Plutarch speaks in similar terms of napkins, nets, and head-*dresses, made of the Carystian stone, but says, that it was no longer found in his time, only thin veins of it, like hairs, being discoverable in the rock[1].
Mr. Hawkins ascertained, that the rock, which was quarried in Mount Ocha, now called St. Elias, above Carystus, is the Cipolino of the Roman antiquaries[2]. Further north in the same island Dr. Sibthorp observed "rocks of Serpentine in beds of saline marble, forming the Verdantique of the ancients[3]:" and he states, that on the shore to the north of Negropont "the rocks are composed of serpentine stone with veins of asbestos and soapstone intermixed[4]." Tournefort speaks of Amiantus as brought from Carysto in his time, but of inferior quality[5].
Pausanias (i. 26. 7.) says, the wick of the golden lamp which was kept burning night and day in the temple of Minerva Polias at Athens, was "of Carpasian flax, the only kind of flax which is indestructible by fire." This "Carpasian flax" was asbestos from the vicinity of Carpasus, a town near the north-east corner of Cyprus, which retains its ancient name, Carpas.
Dioscorides (L. v. c. 93.) gives a similar account of the qualities and uses of Amiantus, and says it was produced in Cyprus[6].
Majolus says[7], that in the year 1566 he saw at Venice Podocattarus, a knight of Cyprus, and a writer on the history of that island, who exhibited at Venice cloth made of the asbestos of his country, which he threw into the fire, and took it out uninjured and made quite clean.
Referring to Cyprus, Sonnini (Voyage en Grèce, i. p. 66.) says,
L'amiante, asbestos, ou lin incombustible des anciens, est encore aussi abon-*
- ↑ De Oraculorum Defectu, p. 770. ed. H. Stephani, Par. 1572.
- ↑ Travels in various Countries of the East, edited by Walpole, p. 288.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 37.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 38.—N. B. Asbestos is always found in rocks of Serpentine.
- ↑ Voyage, English Translation, vol. i. p. 129.
- ↑ See p. 392.
- ↑ Dier. Canicular. Part I. Collog. xx. p. 453.
