or become distorted from their original direc- | structure into numerous chambers, through tion; and hence the sudden disappearance of mineral-bearing lodes where continuity might be expected. Experienced practical miners are too apt to rely upon their own sagacity and discard altogether the teachings of science, when a more thorough and comprehensive understanding of the earth's formation would save them a large amount of labor. Within certain limits their practical experience is of the utmost value, but it is short-sighted and often at fault. which the vapor passes, leaving upon the surface of the walls the quicksilver with which it is charged. Recent experiments made under the direction of Mr. Butterworth show that a considerable loss results from the escape of the more volatile particles of mercury. The walls, in the course of a few hours, become so heated as to affect in a degree the condensing power of the air; and the draught necessary for the furnaces is so strong as to carry the highly-volatilized metal entirely through the condensers and out of the escape-pipe. To remedy this, a series of shelves in each chamber, covered on the upper surface with charcoal, is now in process of construction. This, without materially affecting the draught, will greatly increase the superficial area, over which the fumes must pass before their final exit from the condensers. It is estimated that there has been a loss of two or three per cent. from this cause alone upon every charge which has hitherto passed through the furnaces. A glance at the statistics of production will show that this would amount to a very large sum in the course of a year. The probability is a great saving will be effected in the future. The process of reduction is extremely simple. In assorting the ore it is divided into three classes, called Gruesso, Granza, and Tierras. The first consists of the purest quality of cinnabar, carefully selected; the second is intermixed with foreign substances, and the third is the inferior class usually found in the refuse earth and loose stratum of rock abounding in the vein. After undergoing a process of washing, the residue is made into adobes or large bricks, which are dried in the sun; and these are built up in the furnaces, with spaces between them to permit the passage of a draught. Within the adobe stack, thus constructed, the better qualities of ore are carefully arranged so as to receive the greatest possible amount of heat As the quicksilver is deposited or precipitated from the fires. When the whole charge is fully from the vapors it finds its way into a series of prepared the fires are lighted, and in due time small grooves in the bottom of the condensers. the whole mass becomes heated to a white heat. These grooves are slightly inclined, and conduct The quicksilver is evaporated from the ore in it into pipes, through which it makes its exit into the form of a mercurial vapor, which is con- the large iron pots placed outside for the purpose ducted directly into a series of large condensers of receiving it. When the furnaces are in full built of brick and thoroughly cemented. operation a continuous stream about the thicktition walls divide the interior of the principal ness of an ordinary quill may be seen pouring Par into the receiving pots, affording a practical illustration of the mineral wealth of this region. As a rule the quicksilver is deposited in the receiver in a pure state, and is ready to be transferred to the flasks. Sometimes, however, it is covered by a film which requires to be removed. An interesting experiment, showing its buoyant properties, may be made by dipping the hand in the liquid mass. The sensation is peculiar and difficult to explain. Some force is required to sink the hand to the depth of the wrist; and there is a singular feeling that it is pushed up and repelled by some heavy yet impalpable element; for though one is conscious of a surrounding pressure, nothing can be held in the grasp. By gathering up in a handkerchief a few ounces, and squeezing it through the web, a slight idea may be formed of its penetrative qualities. But the most striking illustration on that point has been derived from the practical working of the condensers. A few years ago some boys belonging to the employés discovered near the base of the walls some globules of quicksilver. The young American spirit impelled them to make further explorations, and they soon found by rooting up the ground that the deposit increased in richness as they got under the foundation of the condenser. It was not long before they were enabled to offer to the Superintendent several pounds of quicksilver, for which he paid them a fair price as a reward for their enterprise. Pleased with their success, they continued to work their newly-discovered mine till they began to bring in the quicksilver in such quantities as to open the eyes of the Superintendent. He made an examination of the mine and found that the entire stratum of earth for several feet in thickness, under the condensers, was permeated with the pure metal. Further investigation led to the discovery that this deposit, which yielded many thousand dol lars, had permeated through four feet of solid brick-work, plastered and cemented! Of course immediate means were taken to prevent further wastage. A layer of sheet-iron was placed between the bricks so as to arrest the errant quicksilver and drain it into the regular channels. The present Reduction Works consist of six furnaces; five of them possessing a