expert, and making his way down into Cornwall, he seems for some years subsequent to 1782 to have been assay-master and storekeeper of some mines at Dolcoath.  While still at Dolcoath, it is very probable that he put together the little pamphlet which appeared in London at the close of 1785, with the title “Baron Munchausen’s Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia,” and having given his jeu d’esprit to the world, and possibly earned a few guineas by it, it is not likely that he gave much further thought to the matter.  In the course of 1785 or 1786, he entered upon a task of much greater magnitude and immediate importance, namely, a descriptive catalogue of the Collection of Pastes and Impressions from Ancient and Modern Gems, formed by James Tassie, the eminent connoisseur.  Tassie engaged Raspe in 1785 to take charge of his cabinets, and to commence describing their contents:  he can hardly have been ignorant of his employe’s delinquencies in the past, but he probably estimated that mere casts of gems would not offer sufficient temptation to a man of Raspe’s eclectic tastes to make the experiment a dangerous one.  Early in 1786, Raspe produced a brief but well-executed conspectus of the arrangement and classification of the collection, and this was followed in 1791 by “A Descriptive Catalogue,” in which over fifteen thousand casts of ancient and modern engraved gems, cameos, and intaglios from the most renowned cabinets in Europe were enumerated and described in French and English.  The two quarto volumes are a monument of patient and highly skilled industry, and they still fetch high prices.  The elaborate introduction prefixed to the work was dated from Edinburgh, April 16, 1790.

This laborious task completed, Raspe lost no time in applying himself with renewed energy to mineralogical work.  It was announced in the Scots Magazine for October 1791 that he had discovered in the extreme north of Scotland, where he had been invited to search for minerals, copper, lead, iron, manganese, and other valuable products of a similar character.  From Sutherland he brought specimens of the finest clay, and reported a fine vein of heavy spar and “every symptom of coal.”  But in Caithness lay the loadstone which had brought Raspe to Scotland.  This was no other than Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster, a benevolent gentleman of an ingenious and inquiring disposition, who was anxious to exploit the supposed mineral wealth of his barren Scottish possessions.  With him Raspe took up his abode for a considerable time at his spray-beaten castle on the Pentland Firth, and there is a tradition, among members of the family, of Sir John’s unfailing appreciation of the wide intelligence and facetious humour of Raspe’s conversation.  Sinclair had some years previously discovered a small vein of yellow mundick on the moor of Skinnet, four miles from Thurso.  The Cornish miners he consulted told him that the mundick was itself of no value, but a good sign of the proximity