Meantime many miners had
left the country, and others were thinking of following them to Africa
and America, while many of the more expensive mines to work had been
closed down. The origin of tin mining in Cornwall was of remote
antiquity, and the earliest method of raising the metal was that
practiced in the time of Diodorus by streaming--a method more like
modern gold-digging, since the ore in the bed of the streams, having
been already washed there for centuries, was much purer than that found
in the lodes. Diodorus Siculus, about the beginning of the Christian
Era, mentioned the inhabitants of Belerium as miners and smelters of
tin, and wrote: "After beating it up into knucklebone shapes, they carry
it to a certain island lying off Britain named Ictis (probably the Isle
of Wight), and thence the merchants buy it from the inhabitants and
carry it over to Gaul, and lastly, travelling by land through Gaul about
thirty days, they bring down the loads on horses to the mouth of the
Rhine."
There was no doubt in our own minds that the mining of tin in Cornwall
was the most ancient industry known in Britain, and had existed there in
the time of prehistoric man.
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