The weekly Alaska citizen., 1918-01-07
SOME OlD-T|ME
 MINES

We people who live In 8 mining district are SO on the lookout all the time for new methods and minerals that we don't often stop to think how old this mining game is, anyway. Since we who live by the sparks are to take thought of the forge, etc., this may not be a bad idea. If you think for a moment that mining has anything but a most ancient history, just remember that such delivers back into the "mists of iniQuity" as an thropologists have named the very stages of mans painful, slow steps, groping upward out of the muck, b. the metals of his tools. Earliest known man had mined. He had quarried, which is a mining operation, in good and regular standing, with union credentials. For he had a hatchet and a hammer of stone. Other periods came to be known as the Bronze Age. Iron Age, etc. Our own may later be named the Steel Age, or the Tungsten Age, according to it's essential metal. Think of the oldest literature that you know. References in the Bible, references in Homer, to the importance and mining of metals are so numerous as to be common place. The earliest Assyrians, Egyp- tians, Greeks. Hebrews that we know of were experienced in metals. The Egyptians used saws of copper, either fed with emery powder or set with teeth of that abrasive. This was done as early as the Fourth Dynasty. The Minyae. an ancient Greclan peo- pie dating beyond 2.O00 B. C.. under stood tunneling, another good mining operation. Gold was mined extensive ly in Macedonia and Thrace in the fifth century B. c. Krates of Chalcis was famous mining engineer of the time of Alexander the Great. By 489 B. c. the silver mines of Laurium were yielding highly satisfactory return and the net profits from them were applied by the Athenians (for they were run and owned by the city. in what we think was modern way) to the construction of a fleet, so that these mines contributed largely to the prosperity and power of Athens, in her great days. The workings are ap- proximately 2,000 in all and consist of shafts and galleries in which the rock was hewn out with hand tool, and brought to the surface on thl backs of slaves. Mining in the old days was the favorite occupation fo slaves of war-by choice of the con querors-for the death rate in the tiny, unventilated worm-holes was a ter rible thing to think of.
 It seems to have been the specia! genius of the Roman people to seek direct methods. They sought the straight line in all their work. Thi. quality has made Latin, the tongu, which they developed, the ideal jurists' language, and, combined with their genius for organization, was very potent in making Rome a great military nation. They went in for such things as reinforced concrete, and for straight, magnificent roads, that were the wonder and despair of the world for ages. The shortest line was taken. and to cut a way through was better than to go around, they argued. This naturally made them fla nous drivers of tunnels, and many of their road-tunnels for military use were perfect specimens of the miners art The modern Italians inherited a tendency to great and truly inspired engineering projects.
 The Romans drove tunnels for pas sage. drainage. water supply and min. ing. not only in Italy but wherever their conquest led them, as is evi denced by countless records and by equally countless old workings. left behind in the countries they domi. mated.
 Possibly the greatest Roman tunnel was driven by order of Emperor Claudius to drain the overflow waters of Lake Fucinus. 75 miles from Rome. The tunnel was com. pleted in 52 A. D.. after eleven years of labor. and is over three miles long, In 1862 1t was reopened and used to drain the lake.
 Both lead and copper were mined and crudely smelted at least 5000 years ago. but 1t was not until the Romans occupied Spain and Britain that operations were on a large scale. Around Huelva, Spain. are found more than 30.000.000 tons of c1ou S,~,~ 1ool r,.. .o,x,~- ~z-l..~x.S l