CHAP. X.

MIDDLE AGES.

253

beginning about 1320 or 1330, the mines ofSchneeberg are said to have yielded so large aportion of silvei’, that the tithes on it amountedin thirty years to 324,000 quintals. If so, theproduce must have been at the rate of about£300,000 sterling annually. These mines musthowever have been exhausted long ago, as noappearance or trace of them is now in existence,and the spot where they are said to have beenworked is covered with corn-fields and vine-yards h

There is no part of the world in which theoperations of mining are conducted with moreskill, economy, and industry, than in Saxony .The annual produce of the precious metals, takenon an average of late years, cannot be estimatedhigher than about four hundred thousand ouncesof silver, and a few ounces of gold 2 . The workaffords employment to about fifty or sixty thou-sand persons; but the most important of theproducts are lead, copper, cobalt, iron, manga-nese, and fossil coal. There were formerly goldwashings in the streams, and gold was found inthe small brooks that run into the Mulda, andin that river itself; but those operations haveceased long ago

The mines in the Hartz forest in Germany ,

' Putter’s Reichsgeschichte in ihrem Hauptfaden, page 380.

2 H asset’s Erdebeschreibung. Vol. iv. p. 337.

5 Mineralogische Geschcchte des Erzegebirges.

Hanover.