Evening Star Newspaper, September 12, 1896, Page 19

THE EVENING STAR, SATURDAY. SEPTEMBER 12, 1896-TWENTY PAGES. CABLE OPERATOR RECEIVING MESSAGE. DRAWN FROM LIFE. CABLE OPERATORS Their Wonderful Skill in Sendingand Receiving Dispatches. AS REPRESENTED BY A WAVING LINE How the Work is Done and Chat About the Men. LOCATING A BREAK HOMAS A. EDISON, who in his time has been one of the fast- est telegraphers in the world, admits that he is totally un- able to receive a cable message from across tke Atlantic ocean. “While the or- dinary Morse land dispateh is represent- ed by makes and breaks of the cur- rent,” he sald, recent- ly, “the cable message is represented by a waving line. This line runs up and down unequally. It is the length or value of the curves that enables the operator to detect the messege. I have eften watched the operators at work, and I think It is won- derful that they are able to select the mes- sage at all. The line as it runs up and @own is crossed and recrossed by other lines coming from earth currents and the thousand and one sources from which a stray current gets in. It is simply impos- sible for me to pick out the real message. Yet those fellows do it every time and with comparative ease. It Differs From Ordinary Telegraphy. Now, not only is this complimentary to the skill of the cable operators, but it calls @ttention to a department of the public service and a class of workers of which ost persons know litle or nothing. The cable station is after all the most wonderful institution in the whole telegraphic sys- tem. The method of its operation is totally cifferent from that of the land telegraph office. The quantities are less exact; a greater mental force is required of the op- erator. Moreover, the mechanism of the system is more picturesque. There is more human interest in trans- mitting characters 3,000 miles under the sea and eventually setting them down in black an@ white than there is in clicking a seties of dots and dashes over a land wire. For this is what cabling across the ocean amounts to. When the operator in the New York cable station gives an impulse to his key, he knows that he is practically writ- ing with an elongated pen which reaches cut undisturbed through miles of alternate and caim and sets down on a strip r letters and words which have all pecullarities of his own chirography. Nor is this at all overdrawn. Operators at each end of the line recognize each other by fe. the gaps. The diffculty is overcome by operating two keys on the sounder instead of one, as in ordinary telegraphy. One key is attached to the positive pole of the bat- tery; the other key is attached to the neg- ative pole. Thus by depressing either key an impulse is created in different directions over the line. As a short cut to brevity it may be said that the polarity of the cur- rent changes constantly and the current travels in elther direction, backward or forward, at the will of the operator. This is reduced to a practical basis in an in- genious manner. On the receiver's desk in the cable sta- tion will be found a large double magnet. Suspended between the poles of this mag- net !s a small elongated coil of wire. The coil hangs suspended in the air by means of a delicate fibrous thread. The current from the cable is made to pass around the coil, which, as it is hanging between the poles of the magnet, will turn backward or forward in response to the particular key depressed by the operator at the other end of the line; for it fs the peculiarity of an electrified coll of wire to so act when suspended between magnetic poles. Producing the Waving Line. Connected to one end of the coil of wire is another thread of fibrous material. This thread runs to a fine glass tube, which is not larger than one-hundredth of an inch in diameter. Ink flows through this small tube. As the tube is movable it is obvious that the action of the coil of wire moving backward ani forward will also cause the ink tube to move backward and forward. At least the coil pulls the tube In one di- rection and a small spring returns it to its place. The end of the tube rests lightly en a long strip of paper, which is kept moving along constantly by an ordinary clockwork mechanism. Thus it will be seen that the depresion of the transmitting keys results in a waving line on paper at the other end of the cable system. ‘The ink tube or siphon {is so small that great lificulty is experienced in inducing the ink to flow from it. The desired object is finally gained by means of electricity. A static current is sent through the ink in the tube and is made to pass through the strip of paper to the negative pole of the battery beneath. Static electricity, as it has a great electromotive force, will easily pass through paper, therefore there is a continual succession of sparks flowing through and carrying the small column of ink along with it as far as the surface of the paper where it is deposited in a waving line. This is the line which Edison cannot read, but which is as plain as day to the ordinary cable operators. The latter sit and watch this tape all day long. It trav- els slowly in front of them a distance of three feet or more before it runs off the end of the table into a basket. The words are generally unintelligible to the operator, for it is seldom that other than cipher dis- patches are sent over the wire. When no current or message Is passing, the sensitive coil of wire attached to the siphon remains