142 THE REPUBLIC OF RAGUSA
thirteenth centuries, at the time of the rise of the Serb States, that the industry revived. Wonderful tales were told by mediaeval travellers of the richness of the Balkan mines. As late as 1453 the Greek Critobulus asserted that gold and silver sprang from the earth like water, and that wherever you dug you found large deposits of the precious metals, in greater quantities than in the Indies.1 King Stephen Uros II. Milutin (1282-1320) was the first to summon in German miners, called Sasi (i.e. Saxons), so as to benefit by their superior skill, but the Ragusans were also numerous. Many of the technical terms relating to mining still used in Bosnia are of German origin : orat = Ort; hutman = Hiittenmann ; karan = Karren. The ore was extracted from galleries and shafts, many of which are still in existence. The refining of the metal was executed at Ragusa or Venice.
   Gold, silver, lead, and iron were the chief products of the Bosnian and Servian mines. Gold, of which the earliest mention is in 1253, was found chiefly in the neighbourhood of Novobrdo (Novus Mons, Nouomonte, No/3o7n;io'yoi'), which was for a long time the largest city in the interior of the Balkan peninsula between the plain of Kossovo and the Bulgarian Morava, three miles east of Pristina. Silver, however, was found in much larger quantities. Of this metal two kinds are mentioned in the Ragusan annals, i.e. argento bianco (white silver) and argento de glama (glamsko srebro in Slavonic), which had a slight gold alloy. Srebrnica was the chief centre for the silver-mining industry. Lead was another important
1	Critobulus, ii. 7, 8, in Fragm. Hist. Grceca, v. 109.