MINING Diodorus Siculus, writing near the Christian era, mentioned the inhabitants of Belerium as miners and smelters of tin. He says : " After beating it up into knucklebone shapes, they carry it to a certain island lying off Britain named Ictis . . . 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 ". The early history of tin-working is wrapt in clouds of obscurity; myth and tradition speak with an uncertain sound. One legend tells that St. Joseph of Aramathea brought hither the Infant Jesus, who taught how tin was to be worked; another legend says that St. Paul came over and preached to the tinners. Yet another tradition says that St. Piran discovered tin when he came here from Ireland in the sixth century ; and on the strength of this St. Piran has been accredited as the tinners' patron saint. One thing is certain ; the earliest method of raising the metal, and that undoubtedly practised in the time of Diodorus, was by streaming, not by mining in our present sense of the word. It was done, in fact, much in the fashion of modern gold-digging. The ore found in the beds of streams is purer than that which exists in lodes ; it has been washed by centuries of water-action. The early streamers had blocks for crushing the ore, smelting furnaces and blowing-houses, and moulds in which to run it. B 17
