Chap. viii.
In what countries and districts iron originates.

P lenty of iron mines exist everywhere, both those of old time recorded in early ages by the most ancient writers, and the new and modern ones. The earliest and most important seem to me to be those of Asia. For in those countries which abound naturally in iron, governments and the arts flourished exceedingly, and things needful for the use of man were discovered and sought after. It is recorded to have been found about Andria, in the region of the Chalybes near the river Thermodon in Pontus; in the mountains of Palestine which face Arabia; in Carmania: in Africa there was a mine of iron in the Isle of Meroe; in Europe in the hills of Britain, as Strabo writes; in Hither Spain, in Cantabria. Among the Petrocorii and Cubi Biturges77 (peoples of Gaul), there were worksteads in which iron used to be wrought. In greater Germany near Luna, as recorded by Ptolemy; Gothinian iron is mentioned by Cornelius Tacitus; Noric iron is celebrated in the verses of poets; and Cretan, and that of Eubœa; many other iron mines were passed over by these writers or unknown to them; and yet they were neither poor nor scanty, but most extensive. Pliny78 says that Hither Spain and all the district from the Pyrenees is ferruginous, and on the part of maritime Cantabria washed by the Ocean (says the same writer) there is (incredible to relate) a precipitously high mountain wholly composed of this material. The most ancient mines were of iron rather than of gold, silver, copper or lead; since mainly this was sought because of the demand; and also because in every district and soil they were easy to find, not so deep-lying, and less beset by difficulties. If, however, I were to enumerate modern iron workings, and those of this age and over Europe only, I should have to write a large and bulky volume, and sheets of paper would run short quicker than the iron, and yet for one sheet they could furnish a thousand worksteads. For amongst minerals, no material is so ample; all metals, and all stones distinct from iron, are outdone by ferric and ferruginous matter. For you will not readily find any region, and scarcely any country district over the whole of Europe (if you search at all deeply), that does not either produce a rich and abundant vein of iron or some soil containing or slightly charged with ferruginous stuff; and that this is true any expert in the arts of metals and chemistry will easily find. Beside that which has ferruginous nature, and the metallick lode, there is another ferric substance which does not yield the metal in this way because its thin humour is burnt out by fierce fires, and it is changed into an iron slag like that which is separated from the metal in the first furnaces. And of this kind is all clay and argillaceous earth, such as that which apparently forms a large part of the whole of our island of Britain: all of which, if subjected very vehemently to intense heat, exhibits a ferric and metallick body, or passes into ferric vitreous matter, as can be easily seen in b............