Part 15

So, amid sounds of universal rejoicing, the young King entered upon his task with all the promise of youth and under fair auspices, and nowhere than in this country was the hope more cordially felt that the unbounded enthusiasm with which he had been proclaimed would be the prelude to a long, ever-brightening record of loyal co-operation between the Sovereign and his subjects, of re-awakened national energies, of solid and enduring gains of domestic unity and progress, and of the attainment of the indomitable aspiration of a noble people.

In every respect these high hopes are being realised. The King’s popularity, based on the solid foundation of respect for wise authority and administration, of his frank, generous, and engaging personality, is growing daily. He has gained the confidence as he won the hearts of his subjects, and it is safe to assert that at no period of recent history has the throne of Spain been more secure, or the future of the country more full of promise. The renaissance of the Spanish nation has commenced; her commercial prosperity is steadily and surely increasing; and with the ever-lessening evil of domestic friction, the expansion of her trade, and the development of her natural and mineral resources, the boundless possibilities before Spain are assuming definite and tangible form.

Mining.

The history of mining in Spain would fill a dozen books, each twelve times as large as the present volume, and even then only the half, if so much of the story, would be told. It would form a narrative that would combine tragedy and romance, and present a moral as stern as humanity has ever been asked to peruse. The mineral wealth of the Peninsula was responsible for the origination of the African slave trade, for the demolition of Carthage, for the decline of Rome, for the sacrifice of lives innumerable, for tortures unspeakable, for crimes that are without parallel in the annals of the world. In ancient times Spain was ravaged, plundered, and depopulated to provide Carthage with the spoils that were to make her the prey of the Romans, who, in their turn, were to be lulled by wealth and luxury into the deadly sleep of degeneracy that precedes decay.

It is probable that the beginning of the history of precious metals may be traced back to India, although it is commonly assigned to Greece about 900 B.C.; but the earliest specific mention of gold or silver mining in European history is derived from the story of Cadmus, a Phoenician, who mined for copper and gold in Thrace in 1594 B.C., or thereabouts. Jason, another Phoenician, journeyed as far west as Sardinia in search of precious metals in 1263 B.C.; and it is known that the Phoenicians were working the gold placers of the Guadalquiver previous to 1100 B.C. The means of winning the gold--the only mineral that was exploited in those days--were both limited and arduous, and some time between 1200 and 500 B.C. (it is impossible to compute the period more exactly) the auriferous resources of Spain were thought to be exhausted. The results of Phoenician mining enterprise must have been considerable, for about B.C. 500 Darius, of Persia, undertook and successfully executed a military expedition against Phoenicia for the purpose of acquiring the metallic treasure, which its adventurers had carried away from Spain. Some portion of this hardly-won stock of bullion found its way back to Europe some two centuries later when Alexander the Great plundered Persia.

Spain did not benefit in the slightest degree by the earliest discovery of her auriferous riches; and when her silver resources were disclosed, they provided the Carthaginians with a further incentive to pillage and plunder the country which was cursed by the possession of her coveted mineral wealth. Between 480 and 206 B.C. the silver mines were worked by the Carthaginians, who stored their spoil at Carthage against the coming, in B.C. 146, of the plundering Romans who captured the city, rifled its treasure houses, and either sold its myriad inhabitants in the slave markets of Rome, or condemned them to the hideous labour of the Spanish mines. Spain was to the Ancients what Mexico and Central and South America became in later ages to Spain--El Dorado, the land of gold, the richest mining country of the world; and the nearer history of Mexico and Peru--the fate of its aborigines, the subsequent struggle among leading nations for the mastery of its precious metals, the destruction of its soil, the neglect of its agriculture, and the resultant poverty and decay of its population--is no more than a repetition of the ancient history of Spain. The aborigines were easily brought into a state of subjection by the disciplined and well armed soldiers of Carthage, who reduced them to slavery, and compelled them, with every accompaniment of savage brutality, to explore and work the mines.

“These people,” says Didorus, “though by their labour they enriched their masters to an almost incredible extent, did it by toiling night and day in their golden prisons. They were compelled, by the lash, to work so incessantly that they died of their hardships in the caverns they had dug. Such as by great vigour of body continued to live, were in a state of misery which rendered death a preferable fate.” Again Didorus, in describing the conditions under which mining was carried on at this period, tells us that infinite numbers of slaves of both sexes were thrust into the mines, kept at work night and day, and guarded so strictly as to make escape an impossibility. Naked, maimed, and sick they laboured on beneath the lash of the brutal overseers without rest or remission. “Neither the weakness of old age, nor the infirmities of females,” says this authority, “excuse any from the work, to which all are driven by blows and cudgels, until borne down by the intolerable weight of their misery many fell dead in the midst of their insufferable labours. Deprived of all hope, these miserable creatures expect each day to be worse than the last! and long for death to end their griefs.”