capacity to receive from 70,000 to 80,000 pounds of metal each at a charge. The sixth is a new furnace erected in 1864 on the most approved principles, and is capable of reducing from 150,000 to 200,000 pounds of ore at a charge. The number of charges worked through the furnaces per month varies somewhat according to the weather, but under ordinary circumstances is from four to six. In the immediate vicinity of the Reduction Works, during the smelting and sublimation of the ores, a noxious odor is perceptible, which has a very pernicious effect upon the nervous system. The workmen who are compelled to stand in close proximity to the furnaces and condensers are frequently salivated, and are liable to palsy, vertigo, and other disorders of the brain; though, of late years, under the improved method of reducing the ores, the health of the operatives is much better than it was in former times. Persons of delicate, nervous organization are peculiarly subject to be injuriously affected by the fumes of the mercury. Instances have occurred of ladies, who, in casually passing, became salivated; but the main exit for the vapors having been removed far up the hill, there is now but little danger of bad effects under ordinary circumstances. It is a mistaken idea that the herbage in the vicinity of the Reduction Works is destroyed. Nothing of the kind is perceptible. The vapors soon become dissipated and lose their noxious qualities in the open air. YEA EARS ago I wrote an account of the Isle of the Puritans, which was published in this Magazine for March, 1857. In this paper I collected some local traditions, and copied certain letters of Summerfield, all referring to that mysterious domain. Little did I then suppose that I should ever visit the island in my own proper person; but it was ordained that this should be done, and that it should happen in the following manner: After manifold experiences in the war, some of which have been told, and others of which remain to be narrated, I met on a June day, in this year of grace 1865, at the club on the Fifth Avenue, my old friends Augustus De Cockayne and Punch Punner, both showing few traces of wear, and still among the brightest ornaments of New York society. They had got at the old Number of the Magazine containing my account of the Island of the Puritans, and were reading it with the romantic enthusiasm characteristic of young gentlemen who belong to clubs. "Good Heavens!" exclaimed De Cockayne several times, with great enthusiasm, "what a place for a picnic! How I would like to flirt a little with those demure Puritanesses!" De Cockayne, I am sorry to observe, does not believe in female modesty, even in the other world. Punch had burst into repeated paroxysms of laughter during the reading of the narrative. VOL. XXXI.-No. 185.-PP "On my conscience," said he, laying two fingers theatrically on a rather doubtful diamond breastpin, "wouldn't I like to get a word in with one of those solemn elders! I'd see if he couldn't understand a joke." "Why, Punch, the old chap would convert you," said I. "He'd have you up on some ghostly anxious seat before you could remember the last conundrum in the Yankee Notions." "I dare say," replied Punch. "I'm of a serious tendency at bottom. I was brought up on the milk of the Assembly's Catechism, you know." "Not really?" asked De Cockayne. "Fact," persisted Punch. "I always go to the Episcopal Church in New York, because it's more select than the dissenting Ebenezers. But pa and ma, in the country, are Old School Presbyterians; and I was educated in a tearful respect for those venerable old cocks of Puritans." "Let's take my yacht," said De Cockayne, "and go around there, and run the island down if they won't let us ashore." Punch coincided with the happy proposition, averring that a second baptism would do the devout islanders no sort of harm. Various other plans were discussed for reaching the mysterious Isola Felice; but from all of them my friends returned with increasing confidence and clamor to the idea of the yacht. After finish-sea, making a bee line for the north of Norway. ing a couple of bottles of Champagne we finally We tacked, and stood in shore for an hour and decided, with three cheers, that we would make a half over waters as bare of any island as a pan our expedition in the Fairy. of skimmed milk. De Cockayne and I kept our glasses in motion, and Punch emitted occasional howls through the speaking-trumpet, inviting all the Puritans in Davy Jones's locker to step up to the bar and liquor. "I mean the bar off the Merrimac," said this second-hand punster. "All the rivers keep up bars, you know." In forty-eight hours the energetic De Cockayne had manned his beautiful schooner, furnished her with a copious supply of meats and drinks, and set her flying before a southwester up the East River. We ran down a sailboat; drowned a couple of boys, as I verily believe; took the bowsprit clean off from a blockhead of a lumber sloop; fired our two-pounder at a party of ladies and gentlemen who were pic-nic-ing near Hellgate; but got away without inflicting any other damage or fright upon the great commercial metropolis. We averaged twelve knots an hour during the whole run, and reached Na-hoot with envy. But still no island; we plowed hant in fine spirits for the first grand ball of the season. I need not say that De Cockayne made his usual half dozen conquests, and that Punch got on board at three o'clock next morning in clothes drenched with "rum-sours" and sea water. At five