at rest and a straight line is traced down the center of the paper; for, of course, the tape keeps moving along constantly, message or not. This line {3 known as the zero line and all variations from it determine what the man at the other end of the line is saying. Sometimes, however, earth currents leak through to the core of the cable and send the siphon careening backward and forward in an alarming manner. Then if a message comes through at the same time the wild actions of the siphon become unintelligible indeed. In such a case the operator is compelled to study the form of the Hne made by the earth current and then to note the differ- ence between it and the true message. In short, he makes his earth current line his zero mark and determines his message ac- cerdingly. It is in this connection that we must look for the true reason why we are unable to resistance which the wire offers to the cur- rent avereges a specified ntity to the mile. When a break or a fault occurs the resistance of the cable is measured in the cable station. This can be readily done, ‘because the circuit wil generally complete itself through the earth. When the resist- ance has been measured, it is easy to find out where the break is by dividing the whole amount by the average resistance per mile. It may then be found that the break is two, three, four or five hundred miles off shore, as the case may happen to be. A cable-repairing steamer, with a full corps of electricians on board, immediately starts for the spot where the break is sup- posed to be. This is an easy matter, for when cables are laid the latitude and longi- tude of the cable-laying ship is taken as each mile of the cable is paid out. If the break, as determined by the resistance, i: say, 500 miles off shore, the captain of the repair boat directs his vessel to the par- ticular junction-of latitude and longitude which was encountered when the~5W0-mile mark of the cable was first laid. Having arrived at what he corceives to be the proper vicinity, he steers his vessel into a course at right angles to the course held by the ecavle. He then throws an iron over- ee and proceeds to. grapple for the ca- le. Difference in the Pull. He knows when he has caught the cable by the difference in the pull from the pull which fs felt when a rock is struck. A rock when caught by the cable will finally let go With a Jerk, but the cable when caught will exert a long, steady and obstinate pull as it 1s hauled to the surface. There is also @ patent grappling iron which cuts through the cable covering and electrically rings a bell. Having picked up the cable, the chief electrician on board the boat cuts through the covering, if it has not already been cut through by the grappling iron, and, attach- ing a transmitter to the core, sends a sig- nal through the cable. If he gets an an- swer from this end of the line he knows, of course, that the break must be beyond him, or, vice versa, if the answer comes from the European end. As he now knows in which direction from the vessel the break must be, ne proceeds to measure the re- sistance of the “broken” end, in order to see exactly what its distance is from the vessel. If it is not far, say, four or five miles, the captain of the vessel proceeds to un- der run the cable until the delinquent spot is reached, when it is an easy matter to repair the break or to put in a new section of cable. If the break 1s found to be a number of miles away, the part which has been picked up Is attached to a buoy, and the vessel steams away to what further observation has determined to be the re- quired spot. The cable is picked up again and a signal ts sent through. If the answer is from Europe instead of from this end of the line, it follows that the break must be somewhere between the two parts of the cable which have been picked up. The precise spot can then be easily determined and repairs can be made. Sometimes the work is very expeditious, but in stormy seasons of the year it has often been a month before the break has been fourd. It has also happened that in grappling for a cable the repair boat has picked up by mistake the cable of another company. This has happened three or four times, but the courtesy of the cable com- pantes to each other has always excused ft. Cables of the World. No Atlantic cable runs directly to New York city at the present time. Most of the transatlantic lines land in the neighbor- hood of Nova Scotia or Newfoundland. The messages are retransmitted by a coast line cable to the metropolis. The interval of time required in the retransmission is not one second, fer the operators read the mes- sages letter by letter as they arrive and send them over the coast cables instantly. The new French ceble to be laid next year will, However, have its terminus directiy in New York city. It is expected that the competition thus engendered will greatly enhance the general service. The coming congressioral agitation over the installa- tion of a Pacific, cable will also revive In- terest in a scheme which must quicken the general process of civilization. The Japan. ese commercial awakening will certainly receive a further impetus when this cable is lald. The whole east, In fact, will be benefited, and incidentally our foreign com- merce. There are already over 1,000 cables lying under the sea and the various water courses of the world. They aggregate over one and gne-quarter millions of miles of cable line. A large fleet