The mortality among the workers in the mines of Spain at this period must have been appalling, and the conditions were calculated to decimate the entire race. Soon it became necessary to recruit the fast thinning ranks of native labourers with imported workers, and these were brought in thousands from Africa. Negro slaves had previously been introduced, to a small extent, into Etruria; but the traffic had not hitherto

attained the gigantic proportion that it was then to assume. Jacob, in his _History of the Precious Metals_, says: “This oppression and exhaustion of the native labourers led to a trade in human beings which was carried on by the Carthaginians with the interior of Africa, and supplied to Andalusia the place of those native workmen who had been destroyed by the excessive toil imposed on them by their Asiatic intruders. This horrid traffic was extended and continued, and it augmented the produce of the mines of Spain in such a degree as to have an influence on the whole commerce of the world at that period. That influence was continued for upwards of seven hundred years, until the Government of the Romans, who succeeded the Carthaginians in the mastery of Spain, had fallen into the hands of the Gothic monarchs.”

The spoils which Phoenicia had won from Spain led to her spoilation by Darius of Persia, in the fifth century before the Christian era; three hundred years later the silver hoards of Carthage excited the cupidity and envy of Rome, and Spain, which provided the booty, was wrested from the Carthaginians by the armies of the Commonwealth. Up to B.C. 400, when mining in Spain was reduced to a regular system, and the output was enormously increased, Carthage was able to utilise her silver in her Indian trade; but with increasing returns the necessity arose for establishing other markets for her precious metals. In Carthage and in Rome the numerary money system still obtained, but about this date the Carthaginians adopted silver currency and endeavoured, but with little success, to dispose of their surplus supplies of silver by offering them in the markets of Rome. But Rome still held to her copper tokens, and was as yet free from the fatal influence of the mines. “Rome trusted to itself and its sword,” says Heeren in his _Researches, African Nations_, “Carthage to its gold and its mercenaries. The greatness of Rome was founded upon a rock; that of Carthage upon sand and gold-dust.”

But the increasing volume of the trade of Carthage with the Orient did not keep pace with her ever-multiplying returns of silver. Carthaginian silver made its appearance in Italy, and the jealous eye of Rome was led from Carthaginian silver to Carthage and its hugely profitable Indian trade. In B.C. 264 began the first Punic War, which cost Carthage the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica--all of them mining countries--and an indemnity of 1,200 talents of silver. Three years after Hamilcar Barca, on the plea that the extension of the Carthaginians’ arms into the interior was necessary in order to make good the loss of the mineral-producing islands ceded to Italy, conducted a marauding expedition through Spain. This campaign of conquest and slaughter culminated in B.C. 219 in the sacking of Saguntum (the modern Murviedro), a Greek colonial city and furnished Rome with the pretext for another war against Carthage. In B.C. 269, prior to the first Punic War, Rome had formally adopted silver as a portion of her monetary system; and the demand for the metal made it necessary for her to devise some means for ensuring a larger and more regular supply than she could obtain from her own mines or by purchase. Italy’s growing commerce with the Orient, which consumed all the silver at her command, hastened the means to the end. The capture of Saguntum by the unauthorised commandoes of Hamilcar Barca was the excuse upon which Rome declared the second Punic War which, in B.C. 207, ended in the conquest of Spain, and the final evacuation of the coveted territory by the Carthaginian forces five years later.

Carthage built her greatness on the spoils wrung from the mines of Spain, and her fall is directly traceable to the same cause. As Alexander del Mar says: “They corrupted the Government of Carthage, and led to the neglect of military discipline and precautions; they introduced a mercenary and gambling spirit into all enterprises; they created monopolies of wealth; they impoverished the masses; they occasioned the abandonment of those industries which had built up the State, and they eventually so crippled its power, that in the memorable contests that ensued with Rome for the mastery of these same mines, Carthage was unable to successfully cope with its more vigorous adversary.”

