Copper, like silver, has been the victim of a ” corner,” and in 1889 the enormous dealings in copper culmin¬ated in a disastrous debacle, spreading ruin far and “wide,” even to the suspension of banks. Not the least romantic episode in copper as a commercial commodity is the story of the vicissitudes of the Rio Tinto Copper Mine, said to be the largest in the world. This mine, covering eight square miles in extent, was worked by many wealthy people, including the Spanish Govern¬ment, without success, but since its absorption by a large English company it has become one of the best-paying of mining concerns, and produces about one-tenth of the copper in the world.

This story belongs to the romance of mining, but it is interesting from a com¬mercial standpoint, because it shows that the Spaniards, while wasting their men and money in the New World, left their own wealth unexploited.
Tin was probably used as a component of bronze in prehistoric times, but the first mention of it as an un¬alloyed metal is the record of it being imported from Cornwall and Scilly, and Spain, by the Phoenicians, who threw into the sea every foreign mariner who attempted to penetrate farther westward than Gibraltar in search of tin and amber.
Pliny and the Romans of his time did not make much distinction between tin and lead, but they imported tin and other metals from Spain.