The lodes in the Cornish tin and copper mines are divided by shafts and galleries into rectangular compartments, called ‘pitches.’ These are open to the inspection of all the labouring miners in the county, and, by an admirable system, each ‘pitch’ is let by public competition, for two months, to two or four or more miners, who may work it as they choose. These men agree to break the ores, wheel them, raise them to the surface, and bring them (if desired) into a fit condition for the market. The ores so raised are sold every week, and the miner immediately receives his _tribute_, or percentage for which he agreed to work. The sinking of shafts and the driving of levels is paid by tut-work, or task work, at so much per fathom. If he is at all imaginative, golden dreams enliven the darkness of his underground labour. He is in fact a kind of subterranean stock-jobber, and ‘settling day’ is as anxious a time for the humble tributer at the Land’s End as for the bold speculator of the Stock Exchange. When not exhausted after his hard day’s labour, the miner frequently cultivates a small patch of land. Many have tolerable gardens, and some are able to perform their own carpentry, while, if near the coast, others are expert fishermen. CHAPTER XXVIII. IRON. Iron the most valuable of Metals—Its wide Diffusion over the Earth— Meteoric Iron—Iron very anciently known—Extension of its Uses in Modern Times—British Iron Production—Causes of its Rise—Hot Blast— Puddling—Coal-smelting—The Cleveland District—Rapid Rise of Middlesborough—British Iron Ores—Production of Foreign Countries—The Magnetic Mountain in Russia—The Eisenerz Mountain in Styria—Dannemora— Elba—The United States—The Pilot Knob—The Cerro del Mercado. As an instrument of civilisation iron is the most valuable and the most indispensable of all mineral substances. Even coal is of inferior importance to the welfare of mankind, for iron may be obtained without its aid, while coal could not possibly be extracted from the bowels of the earth without the assistance of iron. Hard and malleable, tenacious and ductile, endowed with the singular property of welding, which is found in no other metal except platinum, and acquiring new qualities by its conversion into steel, it accommodates itself to all our wants and even to our caprices, so that no other metal has such various and extensive uses. It clothes our war ships with a case of impenetrable armour, and sets the finest watch in motion; it provides the sempstress with her needle, and guides the mariner over the ocean; it furnishes the husbandman with his ploughshare, and the soldier with his sword; it concentrates in the steam-engine the sinews of a thousand horses, and mocks on the railroad the fleetness of the swiftest courser. It is, in one word, the embodiment of power, the chief agent of all social progress.