tracted. But treasure-houses such as these were filled
by forced labor and royal monopolies. In the case of
the early Oriental powers, the tribes upon their borders
who were developing local systems for the ownership
and working of mineral deposits were crushed and over-
whelmed before those systems could take permanent
form. We must leave " the wide Asian fen," and turn
to the hills around whose heights " the first-born olive-
blossom brightened," to the rocky coasts that " sheltered
the Salarninian seamen," to " nodding promontories and
blue isles and cloud-like mountains," to the city " violet-
crowned," whose deathless memory moves like sunlight
about the broad earth forever.

In the Athenian state, we discover the first orderly
\ and effective system in regard to the management of
mineral resources, and the government of mines. The
famous silver and lead mines of Laurium in southern
Attica rose to prominence about the year 600 B.C., and
were worked with varying success till the second century
before the beginning of our era. In 1864, after nearly
two thousand years of neglect, the old shafts were re-
opened by a company of French capitalists. An esti-
mate has been made, that, during the three hundred
years that the Athenians worked these mines, they pro-
cured two million one hundred thousand tons of lead,
and twenty-two and a half million pounds of silver.
According to the law of Athens upon this subject, the
mines were not freehold property. Although belonging
to the state, they were not leased or farmed out to the
highest bidder, as was the Roman custom : they were
granted to individuals to use as a permanent tenantcy.



ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL MINING-SYSTEMS. 15

A small sum was paid on taking possession, and only
one twenty-fourth of the gross ore-yield of the mine was
required as rent. The mine was then to all intents pri-
vate property, unless neglected ; when the state could
bring suit, and recover. The statement, that before the
time of Themistocles the mines were the absolute free-
hold property of certain families, rests upon slight
authority, and seems improbable. Any and all members
of the community were empowered to institute public
suits against the mine-possessors in case of their viola-
tion of any statute, and suits of this sort were frequent-
ly brought. There is evidence of the existence of a '
"director of the mines," elected by those interested.
The income which the state derived from the rents was
annually distributed among the citizens, in much the
same way as was the " Theoricon " in later times, every
one whose name was in the book of the Lexiarchs receiv-
ing his portion. Themistocles, it will be remembered,
persuaded the Athenians to devote this income to the
building of ships.

From Xenophon's " Treatise upon the Revenues," and 1
Demosthenes' speech against Pantsenetus, we gather
much about the Grecian system of managing the Lau-
rium mines. Companies were organized to work one
or more shafts, and many of the wealthier Athenians
owned shares in several such enterprises. The size of
each " claim " was strictly defined, and private enter-
prise was greatly encouraged to send out "prospectors."
Secure though the tenure of mining-property was, it
could be transferred only to a citizen, or to aliens capa-
ble of holding agricultural lands. Any person was
allowed to dig for new mines in unexplored places ; but,
although richly rewarded, successful prospectors had no
prior right : what they found belonged to Athens, and



16 MINING-CAMPS.

might be rented to any other person. The labor used
in the mines was that of private slaves. Each shaft
was registered by the mine-inspector of the state, who
examined the supports of the various drifts and galleries,
and saw that the bounds were not exceeded. Lessen-
ing the supports of a drift, and trespass, were punishable
by fines, infamy, banishment, or death. Demosthenes
addresses the tribunal as the "mining-court," set to try
"mining-cases." Some of the island mines paid one-
tenth of the ore to the shrine of Apollo at Delphos.

Spain, the Peru of Europe, and in minerals the rich-
est country of the ancient world, developed slowly, and
under enormous pressure, a system of mining-laws which
once ruled the greater portion of the American conti-
nents, and still prevails in variously modified forms
throughout Mexico, Central -and South America. In
that law, deeply embedded as fossils in a slab of lime-
stone, there yet remain principles of widely differing
origin, Carthaginian, Roman, Gothic, Moorish, Cas-
tilian. But the traces of mining-institutions are few
indeed under the dominion of either Carthage or Rome.
Instead of many mine-owners, bound together, as in
Athens, by a common law, having the same duties
towards the state, and equal protection from it, we
have in Spain, under Carthage, the almost uncontrolled
authority of the proud family of Barca. Hannibal
procured about three hundred pounds of silver each day
from his Spanish mines. Pliny describes the method
of obtaining gold from streams of Spain by using a
pan, also a method of " ground-sluicing ; " and he men-
tions the use of timber supports in drifts and tunnels,
some of which extended fifteen hundred paces into the
hill.

