the pile at his side, and when that
is sufficiently large fills a little iron wagon, and sends it up "to
grass" through the shaft, by means of the iron "kibble." Here the large
pieces of ore are broken into smaller ones by a man with a hammer; as
far as the inexperienced eye can distinguish he might be breaking
ordinary stones to repair the road! These are then taken to the
"stamps."

Those who have delicate nerves would do well to keep as far as possible
from the stamps of a tin-mine! Enormous hammers or pounders they are,
with shanks as well as heads of malleable-iron, each weighing, shank and
head together, seven hundredweight. They are fearful things, these
stamps; iron in spirit as well as in body, for they go on for ever--
night and day--wrought by a steam-engine of one hundred horse-power, as
enduring as themselves. The stamps are so arranged as to be
self-feeders, by means of huge wooden troughs with sloping bottoms, into
which the ore is thrown in quantities sufficient to keep them constantly
at work without requiring much or constant attendance. Small streams of
water trickle over the ore to keep it slowly sliding down towards the
jaws, where the stamps thunder up and down alternately. A dread power
of pounding have they, truly; and woe be to the toe that should chance
to get beneath them!

The rock they have to deal with is, as we have said, uncommonly hard,
and it enters the insatiable mouth of the stamps about the size of a
man's fist, on the average, but it comes out from these iron jaws so
exceeding fine as to be incapable of thickening the stream of
reddish-yellow water that carries it away. The colour of the stream is
the result of iron, with which the tin is mingled.

The particles of tin are indeed set free by the stamps from solid
bondage, but they are so fine as to be scarcely visible, and so
commingled with other substances, such as iron, copper, sulphur,
etcetera, that a tedious process of separation has yet to be undergone
before the bright metal can be seen or handled.

At the present time the stream containing it is poured continuously on
several huge wooden tables. These tables are each slightly raised in
the centre where the stream falls, so that all the water runs off,
leaving the various substances it contains deposited on the table, and
these substances are spread over it regularly, while being deposited, by
revolving washers or brushes.

Tin, being the heaviest of all the i