island; they labour away in the
most primitive manner, pickaxe and spade being the only implements
employed.

When a promising vein is struck, the miners set to work, and filling
their baskets with the sulphur, carry it out and throw it into large
heaps of a conical shape. These mounds are covered over with moist
clay, some openings being left for the escape of smoke; the bottom is
then ignited, and the matted sulphur flows out through grooves into
pans, where it congeals in solid masses. The passages to the mines are
so narrow, that persons can with difficulty pass each other; they then
expand into high vaults, the roofs of which are ornamented with
beautiful crystals of celestine and gypsum. On account of the excessive
heat, the workmen labour in a nearly nude state, their dark brown skins
sprinkled with light yellow sulphur dust, making them look savage and
strange in the extreme. Towards the end of the last century, the
sulphur mine of Sommatin caught fire, the conflagration causing the
complete abandonment of the pit. For two years it raged, until the
mountain, suddenly bursting asunder, a stream of molten sulphur gushed
forth, and precipitated itself into the neighbouring river. The mass of
sulphur, amounting to upwards of 40,000 tons, was thus obtained by the
owners of the former pit, who had believed themselves ruined.

There are sulphur mines in different parts of the world, the largest of
which are in Japan, but too remote to be worked with advantage. Gypsum,
or sulphate of lime, better known as Plaster of Paris, is found in
prodigious quantities at Montmartre, close to that city; but as it can
readily be worked without having recourse to subterranean excavation, it
need not be mentioned further.

When gypsum assumes an opaque, consistent, and semi-transparent form, it
is known as Alabaster. The largest quarries are near Volterra, in
Italy. Here the whole population have been employed for centuries,
either in cutting it out of the mine, or in converting it into elegant
forms of great variety, which are sent to all parts of the world.

Great Britain possesses inexhaustible alabaster mines in the
neighbourhood of Derby. Some is worked on the spot, but the finest
blocks are sent to the studios of sculptors.

Quicksilver, or mercury, is among the rarest of metals. The only two
important mines in Europe are at Almaden, in Spain, and Idria, in
Carniola. The former, situated on the Sierra Morena, was