The wonders of the world : $b a complete museum, descriptive and pictorial, of the wonderful phenomena and results of nature, science and artAbbott, John Loraine
Science
The wonders of the world : $b a complete museum, descriptive and pictorial, of the wonderful phenomena and results of nature, science and art
Abbott, John Loraine
Curiosities and wonders
Hungary abounds in valuable ores and minerals, and is most celebrated
for its vast copper works, at a town called Herrengrund, built on the
summit of a mountain, and exclusively inhabited by miners. Here the
process, noticed above, of apparently converting iron into copper, is
pursued with great success, several hundred weight of iron being thus
transmuted every year. The vitriol, with which the blue water is
strongly impregnated, can not be strictly said to convert the iron into
copper, but insinuates into it the copper particles with which it is
saturated; and this seeming transmutation requires a fortnight or three
weeks only: but if the iron be suffered to lie too long in this
vitriolic solution, it becomes at length reduced to powder.
In Japan, copper is the most common of all the metals, and is considered
as the finest and most malleable anywhere to be found. Much of this
copper is not only of the purest quality, but is blended with a
considerable proportion of gold, which the Japanese separate and refine.
The whole is brought to Saccin, one of the five principal cities of
Japan; and it is there purified, and cast into small cylinders, about a
span and a half in length, and a finger’s breadth in thickness. Brass is
there very scarce, and much dearer than copper, the calamine employed in
making it being imported from Tonquin in flat cakes, and sold at a very
high price.
In addition to the copper mines thus described, copper has, within a few
years, been found in the richest abundance in the vicinity of Lake
Superior. The existence of copper there, was, indeed, known as early as
1636; and the trace of these early discoveries was never entirely lost.
But the first scientific researches were made in 1842, by Dr. Douglas
Houghton, who was acting as geological surveyor for the state of
Michigan. According to his report, native copper exists in two or three
different deposits about Lake Superior, where it is found in the richest
abundance, both in veins and in large masses in the native state. Dr.
Jackson also states, that he has seen one of these masses, twenty feet
long, nine feet wide, and from four to six inches in thickness, and
weighing about twenty tuns. He adds, that in a single year, thirty-three
men, of whom only twenty were properly miners, had taken out forty-three
tuns of ore, yielding thirty tuns of pure copper. Among the masses of
copper obtained from these mines as early as 1848, were four, the
weights of which, respectively, were seven thousand and eighteen, seven
thousand four hundred and eighty-four, seven thousand six hundred and
seventy-eight, and fourteen thousand pounds. Since that date new
openings have been made; new mining companies formed, and the products
of the mines very greatly increased: and it may yet be, that these mines
will prove some of the richest and most valuable of the world.
TIN MINES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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