return in other wares; accordingly the Phoenicians by conveying it to Greece and to Asia and all the rest of the world acquired great wealth. And so covetous were the merchants that though their ships were fully freighted, when much silver still remained over they cut out the lead that was in their anchors and replaced it with silver. The Phoenicians by means of such trade increased greatly and sent out many colonies, some to Sicily and the adjacent islands, others to Libya, others again to Sardinia and Spain. But many years afterwards the Spaniards, having become acquainted with the peculiarities of silver, started remarkable mines. Wherefore as they prepared very excellent silver in very great quantities they used to get great revenues." Diodorus then gives a detailed account of the working of the shafts and winding galleries which followed the course of the veins of gold and silver, the difficulties caused by the bursting in of springs and subterranean streams, and the ways in which the miners overcame this latter obstruction by means of the Egyptian pumps. But Diodorus, as a patriotic Sicilian, takes care to tell his reader that this pump was invented by Archimedes, the famous mathematician of Syracuse, when, in the course of his travels, he paid a visit to Egypt. Finally, he gives a short but graphic picture of the sufferings of the wretched slaves who were bought wholesale by the mine owners and endured incredible miseries until death, the only friend they had to look to, came to end their sufferings. Strabo, the stoic, is silent on this point, which here, as in Egypt, so strongly moved the heart of Diodorus.
The story of the discovery of silver by the burning of the woods at first savours of the mythical, but there is really good reason for believing that there is in it a solid nucleus of truth. Tin was unknown in Sumatra until in 1710[1] it was discovered by the accidental burning down of a house (an incident which recalls Charles Lamb's delightful account of the discovery of Roast Pig). It is highly probable that it was owing to some such accident that men first became acquainted with silver, as that metal is rarely if ever found native. It may well be therefore that mankind has learned the art of smelting metalliferous
- ↑ Marsden's History of Sumatra, p. 172.
