Note 29 — Chapter I · OUTWARD BOUND.—LIVERPOOL TO LISBON.

In the days of Pliny, we are told, the provinces of Minho, Galicia, and Asturias paid not less than a million and a half octaves of gold to the Roman Empire, as a tribute on the ore extracted from various mines then in active operation, and yet, in the present day, the revenues derived by the Portuguese Government from all their mines does not amount to more than £72 17s. The Romans worked mines of gold, silver, iron, lead, coal, antimony, copper, quicksilver, bismuth, arsenic, and tin, in Portugal: and Faria e Souza graphically remarks, ‘Hardly is there a river, or mountain-base that it laves, which does not cover precious stones and grains of gold.’ This language may be considered poetic, but there is no doubt that ‘le sol de Portugal est essentiellement metalifere,’—that metals abound throughout the whole country; but the mines are not worked; neither can their value be correctly ascertained, in the absence of every means of transport, and internal communication.—Forrester.