of steamers and an army of men are kept busy laying and re- pairing them, so that altogether the cable industry is a large business tn itself, even aside from the messages which are sent over the wires. ——— ee DIET AS A MORAL AGENT, Experiment Introduced in a New York Reformatory. From New York Letter. A queer focd experiment is being tried at the Elmira reformatory, in New York state. All civilized nations hold out some inducement to the criminal in confinement the characieristic shapes of the curved lines which they cause to be traced on the long strips of paper at the recetver’s desk. It ts a common event nowadays for arbi- trage brokers on the New York cotton ex- change to send a cablegram to the Liver- Fool cotton exchange ordering a sale of “future” cotton, have the sale made and re- celve a receipt announcing the conclusion of the transaction in two minutes from the time the first message was handed to the clerk. The significance of this will be real- ized when it is pointed out that there is a class of brokers who depend for business solely on the half minute or so of tele- graphic time which exists between here and Europe. If cotton is quoted at the same price on the New York and Liverpool or other exchanges, but should subsequently drop half a point, arbitrage brokers with connections abroad are sure to cable their agents to sell out before the official change in the quotation fs sent across the sea. The aim is to save the difference in price be- tween the two quotations. Many brokers make all their profits in ray, and the tendency of !t has been to quicken the busin methods of the ex- changes. So much has this become the fact that a delay of one-half minute in the send- ing of a cadlegram fs sure to cause loud ‘and threatening protest from the brokers. One firm, in fact, instituted a suit for dam- ages against a leading cable company be- cause of a delay of ten minutes in sending a cipher dispatch across the ocean. The suit was eventually withdrawn, but the in- cident serves to show at what a break-neck pace business {s now done in our exchanges —quite a contrast to the relays of couriers which were used to carry the news of the tattle of Waterloo to Rothschilds. Description of Apparatus. The reason a waving line printed on a strip of paper is used in cabling instead of the Morse code of dots and dashes fs because of the peculiar construction of the cable itself and of a certain eccen- tricity of the electric current when It is acting under long distances of water. Electricity invariably seeks to escape from its conductor to the earth. Mother Earth will, in fact, absorb it all if given the chance. The cable is, therefore, insulated, but this desire to return to earth is strong- er than the resisting power of the insula- tion; therefore, while the latter holds the current partially intact, the gutta percha or other covering of the cable is filled with innumerable stray lateral currents all seek- ing to escape to the surrounding water. ~ With such a state of affairs it would be simply impossible to operate a succession of makes and breaks in the current; the residual currents would, if short, fill up telephone across the Atlantic. It ts this elec- trification of the gutta percha that prevents it. There is no real insulating substance. Some substances insulate more than others, but all are subject to electrification. When an electric impulse is sent across the ocean the whole of the cable, covering and all, must be electrified before the current flows through and operates the receiving device. It ts what is known as the tail end of the charge that really carries the message. This interferes with the sound wave. In telegraphing there are only ten or twelve sound waves a second. In telephoning there are two or three thousand in the same time. It is obviously impossible then to telephone across the seas under existing circum- stances. One of the peculiar phenomenons of ca- bling fs the ability of one operator to recog- nize the “handwriting” of the operator at the other end of the line, far away in Eng- land or France. It is a fact nevertheless that it is done, and many strange friend- ships are formed between men who have never seen each other and who may never have been ten miles away from their re- spective homes thousands of miles apart. There is an old story of a man who refused to believe In a_ telegram sent to a friend because it “was not his handwriting.” This could not apply to cable operators. As soon as the siphon begins to make its waving line on the tape, the operator, or rather the recorder of the same, knows who is at the other end of the wire. The “writ- ing’ of different operators is as recogniz- able at a distance of 3,000 miles as it would be if they were nearer at hand. The pe- cullarities of the man are detected on the tape, and without any attempt at slang a man ts known by his curves. Some opera- tors “white a piain hand,” others send a message that is equivalent to what in ordi- nary life would be called very bad manu- script. If an operator gets into a rage and violently bangs his keys the fact is known to the men at the other end of the line, and he is prudently laughed at, in another hemisphere. In the old days, long distance fights used often to occur, but talk on any private matter between operators is now strictly prohibited by the various cable companies. How a Break is Located. Sometimes a cable will break at the bot- tom of the sea, or some other fault