Pliny the naturalist gave us some information on gold mining during the
Roman period. "Gold-said-it is in the Roman world, and we do not need
to talk about the gold mined in India by ants, or by griffins in
Scythia. Here,
we shall obtain the gold three ways: it is found in straws in rivers,
the Tagus in Spain, the Po in Italy, Hebrus in Thrace, the Pactolus in
Asia, the Ganges in India. There is no perfect gold, thus being
polished by the movement and friction of water. Secondly, they dig wells to extract
it, or we will seek it in the mountain cave.
Those
who seek to remove the gold in the first segul; segul is the land
that indicates the strata where the vein is, washed sand, with an
estimated wealth of the vein by the residue of the wash. Sometimes we find these gold-bearing veins on the surface of
earth, rare good fortune that we recently saw an example in Dalmatia, in
the reign of Nero, the vein supplying fifty pounds a day. The gold thus found at the surface is
called talutatium, when there is a ground from under gold. Moreover, the mountains of Spain, arid,
barren and unfit for any other production, are forced by man to provide
this valuable production. The gold extracted
from wells is appointed by each canalicium by other canaliense. It sticks to marble sand, and it does
not shine on the surface, and different from that which shines in grain
on the oriental sapphire, stone thebaic, and other gems, he is engaged
in the molecules of marble.
These channels veins flow along the walls of
the wells, hence the name Golden canalicium. The galleries are
supported with wooden pillars.The
mass extracted is beaten, washed, burned, ground into flour. We give the name of apistacudes the money leaving the
furnace. Impurities that
the furnace called rejects, like those of all metals, slags.This slag is golden again beaten, and
heated in crucibles of tasconium.The tasconium is a white
earth, like clay and is the only substance capable of withstanding the
action of the bellows, fire, and boiling materials. The third
method is superior to the work of giants.Using the galleries carried long
distances, we dig in the mountains by lamplight, the duration of
measurement used to work for several months and it is not the day.These mines are called arrugas: often it is formed
suddenly cracks, landslides that bury workers. While it may seem less bold to pick
pearls and purple in the depths of the sea, and we were able to land
more fatal than the water.Therefore it leaves many arches to support
the mountains. In both
methods we encounter barriers flint, and were broken with fire and
vinegar. But as the underground steam and smoke suffocate miners, they
are more often the party of breaking the rock using machine armies of a
hundred and fifty pounds of iron, and then they remove the fragments on
the shoulders day and night is the way step by step through the
darkness. Juveniles at the entrance are the only ones
who see the day. If the flint
seems to have too thick, the following minor side, and he turns.However, the flint is not the most difficult
obstacle: it is a land, a kind of clay mixed with gravel (it is called
white earth) it is almostimpossible to begin.
It was attacked with iron wedges and
mallets the same as above, nothing in this world is harder, but the
thirst for gold is harder still, and comes to the incendiary operation
made it attack last pillars of the vaults. The landslide
looks; only he who sees it is the watchman on the top of the mountain,
one, voice and gesture, recalled workers and made himself retired. The broken
mountain drops off with a roar that the imagination can conceive, and
down to force a breath incredible. Minors
victorious contemplate this ruin of nature. But there is still no gold was not
even known whether he had when we started digging, and so many dangers
and costs just hope that this desired. Another equal
work, and even more expensive, is to lead, says the mountain peaks,
mostly from a distance of one hundred miles, the rivers to wash the
debris caved. Again there are thousands of work: the
slope must be rapid, so that water rushes rather than runny also leads
does one of the highest points.By
means of aqueducts, one passes the valleys and ranges. Elsewhere pierces inaccessible rocks, and
they are forced to accept large beams. Those who bore these rocks is suspended by
ropes, so that seeing from afar this work, we believe we have the eyes
of wild beasts, nay?Birds
of a new species. These men,
almost always suspended, are employed to level the slope, and they trace
alignment that will follow the Corrugated, and where there is no place
to set foot, rivers are led by the hand of man. The wash water is bad when that happens
carries of the mud the mud is called urium. But in order to
preserve the urium, water is passed through siliceous rocks and
gravel. At intake, the frowning brow of the
mountains, tanks are dug two hundred feet long and as wide and ten deep. There
are five openings left, about three feet square. The tank is
full, we remove the windows, and the stream rushes with such force that
causes pieces of rock. In plain, is another work: they dig canals Agogi called
for the passage of water. At intervals, the current is slowed
by a layer of ulex. The ulex is similar to rosemary
thorns, and specific to retain the gold. The sides are closed with planks, and
if there is a ravine to cross, the channel is supported in the air. The earth, kind of conduct, reaches the sea,
the mountain collapsed dissolves, and in this way, Spain has already
fallen off its shores. It also
channels such as in the first method extracted materials are washed with
a huge work, otherwise, the wells would soon be clogged. Gold produced by arrugas does not need to be
melted and is golden at once. We find blocks; wells provide even beyond
ten pounds. The Spanish
called these blocks or palacres palacranes; gold in very little
grain, they call baluce. It ulex then dried, is burnt, and we
wash the ash on a bed of grass or gold settles. According
to some, the Asturias, Galicia and Lusitania provide this way, by year,
twenty thousand pounds of gold. Asturia In this production is for the
largest share. There
is nowhere an example of such fertility, continued for many centuries.I said earlier that ancient
Senatufconfultum forbade minors to attack Italy, without this law, no
land would be more productive in metals. There is a law censorial on Ictimules gold mines in the
territory of Vercelli, which was defended by the farmers of the State to
employ more than five thousand workers to exploitation. "
PLYNUS
The noble subjects 
