It has been conjectured that when the Romans came into Britain they found the inhabitants, especially those to the northward, in very nearly the same state as Captain Cook and other voyagers found the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands; that the Britons parted with their food and valuables for tools of inferior metal made in imitation of their stone ones; but finding themselves cheated by the Romans, as the natives of Otaheite have been cheated by Europeans, the Britons relinquished the bad tools when they became acquainted with articles made of better metal.[13] The Roman colonists were the first makers of iron in Britain on any large scale.

They availed themselves of the mineral riches of the country wherever they went.

Every year brings their extraordinary industrial activity more clearly to light.

They not only occupied the best sites for trade, intersected the land with a complete system of well-constructed roads, studded our hills and valleys with towns, villages, and pleasure-houses, and availed themselves of our medicinal springs for purposes of baths to an extent not even exceeded at this day, but they explored our mines and quarries, and carried on the smelting and manufacture of metals in nearly all parts of the island.
The heaps of mining refuse left by them in the valleys and along the hill-sides of North Derbyshire are still spoken of by the country people as "old man," or the "old man's work." Year by year, from Dartmoor to the Moray Firth, the plough turns up fresh traces of their indefatigable industry and enterprise, in pigs of lead, implements of iron and bronze, vessels of pottery, coins, and sculpture; and it is a remarkable circumstance that in several districts where the existence of extensive iron beds had not been dreamt of until within the last twenty years, as in Northamptonshire and North Yorkshire, the remains of ancient workings recently discovered show that the Roman colonists were fully acquainted with them.
But the principal iron mines worked by that people were those which were most conveniently situated for purposes of exportation, more especially in the southern counties and on the borders of Wales.

The extensive cinder heaps found in the--Forest of Dean--which formed the readiest resource of the modern iron-smelter when improved processes enabled him to reduce them--show that their principal iron manufactures were carried on in that quarter.[14] It is indeed matter of history, that about seventeen hundred years since (A.D.