will prevent messages beirg sent through. Al- though the line extends through miles of drift and over leagues of ocean bed, the system has been reduced to such a nicety that the location of the fault is only a mat- ter of a little calculation. It is generally located as follows: It is known that the’ to soone> secure his release from legal re- straint. A certain amount of time is_al- ways taken off for good behavior. The criminal has often been exhorted to this end by father, mother, brother, sister and by others who had his interest at heart. His manhood, his future, his ambition and his hope of quick release from confinement have been appealed tu, and ir. many cases in vain. Now it is to the man’s stomach that the appeal is to be made. The proposed experiment contemplates a somewhat enlarged scale of dietary priv- fleges, increasing from grade to grade from lowest to highest, so that within due and proper limits of indulgence of the ap- petite by prisoners in a prison reformatory for crime they can, out of their own ac- cumulations, have ‘the privilege to select meal by real at their pleasure, provided always that they keep their expenditure within the limits of indulgence allowed by the government of the reformatory. The prisoners, under the wage-earning system of the reformatory, as it 1s at present, must earn their living and keep a credit balance to their account, respectively, in order to progress toward their release by parole. A prisoner, to maintain a credit balance, must needs restrain, regulate and exert himself in a manner which accom- plishes and shows his improvement: but hitherto the diet rate has been inflexible. It 1s believed that if more latitude is al- lowed and the prisoner has a chance of tickling his palate occasionally with mine a juicy roast or other homelike dainties, he will be more likely to make an extra effort to reform. In other words, if he has an inviting menu to choose from for breakfast, dinner and supper, he will get up and hustle and be a man. oo A Picture of the Near Future. From Filegende Blatter. A practical invention for excursions en famille. IN A SILVER MINE One of the Richest Deposits of the White’Metal. FIFTY MILES UNDERGROUND TUNNELS pe Ti How the Ore is Gotten Out of the Earth. —o+__. CURIOUS EXPERIENCES (Copyrighted, 1896, by Frank G. Carpenter.) PARKE CITY, Utah, September 3, 1896. HAVE COME TO Parke City to tell you how silver is gotten out of the earth. This 1s one of the world’s reat treasure vaults of the white metal. It is the site of the On- tario mine, which 1s the biggest silver mine in the United States, and which is said to be the biggest working. mine in the world today. The On- tario has already produced more than $30,- 000,000 worth of silver, and it has paid its owners more than $13,009,090 in dividends. For the past two years it has been putting in very expensive improvements, and, owing to this and to the demonetization of silver, the dividends have cropped, but I am told that it will pay more than 10 per cent this year, and its silver deposits are still of incalculable value. Connected with Timbering. the Ontario is the great Daly mine, whose dividends have amounted to between two and three million dollars, and near it is the Daly-West mine, now just about ready for working, and other :aines which have large deposits of sitv Our Biggest Silver Camp. You reach Parke City. by a branch of the Union Pacific. It 4s? situated in the Wasatch mountains, Just about a mile and a half above the sea, and within thirty-two miles of Sait Lake, ¢ The town has about 7,000 inhabitants. -It lies along both sides of a gulch, and t¢s rain street is filed with dust in the summer and mud in the winter. All around It ate silver mines, and the town lives upon silver. In its palmiest days its pay roll has‘amounted to millions @ year, and the Ontario mine alone pays out now more than $100,000 annually in wages. The Ontario property is situated just back of the citys When the mine was discovered its surroundihgs were those of Weak, bare and desolate hills. Now im- mense frame buildings, with steam pipes and smoke stacks, are deen scattered ever the mountains, and- tig four-horse wag- ons travel from daylight until dark up and down the valley with loads of silver ore. In going up to the mine you pass here and there enormous bins or square buildings, into which the ore, dragged from the bowels of the earth, is emptied, pre- baratory to loading It on the wagon. These buildings have many mouths or holes at the bottom, so arranged that, by the lifting of a board, they can be opened and the ore will fall down into the wagons on the road below. You pass hoarding houses devoted to the feeding of the army of men in the mines, and go on until you reach the big, barn-like shaft houses. They seem to be rudely built, and you would never imagine that they represent a product of $30,000,000. They contain, however, little more than the hoisting machinery. ‘The real work- shops of any mine are underground. How a Great Mine Looks. But let me give you in simple words some idea of this enormous silver mine. When discovered, it was, you know, merely @ mountain of rock, through one part of which ran a little streak which the pros- pectors thought carried ore values. They broke some of the rock in pleces. It looked not much different from any piece of broken granite which you might pick up on the roadside, but to thetr experienced eyes it contained silver. They laid