ARRAGON, or ARAGON, is an extensive province of Spain, which was formerly a separate and independent kingdom, including Catalonia, Valencia, Majorca, and Minorca. Towards France, Arragon is bounded by the Pyrenean mountains; on the east, by Catalonia and Va lencia, now separated from it; by the latter province and part of New Castile on the south ; and on the west, by Navarre, and also New and Old Castile. Arragon, according to its present confines, is not less than 241 miles in length, and towards 163 in breadth. Great part of it consists of mountains and barren plains. On some of the most lofty mountains storms collect, and then burst with incredible fury, to the great terror of the neighbouring inhabitants; but the climate in gene ral is temperate. The soil is of considerable diversity, according to the various parts of the kingdom. Some of the low lands, and even the more elevated grounds, are fertile by the hand of nature : though the waste and arid plains are of immense extent, and hardly suscep tible of cultivation ; and travellers may journey for leagues without seeing a house or a human being. Many of the mountains are rugged and desolate, pre senting nothing as far as the eye can reach, except a naked gypsum rock. But to compensate for these dreary landscapes, large clusters of vines are seen hanging on the declivities of the hills, and the banks of the Ebro arc covered with luxuriant crops of corn and olives.
The mines of Arragon are said to have been an ob ject of attention to the Romans, and they still abound in valuable minerals. In the valley of Hecho, there is reported to be a mine of gold, and the same precious metal is found in small quantities among emery. At other places, there are the remains of silver mines: One at Benasque afforded a considerable quantity from among copper; and at Herescue, eight marks of silver were obtained out of an hundred weight of ore. Xime nes Aragucs affirms, that six ounces of silver were ob tained from every pound of the lead mine of Calcena. It was worked by order of the king in 1625, but is now almost totally abandoned. Copper, lead, and iron, arc abundant. In the mountains separating Arragon from New Castile are two mines of copper. That in the mountain of Platilla contains the ore in numberless fis sures of white quartz, which arc all irregular, both in shape and size. Some of these fissures arc three ludic-. in width, others not exceeding the breadth of a hair : the ore is blue, green, and yellow, mixed with calcar ous earth. Mines of iron are numerous in the moun tains; one consists of a brown oxvd of iron, which the inhabitants there mistake for a mine of red lead. The goodness of the iron of Arragon is celebrated both by Pliny and Martial. Swords manufactured of it. were
esteemed sufficiently valuable for a royal donation in later times; and the names of Luis de Nieva, Andres Munester, and Andres Fcrrare, are transmitted to us as having particularly excelled in making them at Ca latavud and Zaragoza. The blades bearing the mark of a Moor's head, a dog, or a wolf, arc considered as pe culiarly belonging to that city. In the valley of Gistau, near the summit of the Pyrenees, there was a mine of fine cobalt discovered in the beginning of the eighteenth century. It was worked a considerable time by Ger mans, and abandoned by them in 1753, after having ex tracted a great quantity of ore. From time immemo rial the alum mines of Arragon have been in high re pute. This salt is found entirely free from any foreign substances, and only requires cleansing from the earth and other impurities taken up along with it. But it is far from being converted to real advantage : near the town of Alcaniz, the people dig it up from a low swampy blackish soil, and sell it in its primitive state to the French, by whom it is refined, and the Spaniards then purchase it back. Thus they lose all the advantages of manufacturing at home an ingredient so useful in dying and other works. In short, there are few coun tries richer in mineral productions than Arragon ; for, independent of those already named, there are great quantities of rock salt, jet, and marble. Various emi nent sculptors have displayed their art, and at the same time the beauty of the different marbles. Early in the sixteenth century, Morlanes executed the front of the church of St Engracia, and in 1536, another artist finish ed the portico of the monastery dedicated to the same tutelar saint in Zaragoza. The labours of Becerra and Gregory de Niesa, who died in 1701, were employed in like manner, on the native marbles of this country. Among the more remarkable fossils found in Arragon. is an immense congeries of bones. Near the village of Concud, there is a hill called Cueba Rubia (Red Cave), so denominated from a kind of red earth, which the waters of a gulley have laid open, containing number less bones down to the very centre. Some are dug up as from a cemetery, some are solid, others seem cal cined, or pulverised. The bones belong to all different animals, and lie confusedly huddled together. Frequent ly seven or eight human shin bones are seen irregularly lying in one spot, without any other parts of the body: and many articulations of the bones of cattle mingled along with them. The bones arc all separated front their connecting parts: and the thigh and shin bones of the human race are sometimes full of a crystalline substance. Don Guillermo Bowles relates, that he was informed of an entire skeleton having been discovered.