The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1878-05-24
DOWN IN 4 SILVER MINE.
The Process OF Separating Silver from q
Ore Described.

. !
The Process of Separating Silver from the
Ore Described.
From a paper ON the genesis and his
tory of a silver dollar, by William IL.
Rideipg, in Appletons' journal for
June, we make the following extract:
The beginning of our history takes us
into mysterious region, where spring,
summer, autumn, and winter, are the
same, where night is perpetual, and the
inhabitants toll in gray and sunless
dusk. This wonderland is more than
six times as many feet below the surface
as the Goddess Of Liberty on the dome
of the Capitol, at Washington, is above
it; it is threaded by narrow labyrinths
scarcely wide enough for mans pas
sage, and honey -combed by dismal cav
ems; the heat is more than tropical, and
the sir is sulphurous. Never venture to
explore it, timid reader; but be content
to learn what you may of it In the city
which thrives in the light of day 1000
feet above its deep and sinuous ways.
FACILITATING from exhaustion, we once
stood in its heart with a consciousness
that we were aliens to earth, and vague
dread that we were about to make some
soul-sacrifcing compact with his I'M
perial highness in red. Lanterns flick
cred in the distance and disappeared,
and gnomes, stripped to the waist and
still sweating from their toll, emerged
like phantoms from the solid rock that
imprisoned us, and seemed to melt IN the
unreal perspective-seemed, for much
was seeming here to our visions that
were used to the transparent honesty of
the surface-and the gnomes We're, III
fact, not grotesque offsprings of the
supernatural. but human laborers, with
expansive chests and leathery hands.
Our voices and every other sound
seemed to run off upon heavy, rumb-
ling wheels through the dim corridors;
mist seemed to I'LL the caverns; the
enormous shadows seemed to come and
go without giving an account for them
selves in substance; but, in all the be-
wilderment of the fantasy, the awful
reality of our inclosure never escaped
us. The roof of our prison was noun
tain 1000 feet high, and the floor rested
upon the incalculable massiveness of
rock, which is strong enough to restrain
the fierce heart burnings of the globe.
Both the floor and the roof were silver
10 an uncertain thickness-silver of the
kind seen in the fragment brought from
the Ophir, with the same scintillant
specks and streaks OF dark-blue in it.
This, in brief, is the genesis of the new
dollars.
AS the ore is extracted, it is carried in
small iron cars to the surface, and
wheeled to the reduction mills, where it
is delivered through a chute provided
with a sieve. The pieces that pass
through the interstices of the seive,
which are three inches square, go di-
rectly into the receiving-bin below, while
the coarser pieces are diverted into the
rock-crusher and broken before they are
restored to their smaller fellows. From
the bin the ore is fed to the stamps"
by which it is pulverized in immense
iron boxes and turned, by the addition
of water, into a seething, milky-looking
liquid. The next stageis reached in the
amalgamating-room, where it is deposit
ed in the shape of fine, glittering sand,
and put into pans which are heated by
steam. When it has been steamed and
ground for two hours and half, some
salt, sulphate of copper, and quicksil-
NSI ttIc ulAcu Will Vic pup WuiCu Vic
ore has become; and at the end of five
hours the ore and the quicksilver are
drawn off into settling-pans. The sill
yer separates from the ore in the ANAL
gamating- pans, being changed from a
chloride and sulphuret to metallic
form by the action of the salt ana sui
plate of copper and it then unites with
the quicksilver, which clings to it with
the tenacity of a very poor relation. The
object of all this grinding and was hing is
the removal of the earth, some of which
remains, and is not finally eliminated I'M
til the metal is passed through bag of
heavy canvas, suspended in strong box
with an iron lid. While it is thus in
closed, much of the superfuous quick
silver flows away from it, and, as pasty
mass, it is transferred into an hydraulic
strainer--a cylindrical iron vessel, in
which pressure of $50 pounds to the
sqaare inch is applied to it. Three
fourths OF the mass is srill quicksilver,
and it is next put into a retort, where
the application of heat drives out the
mercury and leaves the boiling silver,
which is nodded into bars or bricks, al
most ready for coinage into dollars.