out their claim and dug a shaft or well. They found the prospects grow richer as they went down- ward, and at last the hole was sold to Sen- ator Hearst, Lioyd Tevis, J. B. Haggin and other millionaires, who put tn expensive machinery to get the ore out. This was al- mest twenty years ago, and it has in that time produced the enormous amount of silver above stated. These men took the well or hole made by the prospectors and they have sunk It more than 1,300 feet down through that mountain of rock. They have made of it what is known as the shaft, which is Iittle more than a hole wall- ed with boards five fee: wide and fourteen feet long, running for more than a quarter of a mile straight down into the earth. This shaft was sunk just beside the vein ef silver rock, and at intervals of 100 feet cn the way downward they have run off tunnels into the vein and have taken out the ore. Each of these tunnels is from four to six feet wide, and from six to nine feet high. It is walled and roofed with timbers. Logs as big around as your watst are braced by the walls against the roof to keep the dirt and rock from coming down upon you as In a Silver Sine. ycu go through them, the miners have worked upward along the vein, digging out great eaves and rooms in the mountain, all:of which have to be valled and roofed with, l9gs and so braced From these tunnels that there may be no danger of their cay- ing in. A good idea of a silver mine might be gotten from a big‘New York apartment house. Take the Ontarto, for instance. The mine has fifteen stories, each 100 feet in height, and the shaft con- tains an elevator which an immense steam engine raises and lowers, car- rying the ore and the men from’ story to story. At each story the tunnels run off through the vein and connect with the rooms or stopes, as they are called by the miners. The tunnels are the passage ways or halls of the flat and the stopes are rooms dug upward and outward in taking out the ore. Each tunnel has a little railroad run- ning through it and there are fifty miles of such tunnels in the Ontario and the Daly. The cars of the raflroad are of iron. They are always loaded by gravity. In order that the miners may not have the trouble of lifting the ore, from, the tunnel of each of these stories to the tunnel below it, is cut @ great pipe or chute at such an angle that the ore being shoveled into it will roll down and fall into the car placed at its mcuth at the other end, 100 feet below. Going Down Into the Ontario. But the manager is ready for our visit to the mine. We stand at the entrance of the shaft and watch the elevator coming up. It is raised by means of a cable made of wire ropes, each as thick as your thumb, which runs over a pulley forty feet above the floor, and thence straight down into the shaft. The cable looks strong, and We ask the engineer how much the rope will hold without breaking. We are told that it can easily support eighty tons. I look at the manager and the two miners who are to go with us. None of them weigh more than 200 pounds, and as my weight is about 100 I feel comparatively safe. Now the elevator is at the top. Two cars, each holding 1,500 pounds of rock, are wheeled off and we are motioned to take their places. As we do so the manager gives a signal to the engineer, and we start down into the bowels of the earth. We descend as fast as though we were in the elevator of a Chicago hotel, and we drop at once into the darkness. We are warned to keep close within the cage, as a hand or a head might be taken off by a projecting timber. We hold on for dear life to the tron rail over our heads, and I try to shrink myself inward as far as possible as we go down, down, down. Now we pass one of the levels, and we catch a glimpse of a candle in the opening. Now our ears are dinned by the shooting of a blast, and the sound so shakes the air that our can- dles are blown out. We light them again when we fall to the next level, and the faces of the miners about us look weird and ghost-like in their flickering glare. It makes one shudder, and you feel at times as though you were on the edge of the grave. At least I felt so when the ele- Vator was stopped at the sixth level, and there, 600 feet below the earth, a miner stepped on with a box of dynamite can- dies. It was no bigger than a soap box. It could not have been more than two feet square, but it contained enough dynamite to have blown up the Capitol building at Washington and to have torn the State, War and Navy Department into atoms. There was no top to the box, and as the miner placed it close to my feet, I thought of the terrible possibilities. Sup- pose a rock should drop from the top down upon that dynamite! Suppose a spark from a candle or a bit of wick should fall into It! A sudden jar might throw one of us upon ft. T could feel my hair rising and my face whiten. I asked as to the danger, and was told that it was comparatively small, but that the box contained 40 per cent ‘of nitro-glycerine. I was much re- lieved when it was taken away. A Forest and a River Undergrou And so we went on down to the bottom, where we were to visit one of the greatest feats of mining engineering known to the world. This 1s the famous Ontario tunnel, which has just been completed at a cost of $500,000, in order to draw the water off of the mine. The Ontario is a wet mine, and a river of water flows through its tunnel. It Js, in fact, a great subterranean passage, zo wide that you could