INTERNATIONAL MINING LAW

CHAPTER I

HISTORY OF MINING AND OF MINING LAW PREVIOUS TO THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA

Mining law, as might be expected, has been a development from the line of activity with which it deals. It could not exist until the industry itself came into being. Hence, a knowledge of the origins of mining as a business is necessary for a clear comprehension of the fundamental peculiarities of mining law.

There was a time (and not so long ago) when all metalliferous deposits were regarded as the personal property of the feudal lord of the region in which they were found, no matter what rights he may have granted for the use of the surface. This assumed sovereignty persists in many countries to-day in regard to gold and silver, because when coined they become money, and the manufacture of money has always been considered a State monopoly; and in some countries it persists in regard to all the other desirable metals and minerals. When the will of the local sovereign was the only law in existence, there was really no law, as we understand the term to-day, for there was no concensus of public opinion behind his decrees. When sovereign rights began to suffer curtailment in favor of those of the community and individual, these irresponsible edicts were gradually superseded by laws which gave greater recognition to the rights of discoverers and producers of desirable mineral substances.

Again, it is only a very few years as historical time goessince the list of the known metals included more than seven, viz., gold, silver, mercury, copper, tin, lead and iron. Not until

the year 1700 was zino clearly recognized as an element, and although antimony and arsenic were known to be individual substances before that date, the metals themselves did not become articles of commerce until many years after. Fifty years ago neither aluminum, nickel, platinum nor bismuth could be purchased in the market, nor any of the ferro metals (manganese, chromium, molybdenum, tungsten, vanadium and uranium). In fact, many of this last list have been produced commercially only during recent years.

Coal mining as an industry is really of very modern origin. The production of coal in limited quantities, and for domestic use in the immediate vicinity of the mine, began in 1750, but the industry was not on its feet until 1820. Coke, although made in England as early as 1619, did not become a successful competitor of charcoal in the manufacture of iron until 1740.

So we shall find, as we dig into the subject, that mining law has been from the first merely a modification of the common law relating to real property; and to understand properly the causes that have led to its differentiation into a subject by itself, it is necessary to become acquainted with the beginnings of mining.

Gold, which was probably the first recognized of the metals, has been an object of search for at least 8000 years. Yet mining of gold as a commercial operation cannot be said to have begun before its almost simultaneous discovery in California and Australia less than seventy years ago; for, previous to that momentous occurrence, the entire gold supply of the world came from placer mines, or from quartz veins yielding visible metal, from which it was separated by the crudest processes of hand crushing and washing.

Reducing iron from meteorites was undoubtedly one of man's earliest achievements, and in certain regions favored with very pure and high grade ores the metal has been in use since the dawn of history. But its production in commercial quantities is a matter of very recent date, as we shall see.

Perhaps the earliest organized mining of which there is any record was at Laurium in Greece. Here was discovered, at least

as far back as 1000 B.C., very notable deposits of silver-leadzinc ore. The location is on the coast, and it is believed that the Phoenicians held and worked the mines for some time. Evidences of Mycenæan civilization have been found in their immediate vicinity. There is proof that the mines were actively worked by the Greeks between 600 B.C. and 400 B.C., and that so much silver was produced that the Athenian state, in whose territory they were, became very wealthy. They were owned by the Government, which leased them to its citizens on royalty, and the actual mining operations were carried on by slave labor.

The deposits of the Iberian peninsula, which yielded to the ancients vast quantities of silver, were being worked by slaves under Carthaginian taskmasters as early as 250 B.C., and when Rome succeeded to the sovereignty of the country the system. was continued.