Even in Carthaginian days, the almost inevitable



ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL MINING-SYSTEMS. 17

destruction attending great mining-operations was going
on with unusual rapidity in Spain ; subsequent Roman
methods wonderfully accelerated this ruin. Their mines,
farmed out to the highest bidders, were wastefully worked
and recklessly destroyed. For a time the Romans em-
ployed twenty-five thousand slaves at Carthagena alone,
and the silver-yield was equal to ten thousand dollars
daily. The Spanish placers yielded large sums ; and
they also were farmed out, after the manner of the silver-
mines. Inventive skill of a high order characterized the
early miners of Spain, who greatly improved the Egyp-
tian methods of grinding or smelting ores, and extracting
the precious metals. All this implies close organization,
division of labor, and severity of discipline. The later
Roman emperors made reforms in the close military sys-
tem, gave more sway to private enterprise, allowed some
mines to be worked by associations, granted the "pros-
pectors" permission to search for mineral, and intro-
duced a sort of feudal service. The Romans also knew
of placer-mines in northern Italy, discovered by the
Etruscans, who even brought iron from Elba; but,
curiously enough, the Roman senate would not allow
them to be worked. The Salassians opened placers in
Lombarcly ; and, as Polybius relates, the Taurisci found
such rich placers near Aquila, that the price of gold fell
one-third throughout Italy in the space of two months.
Thus far in our investigation we have seen, that,
although the gold-hunger has ever furnished a stimulat-
ing element to early society, the ancient world afforded
narrow opportunities for the development of valuable
institutional forms among the classes engaged in mining.
We read of rich placer-mines by the score, but not of
their local legislation and self-government; such fea-
tures being absent until the advent of miners of the



18 MINING-CAMPS.

race whose "political instinct" has become a familiar
phrase. Golden sands of the rivers of Tibet and India
set long caravans in motion past Babylon, past Palmyra,
to imperious, luxurious Tyre ; golden nuggets from the
Chinese frontiers poured into stately Balkh, u mother
of cities," cradle of ancient kings, and greatest satrapy
of Persia; Grecian placers of Pactolus yielded their
treasures to Croesus, and were still worked in the days
of Xenophon. But waste and barren of constructive
energies were all the mining-regions of ancient Europe
and Asia. As the mining-history of the medieval
world shows, the Germanic races, and they alone, have
organized true mining-camps which developed into
higher forms of society. Whatever elements other races
have contributed, the informing spirit of sueli cramps
has been thoroughly Germanic. The organization of a
Spanish mining-law began with the Visigothic kings, in
the days of Pelayo ; the laws of the California camps
of 1849 were linked in spirit to the "mining-freedom"
and the mining-cities of the middle ages.

It is impossible to determine what influences from
the Roman mining-world, which even in its decadence
embraced all the rich mineral regions of southern
Europe, could have survived the chaos and wreck of
barbarian conquest.

After the fall of Rome, the Arabs, Franks, and Goths
in Spain, Gaul, and northern Italy, worked to some ex-
tent the abandoned and nearly exhausted Roman mines.
To northern Spain the Visigoths brought a new force ;
and the Fuero Juzgo, or code of laws of the Gothic
predecessors of Alonzo the Wise, shows greater freedom
of the individual, greater respect for local institutions
and for self-government, than Spain had previously
known. Hints of local mining-organizations in Thrace,



ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL MINING-SYSTEMS. 19

and along the Danube in the fifth and sixth centuries,
make it evident, though definite records are lacking, that
wandering miners existed in that region, and were slowly
"prospecting" the mountain ranges to the north and
west. Hungarian mining can be traced back to the year
750, begun by prospectors from Gaul, says Reitemeier.
But German mining-history clusters about the Hartz
Mountains ; and it is a significant fact, that mining began
there, at the great Andreasberg ledges, in the midst of
a political and national renaissance which profoundly
stirred and influenced the whole of central Europe. It
began there towards the close of the tenth century, in
the reign of Otho the Great, second emperor of the
Saxon line, who wore the iron crown of Lombardy and
the imperial crown of Rome, reviving the glories of
that holy empire, obscured since the mightest of medi-
aeval monarchs had sunk to rest with his paladins and
his sword, in the reign of that Otho whose father,
Henry, had driven back the heathen in many a fierce
battle, had quelled the wild Magyars at Merseburg, had
taken the Mark of Brandenburg from the Sclavdnians
to become in after-time heart of Prussia and appanage
of the Hohenzollerns, had built frontier fortresses, and
posted his warrior Mark-grafs to protect the borders
against Dane and Finn, Sclav and Hun. With a firmer
government, a stronger national life, material enter-
prises developed wonderfully ; the forest-ways began to
be trodden by peaceful merchants, and explored by
seeke-rs for precious metals. In Saxony, in the tenth
century, mines of vast richness were discovered by
Bohemian salt-carriers, who found silver ore in the ruts
worn on a steep hillside by the wheels of their rude
cart. The early German miners soon began to make [
enactments to govern themselves. A law of mining- \



20 MINING-CAMPS.

claims, and rules of mining-life, prevailed among these
first Thuringian miners who struck pick into rocks of
Black Forest and Hartz, and unveiled the treasures of
Freiberg, no less certainly than similar laws and usages
prevail to-day among the organizers of the newest camps
on the Rio Grande and Yukon. The Mark method of
dividing lands was no more certainly a product of the
thought of the Germanic race than are the customs
which to-day govern freemen in distributing with fair-
ness the auriferous soil of western placers. The spirit
of the tribes of whose social and political organization
Tacitus gave so vivid an account, lives at this hour in
free " miners' courts " of Idaho and Alaska.

To Germanic sources we must trace the most impor-
tant principles of mining-law. The local customs of the
earliest Hartz miners have never since ceased to exert
an influence upon civilization. The Mark system of
common lands, annually re-distributed, was most likely
the foundation of early German mining-regulations; but
it took so long to make a mine productive, that the
re-distribution plan could not be permanently adopted.
The plan of making ownership depend upon actual use,
and limiting it to small, well-defined tracts, was the
obvious substitute. All the early German codes express
the idea of mining-freedom, of a possible ownership of
the minerals apart from the soil, of the right of the
individual to search for and possess the precious metals,
provided he infringed on no previous rights. This
" mining-freedom " (^Bergbaufreiheit) contains the essence
of all frontier mining-customs ever since. The right to
"prospect," " locate" a given claim, and hold it against
all comers until abandoned, is the right guaranteed, in
one form or another, by the newest mining-camps of
Montana. This is the same right once possessed by



CODES OF TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES. 21

the men of the " seven mining-cities of the Hartz," and
by those of Freiberg, of Truro, of Penzance, and of
other cities of the middle ages where mining guilds and
organizations existed.

The first written document which embodies these
rights is the mining-treaty of 1185, between the Bishop
of Trent and certain immigrants from Germany. Other
codes appear later; in 1250 one in Moravia, in 1307 one
in Styria. All these, and others of the period, were
founded on the unwritten custom, on those usages
" which have lasted from time immemorial." The Mo-
ravian or Iglau code provides for the appointment of
officials to fix mine-bounds, and defines conditions of
ownership. The full size of a claim is set at four hun-
dred and seventy-nine feet long, and one hundred and
ninety-six feet wide ; a portion is set aside for the king,
and a part for the town if on common lands, for the
owner if on private property. Mining-courts are granted
with special rights and jurisdictions (Bergbehorde). In
later years the miners gave effective aid to burghers
and artisans in their struggles against the robber barons.
The precious " mining-freedom " asserted by the work-
ing miners underwent severe assaults from small land-
owners, from petty princes, and from the emperor
himself; but its broader principles were, as a rule, main-
tained intact. During the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, German mining-jurisprudence grew exceed-
ingly complicated, and covered a great range of topics.
Associated mining-enterprises were frequent. Miners
from the most famous districts of Germany had long
been in demand in other mineral regions of Europe,
and often offered their services to foreign kings. Every-
where they carried with them the customs, laws, ex-
perience, and superstitions of the craft. They worked



22 MINING-CAMPS.

mines in northern Italy, in France, in Scotland and
England, developing a strong professional pride and
secrecy. They filled the place in the mediseval world
that Cornish miners occupy in modern times. Theirs
was the reputation for dealing with the most stubborn
ores, and the most difficult engineering problems.