drive a buggy through It, and so high that we walked in it without stopping. The three-mile tun- nel has a floor running through its mid- dle, upon which there Is a railroad, by which the ore and men are dragged from one part of the mine to another by mules. As we walk over the road we hear the rushing of water, and look down between the boards. There is a torrent flowing un- Ready to Go Down. der us. It comes from the mine at the rate of ten thousand gallons a minute, and as we listen we hear the water falling, fall- ing, as it comes from the levels above. There was not an ounce of silver in the rock which was dug away in order to make this tunnel, and it gives you some idea of the cost of mining when you learn that this half million dollars was spent for dead work, and solely to get water away from the other parts of the mine. Until this tunnel was built all of the water had to be taken out by means of pumps, one of the pumps used costing the enormous sum of $200,000. It had a capacity of 2,000 gallons a minute, but it is now lying idle and use- less, 1ts work betng done by the tunnel. It is the water that necessitates the wall. ing of the tunnels and the stopes with logs. The wet earth and rock is always pressing in, and without timbers the mine would not last for an hour. The force is so great that it sometimes grinds these great pine logs— many of which are as large around as your waist—to powder. Some of the highest- priced men employed in the mines are those who take care of the timbers, who walk through the mine daily. looking out for weak spots. The best of timber is re- quired, and that used in the Ontario mine comes from the forests of Oregon. A Dynamite Experience, And so we go along from tunnel to tun- nel. Now we climb into one of the stopes and watch the men at work. We have candles in our hands and we crawl along almost bending double, the water dripping down upon us. At last we enter a cave. Here a half dozen miners are working. Some are taking the ore out with picks. Their wire candlesticks are stuck into the rocks beside them as they dig away at the pile of stone. which has been blasted out by dynamite. Some are loading ore. They push it intc the chutes with long-handled shovels and we hear it roll down and strike the irdn bottom of the car beneath. In other places men are drilling in order to blast. They cut out holes by means of diamond drills, compressed air furnishing the force which turns them. There they have the work done and a half dozen holes are ready for the explosives. Note how carelessly the miner seems to handle that dynamite! He picks up one of those dy- namite candles, cuts it in half with his knife and slices it down at one end. He then puts a fuse as big around as a lead pencil and about three feet long into the powder. He next pushes the candle into the hole in the rock and fills what is left of the hole with mud and dirt, pounding it close in about the fuse, handling his tools with ere care. A strike too hard might send off the candle and blow him into eternity. Other holes are prepared in a similar man- ner, and the charge is now ready for light- ing. The miner hands me the candle and tells me to start the explosion. I nang back a moment, but finally consent and touch the candle to the end of the fuses. The powder at once begins to fizz and the miners as well as ourselves run for dear life. We get. just around the corner and into a chamber or stope when there fs an immense report. It is dull, heavy and can- non-like. It blows out our candle, and following it we hear the falling and crush- ing-of ore. We go back to the scene of the explosion. The dynamite has torn the rock out of the earth and a great mass of silver- bearing ore hes been loosened from the sides of the mountain. As we stop the miners show us the vein. It runs from six inches to forty feet in width, the average being fifteen feet, and the ore streaks rang- ibe io two and a half to three feet in width. But let us follow the ore to the mill. It 19 HUNYADI JANOS! The World’s Best Natural Aperient Water. 25 Years’ Success in U. S. Highest Reputation all Over the World. CAUTION:.None genuine without the signature of the firm “Andreas Saxlehner,” On the Label. is now little more than a lot of rocks. It is put into the steel cars, raised to the surface and carried in wagons to immense frame buildings further down the mountain. First it is run through a crusher, which chews the rocks between its teeth, until they be- come no larger than pebbles, and fits them for the dryer. The ore as it comes from the mine is wet, and the drying is done by means of an immense iron cylinder, about 100 feet long, through which @ stream of fire runs. The cylinder is inclined at a short angle. The ore is put in at the top, and as it slowly revolves the pebbles of silver ore rolled over and over until they come to the lower end, perfectly dried by the flames. The ore as it comes from the dryer looks much like gravel. It must be made much finer. This is done by means of stamps,each of which weighs 150 pound and which drops on the gravel at the rate of ninety-two times per minute. This pounding reduces the gravel to dust, and it soon becomes a flour. It !s now mixed with salt by means of machinery, and then car- ried by an elevator, made like that which carries the flour in a mill, to the top of a furnace and dropped into the flames. This furnace is so arranged that the ore dust mixed with salt falls down in