Page:Cassier's Magazine Volume XV.djvu/411

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by the treadmill,—a machine which found its last use in prisons for the discipline of convicts, and now is rarely employed, even for animal power. The remnants of treadmills have been found in Spanish mines and in Spanish America, and they are figured in German books as one of the means of hoisting four centuries ago.

A treadmill of small size is shown in the cut on this page, reproduced from Agricola. Larger forms were built like water-wheels, with rungs in place of buckets, and a gang of men, climbing from rung to rung, afforded by their weight the power that is derived from water in wheels adapted to its use. If we may judge from the existing conditions in China, the miners were miserably fed. The labour in the mines was compulsory, the Egyptian kings condemning to the mines not merely captives taken in war, and criminals, but even persons falsely accused and those who had offended the king, the personæ non gratæ of whom we sometimes read now in diplomatic correspondence, and not only the principals, but all their kindred. In Greece the mines were worked by slaves, who were hired at the rate of seventy-five cents a month per head, and we read of 2000 and 3000 slaves employed by one mine owner.

All the indications are that the miner, as we know him, a freeman, working for good wages, proud of his skill, and with his safety guarded by careful laws, was a being unknown to the ancients. Those who were unfortunate were