There is abundant evidence to show that although the Carthaginians were driven out by the all-conquering Romans, they left with the full determination to return at some future time, and they took the most careful precautions to hide their treasures from the eyes of the invaders. The ancient workings that are attributed to Roman miners are, in many cases, of Carthaginian origin; for it appears certain that numbers of these well-developed mines were never discovered by the Romans. The site of a mine at Córdova, for instance, was indicated by a series of seven abandoned and rubbish-filled shafts, forming an irregular row of workings. One or two of these shafts at either end of the row had been tested without yielding any satisfactory results, and when the property passed, at a nominal figure, into the hands of English capitalists the manager received instructions to empty these shafts. He started at one end and cleared three of the seven holes, only to find that they stopped suddenly at a few yards from the surface. Then, following the course that had been taken by the Romans and the more recent Spanish proprietors, he began at the other end only to find that the supposed shafts were no more than huge pot holes. Disappointed with the fruitlessness of his efforts he wired to London, “Have cleared six holes. No trace of lode.” The answer was instantly returned to the despondent manager:--“Clear the seventh.” Acting on these instructions the centre shaft was cleared, and at a little depth he came upon a massive iron door which proved to be the entrance to the enormous ancient workings which the Carthaginians had hidden for over two thousand years by this ingenious device of digging dummy shafts, and so giving succeeding generations the impression that the mine was a worthless and abandoned prospect.

In the majority of these ancient workings in the copper mines that I have inspected, tools of Carthaginian make had been found lying scattered in the tunnels where the workmen had thrown them when they made their hurried departure. One has only to glance from those enormous catacombs to the implements with which the excavations were made to realise the terrific difficulties of the task and the misery and almost super-human labour that was involved in its accomplishment. Human blood was spilt like water to gratify the mineral greed of the Carthaginian conquerors. When the younger Scipio, carrying the war into the enemy’s country, sacked and afterwards burned Carthage to the ground, 60,000 of its citizens were sent to labour as slaves in the Spanish mines of which they had so recently been the opulent masters.

Before the conclusion of the second Punic war Scipio returned to Rome with so great a quantity of the precious metals captured by his forces, that the Roman numerary system was finally abolished, and the complete establishment of silver currency was effected. But the triumph of Rome was the beginning of her end. She had crushed her great Carthaginian rival, and gained her Indian trade; she had extended her possessions to the Atlantic ocean, and made herself the owner of the greatest mineral country of the world. But she had transferred to her own shoulders the curse of Carthage’s decline when she assumed the Carthaginian mantle. Public and private morality was demoralised by the accumulation of the treasure in Rome; wealth was the precursor of corruption; and corruption led to that gross luxury and social and political supineness which sapped the greatness of the empire.

When the impairment of the stock of silver coins by export to India and the surrounding countries necessitated larger and regular supplies of the metal, Rome applied herself to the exploitation of her Spanish mines with a vigour as great as it was pitiless. The native races and their erstwhile Carthaginian masters worked side by side, and their ranks were subsequently swelled by condemned criminals from Italy, and in later times even by legionary soldiers. Jacob tells us that “the silver procured by the Romans by these operations must have cost more than its current worth; and, according to Polybius, the 40,000 workmen who were constantly employed in the silver mines at New Carthage in Spain produced only 25,000 drachmas (valued at under £1,000) per diem--a sum that could scarcely have purchased more than sufficient to keep alive the miserable beings who were immolated in them. Another reason why these mines were worked at a loss at this time, if indeed they were, is supplied by Del Mar, who points out that “when these mines were worked by the Romans there already existed in their own markets a mass of the precious metals that had been obtained at a cost which, reckoned in blood and cruelty, was immeasurable; but which in mere pecuniary outlay of labour, in killing and sacking, was as nothing. It was against the competition of this mass of metals, which pecuniarily cost nothing, that the mine owners had to measure their products in the Roman market; and it is to be hardly wondered at that they found the industry unprofitable. The Spaniards subsequently had the same experience in America, and the Californians and Australians are repeating it at the present time.

The Romans also worked for gold the sands of the Guadalquiver, Darro and Duero rivers, but with what results is not known. They also mined for copper on a large scale, with, it is evident, the most gratifying success. The mechanical resources at their command were limited, and there seems no doubt that many rich mines were abandoned for want of knowledge and the proper appliances with which to treat the ores. In one instance, that of the Escurial Mines at Escurial, a huge lode carrying rich copper was broken by a fault, and the Romans made no effort to pick up the lode again. The present English owners penetrated the fault, and found the lode of the original dimensions on the other side.