millions of tiny dust-like particles. The furnace is 39 feet deep. It 1s filled with flames, and it is kept at such a heat that the ore is roasted, but not melted, by the time it falls to the bottom. In falling the salt brings about a chemical action by which the ore has been changed from a sulphide to a chloride of silver, the onty form in witch it can be acted upon by the mercury, which is to suck the silver out of the rock. After fall- ing to the bottom the ore is drawn from the furnace and piled up on the floor out- side, and left there for about twenty hours, during which this chemical action is per- fected. When I entered the furnace room I saw perhaps a dozen of these great piles of ore. They did not seem to be hot, and they looked for all the world like piles of send. They appeared, indeed, so inviting that, boy-like, I was tempted to jump in- to them. The manager, however, pulled me back and, handing me a long-handled shovel, told me to stir the sand. I did so, and saw that it was red-hot ore. Putting your finger into it would be like sticking it into molten lead. The yellow crust was of the thickness of paper, while all beneath was of the temperature of the Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego furnace. The Wonders of Quicksilver. After the silver-bearing sand has thus lain for twenty hours it is ready for its marriage to the quicksilver. The union of the two metals makes me think of the prince who broke through the hedge and kissed into life the princess who had been sieeping for a hundred years. It is the quicksilver prince, in fact, who kisses the sleeping silver-ore maiden into Hfe and carries her away from the palace of rock in which she has been locked for ages. After the sand has cooled it is carried into what is known as the pan room, and is thrst into great pans of iron, each of which holds about 3,000 pounds. Water is introduced and the pans seem filled with a thick brown mush. Now into each of them through a little pipe is poured 300 pounds of quicksilver, and stirring machinery is set to work which moves about through the orc, mixing the quicksilver with it. The sand was warm and the quicksilver by the warmth becomes active, and by the mixing divides into globules the size of the point of a pin or needle. The mixers shove these about at the rate of sixty revolutions a minute and send these little globules flying about through the sand. As they go they seek out the particles of silver. Thay seem to become alive, and each globule which touches an atom of silver embraces it, and with amorous lips sucks it out of the sand. This traveling of the globules of quicksilver is kept up for eight hours, at the end of which time all of the silver in the sand has come into contact with and been absorbed by the quicksilver. The two metals have united, and the marriage is complete. The quicksilver is now taken out of the sand by drawing the sand and quicksilver into a big tub, known as the settler, and running cold water upon it. As the cold water touches the mush It congcals the quicksilver. The little glob- ules run together, and having grown heavy finally fall to the bottom. More cold water is put in to wash off the sand, and in four hours the sand has all gone, and you have a bucket full or so of quicksilver, con- taining the silver. This is drawn off into cone-shaped amalgam sacks of canvass, the meshes of which are so small that the sil- ver cannot go through them. Much of the quicksilver drains out and that which is left is a thick, pasty amalgam, containing the silver. Divorcing the Quicksilver From the sin But man cannot use quicksilver and silver urited together. The marriage was all right. The next question ts to get them apart. The marriage was by water. The divorce is by fire. The quicksilver and sil- ver amalgam is now taken to a furnace room where there are six great retorts. Each retort is of cast fron. It is a great Iron pipe fourteen inches in diameter and about six feet long. It will hold 2,400 pounds of quicksilver or about a washtub full of this amalgam. This much ama!gam has 400 pounds of pure silver. It is carried in a wheelbarrow into the furnace room, and the precious stuff is shoveled into the retort with what looks much like a fire shovel. The retort is now tightly stopped up so that not even the vapor can escape, except by means of a pipe at one end of it. ‘The fire is made hotter and hotter, until at last the quicksilver, which vaporizes at 260 Gegrees, goes off in the form of steam or vepor. It flows away into the pipe, and ts condensed further on by the cool water pessing over the pipe. It then flows off into a reservoir outside the furnace, and is ready for a second chase after other silver maidens in the pan room. The purc silver does not vaporize at all. After the quicksilver has left it it melts, and whe: the retort 1s altowed to cool it is found the bottom, looking for all the world like a@ piece of old plank covered with ashes. It is silver slag or impure silver bullion. It is now broken up into pieces, remelted ip a smaller furnace and cast into bars. It is not yet ready for the market, but must first be shipped to refining furnaces in other parts of the country, where by means of chemicals it is made pure and ready to go to the mint to become sliver dollars. FRANK G. CARPENTER. a ‘The Report is True. From the Det-olt Free Press. “There is a report that Buzbee has a large floating debt,” announced the cashier to the teller. aa “Yes, sir; an $80,000 steam yacht. ————__+o+—___ A Necessary Precaution. From the Somerville Journal. George—“‘How do you like it, Cora?” Cora—“‘It’s perfectly lovely. But what do they have all these policemen at the game for? Oh, I know; it is to keep the men from stealing bases.’ A Trap for Bea Bugs. From Science, An ingenious plan ts employed with great success in hospitals in India. It is to place a@ piece of wood, freely perforated with gimlet holes, under the mattress. The in- sects find their way into these holes, where they may afterward be destroyed by dip- ping the piece of wood into hot water. Who Died on a dim the Year 1846. From the Lewiston Evening Journal. Uncle Robert William Quimby of Lewis- ton says that he has traveled in all the warm countries of the globe, and that he has been in the coldest latitudes. He does not think that we have such very hot weather. If people would make provision for the hot days, as they do in India, he thinks we should flot notice it so much. “But,” says he, “the warmest weather that I ever experienced was on a small ts- land calied John’s Biscuit, off Cape Gracias, on Honduras. The Elizabeth Jennings, on which I sailed in 1870, from Portland, stop- ped there for water, and a boat's crow went ashore for water. It was a little volcanic island, and awful dry and hot. We didn’t know whether there would be water there or no, but we did find a spring with @ stream as large as @ broom handle pouring cut all the time. And do you believe me! The water was dried up and soake® up before it had run ‘four feet in the sand. The place was covered with dried trees, and a little distance away was what looked like a hut +8 habitation for man. We went in and found the shrunken remains of four men sailors, probably, who had died in one night, to judge from appearances. One was sitting in a chair, one tying on the floor, and two Jeaning agains: the wall in a sitting posi- tion. There was dry food on the table, dry a in a box, and everything was burning ry. “A letter in the pocket of one man was dated Liverpool, 1846, and on the table was a bottle with a note in ft, evidently Intended to be cast adrift. It said they were four English seamen marooned by a capcain, left to die. The note was dated 1846, and I suppose they had been dead in that hut for over thirty years, and they must have died of heat in one day and dried right up. We left them where we found them.” +o-+ A Sprinter Under Peculiar Circum- 5 stances, From the Wabash Herald. A good story is told on the venerable Bishop Whipple. The scene ts iaid in St. Paul, and the story runs as follows: One evening in the fall, and after dark, as the bishop was walking along the street, he noticed a Ittle fellow trying to ring the door bell of a fine residence. He was too skort to do any more than reach it, and, although he stood on his tiptoes and stretched vigorously, no sound came from the bell. The kind-hearted prelate felt called upon to assist him, and so, ascend- ing the steps, asked: “Shali I heip you, my little man?” The boy intimated that such a course would be gratifying to him, ani the bishop rang the bell. Thereupon the litile fellow remarked: “Now, we'd better both run lke h—i!* and decamped as rapidly as possible. It took the bishop just a moment to re- member that it was Halloween, and it is said that he made tracks and go: around the corner about as rapidly as did the litde boy. Constipation is the start of nearly all sickness in the world. It not only makes a man sick, but it depresses him mentall It ives him “the lues.’’ He is plunged in the depths of @ sponden Ashe gets rid of his con- stipation, be feels himself lifted out of the depressing darkness back into the light of health and good feeling. The alarming prevalence of this really dangerous, seemingly insig- nificant’ disorder, many years ago in- fate Dr. Pierce to prepare his since world-famous “ Pleasant Pellets” They are designed to do just one thing, and they do it. They restore the bowels and liver to a healthy, natural ac- tion, One little “Pellet” is a'gentle laxa- tive, and two a mild purgative. They cure headache, heart-burn, sour stomach, fiatu- lency, biliousness, foul taste in the mouth, aud ail the other disagreeable symptoms of constipation. Druggists sell them, but look out that your druggist is honest with you, and gives you what you ask for. Don’t accept a substitute. There would be less sickness in America if S7ery home library contained a copy of Doctor "s grest work, “The e's Com: wae * Sense Medical Adviser it te exactly what its, name implies It is the people's text- medicine, prepared by a regular, piacticing physician, eminent in is profession, and now—as for thirty years—the head of one of the greatest medical and su institutes in the world—The In- valids’ Hotel and Surgical Insti- tute, at Buffaio, N.Y. It is full of simple, inexpensive, common sense remedies for the cure of the common ailments that arise in every family. following its advice, many illnesses are ni in the bud, which might otherwise become seri- ous and dange-ous. This creat book will be sent absolutely free, in paper-covers, to any one who will send twenty-one one-cent stamps. to pay the cost of mailing only. to the World's Dispensary Medical Association. No. 62 Main Street, Buffa Nov. If French sloth binding te desived, send ten cents extra (thirty-one cents in all), ey ; Py z 20Z. Sack 10 Cents.@ Cgarette paper with each 2 0z. sack. BES DB DWIBIEG B: