88
MINES IN
CHAP. II.
value \ The mines there were also celebratedfor the quality of their iron. It was used formaking the best weapons, and hence, “ Noricusensis,” among the Romans, was as much synony-mous for a good sword as a Toledo or AndreaFerrara blade in other times. In this sense it isused by Horace, book i. ode xvi. v. 9- Gaul wasscarcely productive of metallic wealth before thereign of Augustus . The Tarbelli, a people atthe foot of the Pyrenees , are noticed by Strabo 1 2 ,as working mines of gold, silver, brass, and iron.The gold was found near the surface, and in sopure a state as scarcely to require smelting.Some of it was also procured by washing thesand of the rivers, but was less pure. The othermetals were found in their respective ores.
There seems no reason to believe that themines in Hungary were worked at any periodbefore the Christian era 3 . The earliest accountsof them do not go higher than the years between745 and 770 from the birth of Christ, except anassertion of Agricola, a German physician of greatcelebrity for his knowledge of metals, who wroteabout 1,550, and says, the mines of Kremnitz