[The following refers to the scale of the devastation that accompanied Roman mining practices in modern-day Spain.]
In the east great cities were ransacked for treasure – but in the west it was the earth. The result was mining on a scale not to be witnessed again until the Industrial Revolution. Nowhere was the devastation more spectacular than in Spain. Observer after observer bore stunned witness to what they saw.
[…]
The mines that Rome had annexed from Carthage more than a century previously had been handed over to the publicani, who had proceeded to exploit them with their customary gusto. A single network of tunnels might spread for more than a hundred square miles, and provide upwards of forty thousand slaves with a living death. Over the pockmarked landscape there would invariably hang a pall of smog, belched out from the smelting furnaces through giant chimneys, and so heavy with chemicals that it burned the naked skin and turned it white. Birds would die if they flew through the fumes. As Roman power spread the gas clouds were never far behind.
[…]
Measurement of lead in the ice of Greenland’s glaciers, which show a staggering increase in concentration during this period, bear witness to the volumes of poisonous smoke the mines belched out.
Source:
Holland, Tom. “The Sibyl’s Curse.” Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic. Anchor Books, 2005. 40-1. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Hughes, Pan’s Travail, p. 127.
Sounds like /s/cabbage