HYDRAULIC MINING.
LVII.
COPPER AND COPPER MINES.
ANTIQUITY OF COPPER.—USE OF IT AMONG THE ANCIENTS.—OLDEST COINS.—THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES.—COPPER MINES OF ENGLAND AND OTHER COUNTRIES.—NATIVE COPPER.—HOW IT IS WORKED.—OVERTHROWING A MASS.—A LUMP WEIGHING EIGHT HUNDRED TONS.—MALACHITE.
One of the first metals known to man was copper. It is related in Scripture that Tubal Cain was “an instructor of every artificer in brass and in iron.” In the book of Job we read that “copper is molten out of the stone.” It is recorded in Egyptian history that the Emperor Cheops worked a copper mine in Sinai. The ancient Egyptians were familiar with copper, and the Syrians, Phœnicians, and also the Greeks and Romans, used a great deal of it in the manufacture of monuments and statues of bronze. The Colossus of Rhodes, after lying in the sand for nine hundred years, is said to have required nearly a thousand camels to convey its pieces away. The ancients seem to have worked copper mines very extensively, and their facilities for making large castings were quite equal to those of modern times.
Copper was known in America to the races that inhabited this continent before the Indians had any knowledge of it, as appears from the various utensils of copper found in the ancient mounds of the Western country and the extensive mining works along the shores of Lake Superior. The Mexicans and Peruvians had many tools of copper, and it is a curious fact that these tools are almost identical in composition with the tools found at Thebes and other points along the Nile. A chisel found in a silver mine in Peru contained ninety-four per cent. copper, five per cent. tin, and one per cent. iron.