THE GREAT TOWNS, THEIR INDUSTRIES AND
COMMERCE.
1.
Group of Tin Miners.
2.
Tin Mine Shaft.
3.
Four Hundred Fathom Level, Dolcoath.
4.
Tin Mine Boring Machine.
5.
In a Tin Mine.
Five hundred, six hundred, and seven hundred years ago Britain was what Australia is now. It supplied nearly the whole of Europe with wool. As we have seen in the last lecture, the agriculture and the pasture of Britain are still important, but now, of course, Britain’s fame is chiefly as a mining, an industrial, and a commercial country. Even in antiquity there was one part of the land which was important on account of its mines. The oldest mines of Britain are tin mines, and they are still worked, although the tin of the world is now mainly got in the Malay Peninsula, and the neighbouring islands. Singapore is now the great tin port of the world, but at no very distant time tin was obtained almost exclusively in Britain—in that part of it which forms the rocky peninsula of Cornwall stretching out into the western seas. The Cornish miners, though they no longer find much employment in Cornwall, are the most skilled miners of gold in South Africa. So we find within the British Empire three districts which are very closely related to one another by the bond of tin: Cornwall in England, the Malay Peninsula, and the gold mines of South Africa. Here is a group of Cornish miners, men from whose race have come not a few leaders in other parts of the Empire. These are two of them descending a shaft into the depths of the earth to work for tin. One of the deepest mines in the world is in Cornwall. And here is a passage in the depths of the earth with rails laid for trolleys to run along, carrying the ore which is to be raised to the surface and there treated, so that from rock is obtained shining metallic tin. In this slide we see miners at work on the face of the rock, drilling holes in the hard stone into which explosives are inserted with the object of shattering the stone and splitting the ore into fragments that can be handled. Observe with how little clothing they work, for at these depths the temperature is high. Our final scene in a tin mine is comparatively near to the surface.
6.
Map showing Coalfields of United Kingdom.
7.
Map showing distribution of Population about the Coalfields.