryce states in his Mineralogia Cornubiensis that some late 
discoveries, where the charcoal and metallic dross had been found 
mixed together, had given him an idea of the early smelting 
process, which was to dig a hole in the ground, and throw the tin 
ore on a charcoal fire, which probably was excited by a bellows. 
It is, however, probable that a race of men who were capable of 
erecting maenhirs, cromlechs, and kistvaens, would not long be 
content with such a crude and wasteful arrangement. Dartmoor 
has thus far yielded no recorded instance of the discovery of such 
