The peasant women of Iviza, in the Balearics, are described in the same manuscript as wearing "un collier en verre, quelque fois en argent, et rarement en or"; while Laborde wrote of Minorca, another of these islands, that "the ladies are always elegantly adorned; their ornaments consist of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings, and chaplets. _The peasants wear these also._" Of the women of Barcelona he said: "Silk stockings are very common in every class; and their shoes are embroidered with silk, gold, silver, pearls, and spangles." But Spain, like Italy or Switzerland, or many another country, is throwing off her regional costumes, of which these various jewels form a prominent and even an essential feature. More rarely now we come across the gold and seed-pearl necklaces of Salamanca, the Moorish filigree silver-work of Cordova, the silver-gilt necklaces of Santiago, and the heavy _arracadas_, hung with emeralds and sapphires, of Cataluña. Murcia, nevertheless, retains her Platería, a street of venerable aspect and associations, where to this hour the oriental-looking silver pendants of the neighbourhood are made and trafficked in. [Illustration] IRON-WORK The ancient iron mines of Spain were no less celebrated than her mines of silver and of gold. Nevertheless, the history of Spanish iron-work begins comparatively late. Excepting certain swords and other weapons which require to be noticed under _Arms_, and owing to the commonness and cheapness of this metal, as well as to the ease with which it decomposes under damp, few of the earliest Spanish objects made of iron have descended to our time.[61] Even Riaño pays but little notice to this craft in the Peninsula before the second half of the fifteenth century. Henceforth, he says, "it continued to progress in the sixteenth, and produced, undoubtedly, at that period works which were unrivalled in Europe."