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Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

"Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series)"


Copper is lately not found, but rather restored again to light. For I
have read of copper to have been heretofore gotten in our island;
howbeit as strangers have most commonly the governance of our mines,
so they hitherto make small gains of this in hand in the north parts;
for (as I am informed) the profit doth very hardly countervail the
charges, whereat wise men do not a little marvel, considering the
abundance which that mine doth seem to offer, and, as it were, at
hand. Leland, our countryman, noteth sundry great likelihoods of
natural copper mines to be eastwards, as between Dudman and Trewardth,
in the sea cliffs, beside other places, whereof divers are noted here
and there in sundry places of this book already, and therefore it
shall be but in vain to repeat them here again. As for that which is
gotten out of the marchasite, I speak not of it, sith it is not
incident to my purpose. In Dorsetshire also a copper mine lately found
is brought to good perfection.
As for our steel, it is not so good for edge-tools as that of Cologne,
and yet the one is often sold for the other, and like talc used in
both, that is to say, thirty gads to the sheaf, and twelve sheaves to
the burden.


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