Warren sheaf. [volume] (Warren, Marshall County, Minn.) 1880-current, 1898-07-14
CHINESE TIN SMELLING.
It Is Different In a Great Many Ways
from Smelling Down in
Boston HarbOr.

At TAPPING the tin mines cover an
area of several square miles, and are
worked almost entirely by Cantonese.
They resemble nothing so much as the
gold washings of California and New
Zealand; that is, tin washing is
series of delphs or hollows, like an Or
binary English quarry, except that
there is no stone.
The sand or rubb1e is excavated and
conveyed to the troughs, which are
placed at sufficient height to allow of
the water running freely down an in
cline; one man rakes up to the topmost
end the flakes CT tin, which resemble
bits of black pencil lead, and which,
when disengaged from all mud or other
light clinging matter, sink at once to
the bottom of the inclined trough
Other laborers pick out the larger
stones from the rubble; while a man,
stationed at the bottom of the trough,
pushes up the accumulated mud from
which the lead is not yet quite separat-
ed, so that it may pass through a second
or,third course of washing. The leaden
ore is then carried in buckets to special
cleansing houses and there thoroughly
washed once more.
The furnace looks like good-sized
wine cask set on end, but at a slight
angle, and each one is provided with
an iron pan for base.
This, iron pan, together with a num-
Der of cooper's hoops twined round the
baked mud, serves as a stiffening, and
helps to keep the furnace from COL
lapsing. The lead. ore is thrown, to-
gether with the charcoal which melts it,
in one mass into this barrel-like fur
mace, where the molten metal soon
passes through the charcoal and es-
capes (through a vent in the side of the
lower portion of the barrel furnace)
into small pit dug into the ground be-
low.
The fire is kept active by primitive
but very effective bellows, consisting of
followed tree fitted with wooden
piston, and connected with the furnace
by a short bamboo tube inserted into it's
side. The whole apparatus costs only
(at present rates of exchange) about
$3.50. -. g
A workman rakes the Stag out of the
pit, and if the market price of tin is
sufficiently high to make it pay to do
so, this Stag is passed second time
through the furnace. The pure molten
tin, freed from the Stag as it SINNERS
In the pit, looks like so much quicksil-
YER The ''pigs'' are like so many large
bricks, with one side rounded and the
other flat, the fiat side having a broad
rim Or border. r..
" The explanation, Of this is that blocks
of wood of precisely this shape are
pressed into the sand or mud which
forms the natural floor of the smelling
houses; when these, wooden molds are
removed, of course corresponding holes
remain, and: into these holes. the molten
lead is ladled from the pit. It takes
whole day to cool sufficiently to get
firm; when it has we'll set it is lifted or
dragged out of the holes with long rakes
and dashed with water. After little
more cooling it is ready for shipment.
At Perak, in 1888, and at Maliwun, in
1898, I found that four or five Cinnamon
could turn out seven hundredweight of
tin pigs day, worth Gin 1899 about
$140 in all.-E. H. Parker, in Chambers
Journal. 49,