It is probable, though perhaps it cannot yet be proven, that the most ancient metal-mining industry of a more or less organized character was that which grew up slowly through the ages at the East Indian tin deposits. To understand its importance we must recall the fact that copper is the only metal existing in a native or pure condition in any quantity in the crust of the earth, and accordingly the archæologists generally find at the beginnings of all civilizations a period when implements, ornaments and weapons of the metal were used. Succeeding it, and before an extensive knowledge of the metallurgy of iron was current, is generally found an age of bronze, an alloy composed of copper and tin. Tin is never found native, but its principal ore cassiterite -is easily reduced, at a comparatively low temperature, to the metallic state. As cassiterite is black or dark brown, and quite heavy, it no doubt attracted the attention of men at a very early age, and when, by some accident, it was found to yield in abundance a white metal, which probably was at first mistaken for silver, their astonishment must have been great. However it came about, at some place and at some time this new white, soft metal came into contact with copper tools or weapons, and the very useful alloy, bronze, was discovered, which would take and

keep an edge under circumstances where copper alone failed to do so.

Unlike gold and silver, tin occurs in payable quantities in only a few places in the earth's crust, and nowhere so abundantly as in certain parts of the Malayan peninsula and of the islands adjacent to it. It exists there in the form of dark and heavy grains in alluvial gravel deposits, from which it is easily separated by the simplest methods of hydraulic mining. The area of these Asiatic placer regions is very extensive, and the proofs of their exploitation in very remote ages are abundant There is also no doubt that, in the centuries during which the Phoenicians were the dominant people of antiquity, a very considerable commerce was carried on between Asia and Europe, one of the principal items of which was tin. For this useful metal Europe gave silver in exchange, which was scarce in Asia, but abundant around the Mediterranean basin.

The central European mining region, of the Sudetic Alps, that broad series of parallel ranges in Bohemia and Moravia connecting the Carpathians with the Swiss mountains, attracted the attention of the Romans when their sway had extended itself into that region, during the first century of the present era, but their tenancy there was too brief and uncertain to allow them to organize an industry except of the most primitive kind on the basis of the great mineral wealth that the country contained. But when the Empire fell to pieces these regions gradually passed into the possession of Teutonic and Teuto-Slavic peoples, under whose control mining slowly became a business of some standing. In the 8th century there appears to have been considerable activity there, based mainly upon the production of silver, lead and copper. The great salt mines at Wielitzka were actively producing in 1040. The Freiburg silver mines were discovered (or probably re-discovered) sometime between 1100 and 1209, the Kuttenberg district about 1225, the Przibram lodes in 1300, the Idria quicksilver mines in 1497, the Clausthal argentiferous lead veins between 1500 and 1600, and early in the 16th century there was a mint at Joachimsthal at which the Joachims

thaler the ancestor of the modern dollar-was coined. At Iglau in Bohemia, where it is thought that the rich silver veins of the vicinity were worked by the Celts perhaps as early as A.D. 500, there is extant, in the Town Hall, a code of mining laws dating as far back as 1249. These constitute, so far as I have been able to ascertain, the first codification of laws relating to the mining industry. That they were as yet merely a statement of the rules under which the local sovereign permitted the peasantry under his control to explore for and to extract ore from landed property considered as belonging solely to him, does not detract from their interest; for throughout the Russia of to-day similar laws until recently prevailed, all the unoccupied land of the Empire, besides vast areas of the occupied land, being regarded as the personal property of the Czar. It was these central European mines that gave to Germany her acknowledged primacy in mining knowledge and science in the civilized world, which she retained until the occupation became commercialized in the United States during the eventful years between 1860 and 1880. It was not until 1623 that the Norwegian silver mines at Kongsburg were discovered. About a century later gold mining as an industry began in the Urals.

Copper, as a metal, never seems to have created an excitement among the ancients, or even during medieval times. This was probably due to the fact that it was found abundantly enough in the native condition during the copper and bronze ages of each people at many places-Sinai, Cyprus, Persia, central and northern Africa, Spain, etc.—so that it was not necessary to obtain it from its ores. In due time, however, simple methods of its reduction from its carbonates, oxides and even sulphides were discovered; but by that time the metallurgy of iron had become so well developed, and the latter metal proved so superior for the manufacture of weapons and tools, that the sole demand for the red metal was for ornamentation, for which a small annual production was ample.

Iron first became known as a metal in the form of meteorites, and there are astronomers who believe that in primitive human

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