LESSON X.

A NEVADA QUARTZ-MILL.

PART SECOND.

Com pǎet', firm; close; solid.
Fa çil'i ty, ease.

Săt'u rātes, completely fills

and soaks.

Chem'is try, that science which treats of the composition of substances, and the changes they undergo.

Sen'si tive, easily affected.

Re tôrt', a vessel in which sub- Com press'ing, forcing to

stances are melted or decom-
posed by heat.

Vapor, the gaseous form of a
substance which is ordinarily
liquid or solid.

gether, or pressing into smaller

space.

Pōres, minute openings.
So lu’tion, state of being dis-

solved.

Pro pōr'tions, relative parts Ab sôrbed', drawn in; taken

or quantities.

Req'ui şi'tion, demand; use.

A

up, as water into a sponge.

T the end of the week, the machinery was stopped and we cleaned up, that is to say, we got the pulp out of the pans and batteries, and washed the mud patiently away until nothing was left but the mass of quicksilver, with its imprisoned treasures.

2. This we made into heavy, compact snow balls, and piled them up in a bright, luxurious heap for inspection. Making these snow balls cost me a fine gold ring, that and ignorance together; for the quicksilver invaded the ring with the same facility with which water saturates a sponge, separated its particles, and the ring crumbled to pieces.

3. We put our pile of quicksilver balls into an iron retort that had a pipe leading from it to a pail of water,

and then applied a roasting heat. The quicksilver, turned to vapor, escaped through the pipe into the pail, and the cold water condensed it into good, wholesome quicksilver again; for quicksilver is very costly, and they never waste it.

4. On opening the retort, there was our week's work, a lump of pure, white, frosty-looking silver, twice as large as a man's head. Perhaps a fifth of the mass was gold, but the color of it did not show-would not have shown if two thirds of it had been gold. We then melted it up and made a solid brick of it by pouring it into an iron brick-mould.

5. From these bricks a little corner was chipped off for the "fire-assay," a method used to determine the proportions of gold, silver, and base metals in the mass. This is an interesting process, and calls into requisition some of the wonders of chemistry.

6. The silver chip is first hammered out as thin as paper, and then weighed in scales so fine and sensitive, that if you weigh a two-inch scrap of paper on them, and then write your name on the paper with a coarse, soft pencil and weigh it again, the scales will take marked notice of the addition.

7. Then a little lead, also weighed, is rolled up with the flake of silver, and the two are melted, at a great heat, in a small vessel called a cupel, made by compressing bone ashes into a cup-shape in a steel mould.

8. The base metals oxidize and are absorbed, with the lead, into the pores of the cupel. A globule or button of perfectly pure gold and silver is left behind, and, by weighing it and noting the loss, the assayer knows the proportion of base metal the brick contains.

9. He has to separate the gold from the silver now. The button is hammered out flat and thin, put into

the furnace, and kept some time at a red heat. After cooling it off, it is rolled up like a quill and heated in a glass vessel containing nitric acid; the acid dissolves the silver and leaves the gold pure and ready to be weighed on its own merits.

10. Then salt water is poured into the vessel containing the silver in solution, and the silver returns to its solid form again and sinks to the bottom. Nothing now remains but to weigh it; then the proportions of the several metals contained in the brick are known, and its value is stamped upon its surface.

tribes inhabiting Arctic Amer. ica and Greenland.

Äre'tie, far north; under the Mär'vel oŭs, wonderful.

northern constellation, called

the Bear.

E sat aloft on a rocky height,

HSnow-white above the snow,

In the winter morning calm and bright,
And I gazed at him below.

2. He faced the east where the sunshine streamed
On the singing, sparkling sea,

And he blinked with his yellow eyes that seemed
All sightless and blank to be!

3. The snow-birds swept in a whirling crowd
About him gleefully,

And piped and whistled sweet and loud,
But never a plume stirred he.

4. Singing they passed, and away they flew
Through the brilliant atmosphere;
Cloud-like he sat with the living blue
Of the sky behind him, clear.

5. "Give you good morrow, friend!" I cried.
He whirled his large round head,
Solemn and stately from side to side,
But never a word he said.

6. "O lonely creature, weird and white,
Why are you sitting there,

Like a glimmering ghost from the still midnight,
In the beautiful morning air?"

7. He spurned the rock with his talons strong,
No human speech brooked he;

Like a snow-flake huge he sped along,
Swift and noiselessly.

8. His wide, slow-waving wings so white
Heavy and soft did seem,

Yet rapid as a dream his flight,
And silent as a dream.

9. And when a distant crag he gained,
Bright, twinkling as a star,

He shook his shining plumes and deigned
To watch me from afar.

10. And once again, when the evening red
Burned dimly in the west,

I saw him, motionless, his head
Bent forward on his breast.

11. Dark and still 'gainst the sunset sky
Stood out his figure lone,

Crowning the bleak rock, far and high,
By sad winds overblown.

12. Did he dream of the ice-fields, stark and drear, Of his haunts on the Arctic shore?

Or the downy brood in his nest last year
On the coast of Labrador?

13. Had he fluttered the Eskimo huts among?
How I wished he could speak to me!
Had he sailed on the icebergs, rainbow-hung,
In the open Polar Sea?

14. O, many a tale he might have told

Of marvelous sounds and sights,

Where the world lies hopeless and dumb with cold,
Through desolate days and nights.

15. But with folded wings, while the darkness fell, He sat, nor spoke nor stirred,

And chained, as if by a subtile spell,

I mused on the wondrous bird.

OUR YOUNG FOLKS.