The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-11-04

monazte are to be gathered. An agent
Tor a commission firm has been slipping
around from point to point in North Caro-
lima buying up all the monazite in sight.
There We're millions in 1t. The market
was busted" 1t was used to deteriorate
gold. It was a patent medicine. No one
outside of two people, one in New York
and one in Hamburg, knew what It was
USED Tor. 1t was an open secret and not
worth talking about. OF such were the
varying and contradictory hints and
phrases that had noated into the reporters
ken, yet when it came to the simple ques-
ton, What is monazite?" the answer
was almost invariably the negative one
Just quoted. Sometimes, however, II was
accompanied by a half friendly pointer
such as go down and see Flinkstein: he
knows all about it," or run over to DR.
schwartzmann's place and ask him."
And so by dint of mounting many dark
and greasy steps, getting into all sorts Of
strange smelling laboratories, and by
taking up leads and hints and Indications
the following facts about monazite were
secured.
Monazite Is strange, rare mineral
round In that rich metallic heart Of the
Appalachian mountains that lie in North
Carolina. Some year or so ago one of the
gold mining companies down there dis
covered In their placers a deposit Of small
brown crystalline sand which was quite
unfamiliar to any Of the. miners. They
sent sample to their agent here I'm New
York. The agent sent it to a famous
German analytical chemist. by whom Il
was recognized as monazite. I'D to that
time IL had only been found IN small and
scattered deposits In such widely separ-
ated localities as Finland and Cornwall
Norway and Bohemia, and in such small
quantities that only the richer labora-
tories had any specimens. II was not like
HING al ba md
few brown octahedron crystals that had
been bottled up We're labeled monazite, or
the lonely" or solitary" mineral The
composition of the mineral was even more
curious, for II was found to contain six Of
those undehnable products known as rare
earths" and all ending In "ium," which
Is popularity, Il seems, Of these imper-
ishable dusts What these dusts had gone
through before arriving at the catalogued
state OF "iums" and "ites" can only be
guessed AZ, but the inference Is that they
had been born In "a period OF intense cos
mic energy. for they proved to be the
most refractory" things on record.
Chemists call things refractory when
they can neither melt nor burn them any
further toward the point OF elementary or
igin, and these earths wouldn't go back at
all. No matter how great the heat, they
Just became incandescent, and glowed
with "A brightness that was like that of the
sun, but when the flame was turned of
they were Just rare earths, undestroyed
"iums" as before.
II happened about this time that a GER
tain Illuminating company was looking
for Just such "a material as mOnagite. and
Boo correspondence heard Of a. Investina-
lions we're made, experts were dispatched
10 North Carolina, and mOnazite was
found boy the ton. Along the river bank
and 10 the river beds IN the ciofts Of auri-
ferrous rocks. and az the bottom ~ Rullies
Tho brown crystalline sand was found and
bought and shipped 20 Germany. But 81