Speaking in the broadest sense, the true relationship
which exists among the laws of all " mining-camps "
worth the name, is not so much in the form of the laws
themselves, as in the organizing capabilities of that race
which works out similar results under similar circum-
stances, with surprising fitness of method and fulness
of harmony, and with supreme and all-conquering self-
confidence. No one is able to show that there has ever
been any uniform theory of law for mining-camps,
scarcely more than for caravans in the desert : but it
has nevertheless happened, owing to this inherent polit-
ical instinct, that whenever and wherever men of our
Germanic race found minerals, they developed a satis-
factory system of local government, based on a series
of compromises, and differing in essential particulars
from the sort of local government developed no less
naturally by agricultural communities ; their judgments
grew swifter, and their justice surer, as was needed to
counteract the volcanic passions and disrupting tenden-
cies of their fascinating and hazardous pursuit. In the
hands of the Germanic race alone, this fierce gold-hunger
has been controlled, utilized, and made a force of pri-
mary importance in the shaping of civilized society.
Communities created and built up by mining-industries
have thus been transformed, without danger and with-
out loss, into communities based on agriculture, com-
merce, and manufactures. With men of other races,
the possession of wealth-laden placers has too often



GERMANIC MINING-FREEDOM. 23

meant their rapid, reckless exhaustion, the washing-
away of every particle of soil, the destruction of every
forest-tree, the inevitable decay and desertion of towns,
the absolute ruin and complete desolation of the entire
region : with men of our race, the exhaustion of placer-
mines has only hastened the development of more potent v
and permanent resources, has given us the wools of later
Australia, the wheat and wines of later California.

The institutional history of modern mining-camps
thus finds its proper place in the ever-broadening story
of local self-government among men of our race, the
story which runs back to the days when rude, brave
men lifted a chosen leader on their ringing shields, and
swore allegiance ; when the three judges, each with his
twelve doomsmen, met in yearly tribunal ; when " broth-
ers of the sword-oath " (in Icelandic, ver svorjum Bru-
derska/f) bound their rune-cut, bleeding arms together,
swearing eternal freundschaft over their naked war-
weapons. You may find to-day, if you are able to recog-
nize old types in new attire, the true descendants of the
Germanic " sword-brothers " in the devoted " pards " of
a raw mining-camp on the outposts of civilization ; and ^
closer resemblances than this lie thickly scattered along
the course of our investigation. To those who have
ears to hear, the free and unconventional yet sufficiently
systematized life of mining-camps is able to tell a story
of the beginnings of things, of forest meetings in Sax-
ony, of freemen in isolated villages assembling to allot
the common lands, of English folk-moots in England
before the waves of conquest rolled over the wild
heights of Exmoor, before the hill-fortress of Exeter
passed from Keltic ownership, before Lindum Colonia
became English Lincoln. Since Germanic mining be-
gan, certain vital principles have been asserted by the



24 MINING-CAMPS.

men of camp, district, and mining-town. The local
mining-law whose sources are as old as the capitularies
of Charlemagne, and probably far older, is a living force
in the world to-day. Professor R. W. Raymond says
of early Germanic mining-law,

" In the form of a local custom, obtaining with remarkable uni-
formity in all the original centres of German mining, the principle
of mining-freedom established itself, permitting all persons to search
for useful minerals, and granting to the discoverer of such a deposit
the rights of property within certain limits. This principle of free
mining emigrated with the German miners to all places whither
their enterprise extended itself, and the original local custom be-
came the general law. In this existence of an estate in minerals,
entirely independent of the estate in soil, lies the distinctive charac-
ter of German mining-law. It is eminently a special law, not sut>-
ordinate to civil law but co-ordinate with it." 1



1 Relations of Governments to Mining. United-States Mining Re-
port, 1869.



CHAPTER III.

CUSTOMS OF CORNWALL. STANNARY-COURTS, BAR-
MOTES, AND TIN-BOUNDS.

