The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1905-03-24
Scenes in the Land of Greas-
ers and BuIIfighters.
He Visits the Largest Silver
Smelter in the World.
Takes Trip Into the Mountains;
Other Incidents.
From Fridays Daily.

Emmett r. Tanner writes as follows
from San Luis Potosi, Mexico, to his
father, E. w. Tanner of Eagle Lake:
"The altitude here was at first unno
ticeable, but the other day three of us
climbed the mountains up to about 81
900 feet. There | could notice the diff
ference, as person lacks lung capacity.
Since that I have noticed the difference,
though not at all unpleasantly. On the
same trip we visited the largest silver
smelter in the world. 1t is about four
miles away. We went as far as we
could on the mule cars and then up the
mountain on foot. 1t seemed as if there
was no end to the hills we had to climb
The smelter has capacity of forty car
loads of ore per day. There are twelve
furnaces, but as we were there on Sun
day only about half were in operation.
1t did look fine to see the molten metal
run out in stream as large as could
run through an eve trough, the silver
into one car and the molten lava into
another. When these were full the sill
yer was cast into bars valued at $500
each and the lava was hauled out and
dumped. The most interesting part to
tain amount of silver always leaves the
furnaces in the smoke and to save this
the smoke is all forced through an
immense chimney $50 large that Hub
bard's whole mill wouldn't half build
it) that is filled with sleeves which take
every particle of SCOT out of the smoke.
This SCOT is then sent back to the
smelter by the car load, where it is
pressed into bricks just the shape of
cheese and about the size of saucer.
These are then left in the sun to dry
and then melted again. The whole
works are of course owned by Ameri-
cans, and as we passed along they all
bowed to us, thinking we were the
owners or the plant.
"From there we went up into the
mountains, three miles farther, to the
city reservoir. We climbed around
among the cactus until we reached
point abou 500 feet directly above the
dam, and as it is almost 23O feet high,
we could look straight down over 1000
feet. Well, it did seem as if it would
be very easy to get down quickly, but
/ preferred the slower method. We
then went down and walked across the
top of the dam. 1t is over 500 feet
long and about Is feet wide on top.
The water is about four feet from the
top on one side and the ground is about
$50 feet down on the other. / walked
across it three times, though 1 didn't
spending much time looking over the
edge. dropped a stone down and it
took four seconds to fall. AS stone
drops sixteen feet the first second and
doubles its speed every succeeding Sec
ond, we could tell our elevation. Some
day 1 am going to take some views of
the cascades formed by the overflow.
When the water has fallen 23O feet over
jagged rocks it is simply rainbow of
foam, beautiful beyond description. i
have not had flee bite yet. How
about that? However, [ have had
kind of rash all over me, which | think
was caused by the sudden change of
diet and climate. 1t is nearly well now,
however.
81 am doing my best at Spanish and
guess 1 am learning something. 1 can't
talk to anyone yet but there are lots of
things l can say and 1 can wait on
nearly all of the customers in the store
though when the get to particularly
foolish, I have to have assistance. l
don't work in the store yet though, only
for fun and what 1 can learn. 1 have
taken nine lessons. My teachers name
is Abraham Navos and he gives me
longer lessons than you could dream
about. He told me yesterday that 1
had a pretty good lesson, though he
had to lie a little to do it.
GAS today is Friday, we bake two
patches of bread instead of one as
usual. I was keeping the account and
Julius wanted me to play detective a
while and so I began to look around
found stolen bread in three places. May
be you think the bakers didn't took
cheap, when they saw that had caught
them. 1t was a good thing for them
that l was not very familiar with the
Spanish language. The bakers took a
window light out of the store door the
other night, and broke open the cash
drawer and took ten or twenty dollars,
we don't know just how mucn. We
have great times here if it is rather off
the earth.
'There are some of the most beauti-