Now to get at stream-tin very little trouble is needed. The rubble brought down and lodged in the valleys has to be turned over; and the ore is distinguishable by its weight and by a pink tinge, like the rouge ladies were wont (a hundred years ago) to put on their cheeks and lips. There is no tunnelling, no nasty shafts and adits to be made; and shafts and adits were beyond the capacity of primitive man, furnished with bone and oak picks only. Besides, why take the trouble to mine when the tin lay ready to be picked up? The story told in Cornwall of the discovery of tin is this:-- S. Piran came over from Ireland in a coracle, and, like a prudent man, brought with him a bottle of whisky. On landing on the north coast he found that there was a hermit there named Chigwidden. The latter was quite agreeable to be friends with the new-comer, who was full of Irish tales, Irish blarney, and had, to boot, a bottle of Irish whisky. Who would not love a stranger under the circumstances? Brothers Chigwidden and Piran drank up the bottle. "By dad," said Piran, "bothered if there be another dhrop to be squeezed out! Never mind, my spiritual brother; I'll show you how to distil the crayture. Pile me up some stones, and we'll get up the divil of a fire, and we shall manage to make enough to expel the deuce out of ould Cornwall." So Chigwidden collected a number of black stones, and the two saints made a fine fire--when, lo! out of the black stones thus exposed to the heat ran a stream like liquid silver. Thus was tin discovered. The story won't wash. Tin was invented a thousand years at least before either Piran or Chigwidden were thought of. But that was most certainly the way in which it was revealed. On Dartmoor the stream tin can thus be run out of the ore with a peat fire. And the Dartmoor stream tin has this merit: it is absolutely pure, whereas tin elsewhere is mingled with wolfram, that makes it brittle as glass; and to separate wolfram from tin requires a second roasting and is a delicate process. Another Cornish story is to the effect that Joseph of Arimathea came in a boat to Cornwall, and brought the Child Jesus with him, and the latter taught him how to extract the tin and purge it of its wolfram. This story possibly grew out of the fact that the Jews under the Angevin kings farmed the tin of Cornwall. When tin is flashed, then the tinner shouts, "Joseph was in the tin trade," which is probably a corruption of "S. Joseph to the tinner's aid!" We will now shortly take the history of tin mining in Devon and Cornwall. Whether the west of Cornwall and Scilly were the Cassiterides of the ancients is doubtful. But one thing is sure: that they had their tin, or some of it, from Britain. Diodorus Siculus, who flourished in the time of Augustus, says so:--