THE development of local legislation among some of
the miners of England furnishes most useful parallels
to the development of such legislation among American
gold-miners. Valuable gold-mines have existed in Eng-
land, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland ; and mining excite-
ments have several times occurred over the " auriferous
gossan " of Cornwall and Merionethshire. A Briton
tribe, the Trinobantes, coined gold, it is said, from the
" placers " of Essex. Edward III. issued a writ assert-
ing royal rights over a gold-mine in Salop County, and
Henry IV. did the same in several instances. During
the reign of James V. of Scotland, some three hundred
placer-miners worked for months at " Gold-scaur," near
Wanlochhead, and collected more than a million dollars.
The largest nugget found weighed thirty ounces ($480).
Many instances of alluvial washings for gold in the
British Isles might be given from the old chronicles;
the latest being those of Wicklow, Ireland, worked in
1796. But no trace of "local law" seems to have re-
mained ; and we are forced to turn to the lead, tin, and
copper miners, for examples of successful organization.

Local customs of the utmost importance have long
existed in Cornwall, Devonshire, and Derbyshire, chiefly
in Cornwall, that land of folk-lore tales and strange

25



26 MINING-CAMPS.

survivals. When, as legends declare, "St. Michael's
wooded mount was six miles from the sea ; " when the
early Britons, or as modern Cornishmen call them " the
old-men," were simple placer-miners digging up " stream
tin " from alluvial channels, and leaving traces of their
toil from Land's End to Dartmoor ; when Beltane-fires
were lit, and St. Piran became the miners' merry saint,
there was rude organization among the miners of Corn-
wall. They held great public assemblies under the open
sky, upon chosen spots on the wild moor, surrounded
by earthen walls, traces of which yet remain ; and these
meetings were called Guirimears or speech-days. Old
smelting-furnaces of this Keltic period still exist, and
the modern miners call them " Jews' houses." A curi-
ous old song, apostrophizing early Cornwall, says,

" Come old Phoenicians, come tin-dealers,

From Marazion come, ye Jews;
Come smugglers, wreckers, and sheep-stealers,
Come tell the ancient county news."

Into this prehistoric drift, to borrow a term from
geology, an adventurous element was brought from
widely diverse sources. There was a wild freedom in
the air of Cornwall ; and outlaws sought its forests, sea-
rovers the shelter of its cliffs. Literature, with its
divine instinct, loves the stormy land where Tristram
slew giants, and Hereward wrought deeds of prowess ;
and some of the greatest of living poets have made its
shadowy legends as immortal as the tales of the Vol-
sungs. Long ago the miners of "wild, bright Corn-
wall" chose their standard, a white cross on a black
ground ; until within this century they kept " Old
Christmas," the 5th of January, and for twelve days
suffered no fire to be taken from their hearths. So



CUSTOMS OF CORNWALL. 27

tenaciously does the past survive in the present, that
even now a verdant branch is fastened on midsummer-
day to the highest woodwork of the steam-engines, to
mark the beginning of the Baal-year.

Early in the middle ages, miners from the heart of
the Black Forest found their way to Cornwall. 1 They
left numbers of mining-terms embedded in the language,
and greatly modified the local laws and customs. The
use of the divining or "dowzing" rod in England is
not older than the advent of German miners, brought
over by Queen Elizabeth to teach the Cornishmen how
to work certain refractory ores. One of these, named
Schutz, became warden of the stannaries. At this point,
then, we discover the institutional link between English
and German mining-law: we also understand how it
has come to pass that the Cornish miners of Nevada
and Montana still use a vocabulary some of whose terms
are derived from phrases in use among the miners of
Freiburg six centuries ago.

The former rights of the " free prospector " or " tin-
bounder " of Cornwall have only recently fallen into
disuse. The ancient stannary-courts, which we are
now to describe, have only of late years received any
serious modification; and, though shorn of many of
their ancient dignities, they still remain as, historically
speaking, the last representatives of older and far more
powerful forms.

The local mining-courts, and the force of local custom,

1 There was also some migration of Cornish miners to Germany.
Camden's Britannia says, " After the comming in of the Normans the
Earles of Cornwal gathered great riches out of these mines . . . sith
that in those daies Europe had tinne from no other place." He goes
on to state that in the year 1240 " was tinne mettall found in Germania
by a certain Cornishman driven out of his native soil to the great losse
and hindrance of Richard, Earle of Cornwal."



28 MINING-CAMPS.

were authoritatively recognized by the organization of
the chief stannary-court, which long proved a most