are protected with long gloves, to prevent them from being injured by the
chips which fly away from the fragments.
In that district of Greater Germany which is called Westphalia and in
that district of Lower Germany which is named Eifel, the broken ore which
has been burned, is thrown by the workmen into a round area paved with the
hardest stones, and the fragments are pounded up with iron tools, which are
very much like hammers in shape and are used like threshing sledges. This
tool is a foot long, a palm wide, and a digit thick, and has an opening in the
middle just as hammers have, in which is fixed a wooden handle of no great
thickness, but up to three and a half feet long, in order that the workmen
can pound the ore with greater force by reason of its weight falling from a
greater height. They strike and pound with the broad side of the tool, in the
same way as corn is pounded out on a threshing floor with the threshing
sledges, although the latter are made of wood and are smooth and fixed to
poles. When the ore has been broken into small pieces, they sweep it
together with brooms and remove it to the works, where it is washed
