There lie the world of the Men of Winter hidden in mist and cloud Never the flaming eye of Helios light on those men at morning, when he climbs the sky of stars, nor in descending earthward out of heaven, ruinous night being rove over these wretches.
Then suddenly the silence was broken by a dark rhythmic noise, almost like the first of a giant Cyclops beating monstrously on the tormented slopes of the mountain. Alexander spurred his horse by digging in his heels, he wanted; he wanted to see what was making the tremendous noise which now seemed so strong as to make the ground shake.
They came over a rocky crest, and Alexander saw ahead of him the point where all the pathways came to an end. There was a gigantic machine, a sort of tower of large wooden beams and uprights and it supported a pulley at its highest point. A hemp rope held a colossal drop hammer, made of iron, while at the other end the rope was wrapped around a winch operated by hundreds of poor souls. They pushed the winch to make the rope turn around the drum, thus raising the hummer inside the wooden tower.
When the hammer reached the top, one of the overseers unhooked the brake, freeing the drum of the winch which the spun in the opposite direction because of the weight of the hammer. The hammer fell freely to earth smashing the rocks that were tipped inside continuously from the baskets carried bodily across the mountain.
The men gathered the smashed mineral material, filled other baskets with it and then took it away along other paths to an open area . Here it was crushed more finely Iin mortars and then washed in the waters of a torrent, chanelled through a series of weirs and ramps, separating the gold granules and dust from the smashed rock.
From the book: Alexander: Child of A Dream. By Valerio Massino Manfredi. Translated by Iain Halliday