During the eight hundred years that Spain was under Arab domination, the mines of Sardinia are believed to have been worked by the conquerors, and they prosecuted their explorations for the precious metals on the main land with some vigour. Yeats, in his _History of Commerce_, tells us that in the eighth century the old silver mines, thought by the Romans to be exhausted, were made to yield afresh by skilful working; and the Spanish mines then furnished to the world the chief supplies of precious metals. The Arabs exported quicksilver to Constantinople, and it is possible that they extended the industry by opening up new mines. Spain is so full of metals that, after being explored for centuries, new mines are constantly being discovered; and perhaps the richest of all the silver mines--the Hiendelæncina--was opened up in 1843. But what the Arabs did in the way of discovery we have no means of ascertaining. They are believed by Jacob to have re-opened the Roman silver mines in the present French division of the Pyrenees, and to have worked the gold mines at Lares, the silver mine of Zalamea in Andalusia, and that of Constantina, near Cazalla. The hills of Jaen, upon which they principally concentrated their exertions, are pierced with over five thousand shallow pits, which are estimated to have been the work of five centuries. Even the approximate amount of the precious metals obtained as the result of Arab mining in Spain is a matter of the merest conjecture.

It is curious to note that when Spain was at the zenith of her greatness the wealth in which she abounded was not the result of the exploitation of her own vast stores of precious metals, but the fruits of conquest, bloodshed, and cruelties, similar to those which she had herself suffered at the hands successively of the Phœnicians, the Carthaginians, the Romans, and the Arabs. She had seen each succeeding nation of her despoilers crumble into decay, but she failed to learn the lesson that their disastrous endings had for her.

In her turn Spain crushed Mexico and Peru, and grew rich and powerful by tribute and plunder to the neglect of her own resources and her ultimate temporary ruin and submersion among the nations of Europe. Her own metallic hoards were passed over--the treasure for which Carthage, and Rome, and Morroco had fought and bled was neglected; while the methods of the Roman and the Carthaginian conquerors were being practised upon the people of the New World. The result is, that while Spain is to-day recognised as the richest mineral country in Europe, her mineral assets are in a more backward state of development than those of any other European country.

In the production of copper ore, lead, and quicksilver Spain heads the list; she is second only to Austria-Hungary in the production of salt and silver; her tin mines are at present almost untouched; while among the less important minerals distributed over the Peninsula are manganese, antimony, cobalt, soda sulphate, sulphate of barium (barytes), phosphorite, alum, magnesia sulphate, sulphur, kaolin, lignite. Gold is also found there in payable quantities; coal and cement of good quality and in enormous deposits are present in the province of Lerida; while the richness and extent of her iron resources in the districts round Santander and Bilbao have long been recognised. With all this vast mineral wealth within her boundaries, Spain should be one of the richest, rather than one of the poorest of European countries. The natural conditions are all favourable to the development of the industry. Labour is cheap and abundant, transport facilities are mostly good, and the mines are within easy reach of all the important markets of the world. The working of the mineral resources is carried on under generous and encouraging State regulations. For this purpose the whole kingdom is divided into three sections, and each of these into four districts. Each section is under the charge of an inspector-general of the first class, and each of the districts under an inspector of the second class. There are no harassing restrictions to hamper the energies of the mine owner, while the climatic conditions render it possible to work the majority of the properties all the whole year round.

Yet with all this mineral wealth to hand, only waiting to be systematically developed to yield immense returns, less than ten per cent. of the population of Spain are engaged in its mining industries; and between sixty and seventy per cent. are occupied in various branches of agriculture, or in pastoral pursuits. The reason is not far to seek. In many parts the country realises Mr. Stephen Phillips’s dream of that fair land where

“Trees without care shall blossom, and the fields Shall without labour unto harvest come.”

The Spanish peasant can tend his land to produce sufficient for his needs, and allow him to be independent of his fellows. He is more contented and happier, and his best qualities are more strikingly evident when he is “on his own” than in the mass. Unregulated labour is congenial to him, and if his earnings are small, his wants are few. Agriculture appeals to his temperament and satisfies his needs. Mining, however, demands capital which he has not got, and experience which he has no means of acquiring. It is something which he does not understand. The Spanish noblemen and landed proprietors who own the mines neglect this source of revenue for another reason. Englishmen, nobles or commoners, who possess mineral land do not hesitate to turn their possessions to practical account; but the Spaniard has the greatest aversion to anything that savours of trade. In England pig-iron is aristocratic, though tenpenny nails still remain scarcely respectable; in Spain wholesale and retail are alike beneath the dignity of the aristocracy.