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THE

YOUTHS' MAGAZINE;

OR

Evangelical Miscellany.

JANUARY, 1832.

CARCLAZE TIN MINE,

NEAR ST. AUSTLE.

THIS mine derives its denomination of Carclaze, or Grey rock, from the growan, (as it is locally called) or decomposed granite within which it has been excavated. Its immediate site is about two miles, nearly due north from St. Austle, on the summit of an elevated tract of barren land from which the prospects are every way extensive. In its general appearance it resembles an enormous but irregular bowl or crater, varying in depth from twenty to twenty-two fathoms in the open parts, and being sunk as a mine in many places to the additional depth of ten fathoms. It comprises a superficies of about twelve acres, and its margin, including irregularities, exceeds one mile in circuit.

This mine is traditionally reputed to have been in working full four hundred years; and it was declared by the late John Sawle, Esq. to whom the soil belonged, that the dues which it paid to various claimants three hundred and fifty years ago, were more than it has discharged in recent times.

[blocks in formation]

The lodes are numerous, but not large; and as they approach the surface, the metalliferous veins become more various and ramified, yet, in their descent, they conjoin and occasionally furnish very rich bunches of tin.

In every direction the ground is more or less impregnated with this valuable ore. Before the open workings were sunk to their present depth, the ore, or "tin stuff," dug out by the miners, was conveyed (in its way to the pulverizing mills) in boats, through an adit, or tunnel, formed in the side of the hill, but the mouth of the adit having fallen in whilst the boats were within side, that method of conveyance was abandoned.

The water and refuse are at present carried off by means of an open drain, or an inclined plane, but the ore itself is pulverized and refined in the different stamping mills which have been erected within the excavation.

"LET THERE BE LIGHT." GEN. i. 3.

It is an observation no less true than common, that there are few things we do for the last time, that are not affecting. Nothing has done more for the cultivation of taste, intellect, and feeling in this country, than its periodical literature, and among those who followed, or led the way in that branch of letters, not many were more successful than Hawkesworth; who, in his last paper in the Adventurer, has the following beautiful and solemn sentence.

"The hour," says he, "is hastening on in which, whatever praise or censure I have acquired, will be remembered with equal indifference. TIME, who is impatient to date my last paper, will shortly moulder the hand which is now writing in the dust, and still the heart which now throbs at the reflection. But let not this be read as something that relates only to another, for a few years only can divide him that is now reading from the hand that is writing."

To praise or censure no ingenuous mind can, or ought to be, indifferent. To deserve praise is one thing, to suffer censure is another; but no moral writer will be actuated by motives

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