precisely, amidst the hazy aureole of a June sunrise at sea, we were speeding with a gentle rush and ripple right out over the slowlypulsating ocean. As we approached the imagined place of the Isle of Mystery, I began to feel a tremulous awe stealing over me, as if already within the spell of some spectral circle-a startled awe, as if I heard the hail of the solemn dead ringing from a near invisible shore, as if even they had climbed the bulwarks and stood upon the deck, a ghostly band, such as once toiled by the side of the Ancient Mariner. I experienced a sudden compunction, almost a terror, at having dared to enter this supernatural domain with men so worldly and carnal as my two companions. As a consequence of these feelings, I was really annoyed by the appearance of De Cockayne on deck, and felt like flying from him as a fastidious saint would from Mephistopheles. He had on his blue jacket, blue trowsers, blueand-white linen shirt-wonderful fits, all of them-making him look as oceanic as a Shanghae rooster. When the Fairy had almost driven her nose into the Ipswich beaches, we tacked anew and shot once more into the wide solitude of ocean. The schooner flew like a hawk, running away from fishing smacks, and causing lumbermen to the sea for thirty miles around Nahant, but no island; we ate dinner and went ardently on deck again, but no island; tea-time came and a sunset of wizard pomp, but no island; we wore out the ghostly hours of an early moonlight, but alas! no island. "Captain," said Punch, coming up with a carpet-bag under his arm, "if you think we've got there, I'll go ashore." "Hang it!" replied De Cockayne; "why don't you keep a look-out, and try to see the place?" "Don't feel any responsibility, Captain," declared Punch. "I'm only a passenger!" "Blast it! let's go in," said De Cockayne, turning to me. I agreed; and the sharp beak of the Fairy presently pointed once more toward Nahant. It was eleven o'clock when we found ourselves, with a select New York party, in the great parlor of the Nahant House. Vast was the excitement, and many were the ironical jokes while we related our expedition and our ill success. Some, however, treated the subject with proper seriousness; for there were refined men and women there, capable of feeling the beautiful solemnity of such a mystery; there were the intellectual eyes of Peppergrass, Counter Jumper, Major Slick, the Reverend Whist Pussyite, and Miss Schottische, author of the "Narrow House." This circle of mystics was presently enlarged by the entrance of Professor Glace and Mrs. Glace, of Boston. I need hardly say that the Professor is a Unitarian, very near to transcendentalism, and that he is attached to one of our most distinguished universities. Mrs. Glace, as Gauche "Where away?" shouted Punch, running up whispered to me, is a very poetical lady, and a the companion, and staring all round the hori-leader of fashion in the more religious circles zon with very dim eyes. "Oh! is that it ?" he of the modern Athens. It was at the mansion added, pointing astern. I "Look out for land there on the weather bow!" he roared to one of the men forward. saw the steersman-an old, dried, and salted Cape Codder-stick his yellow face into his neckerchief, and chuckle as if he would split his leathery sides. "No; that's Nahant," replied De Cockayne. "Don't see the island yet. Hang it look about, won't ye, and make yourself useful?" "Get me the speaking-trumpet, Captain, and I'll take a squint through it," said Punch, yawning. We watched for an hour uselessly, and then went below to breakfast. When we came on deck again the Fairy was twenty miles out at of the Glaces, most people must recollect, that those mysterious mutterings occurred which perplexed all our scholars and physicists eight years ago. "My dear Professor," said Punch, in his usual familiar way, "couldn't you give us a little spirituous aid in this affair? What do you say to a supernatural steam ferry-boat plying to the island?" The Professor, who is a calm, pale, absent minded gentleman, seemed little pleased with | seaward horizon. At that instant Mrs. Glace my friend's witticisms, and favored him with a pointed with her slender finger to an island of look of well-bred reproof. preternatural beauty which rose on our southern bow. It seemed to have sprung suddenly out of the bosom of the sea, as a bubble struggles up to sit on the surface of a fountain. "You have been engaged in a most fascinating labor," said he, turning to me and speaking in a slow, sweet, measured tone, that seemed like the utterance of a spirit. There was an awed, an utter silence; so long a vibration had his voice and look wrought in every heart. "I think a sitting might aid us to our object," he resumed in the same solemn music of intonation. Really the man's low voice had the power of a requiem; we were as hushed as those who stand by the open mouth of a grave. "My dear, can you commune with our lost darling?" he said, after a minute's pause. "Land, ho!" shouted Punch, in a state of violent excitement. "A pilot for the flying Dutchman! Three cheers for the Puritans! Hurrah, Mrs. Milyun! If there isn't any port here, we'll go in to that old white port." Professor Glace quelled him with a look, and no one cheered. As the schooner came to, down went her boats, and we commenced disembarking in an uproar of hurry. Punch took Mrs. Milyun on one arm, and the precious basket of old white port on the other. I charged myself with the welfare and the slender wrist of the spiritual Miss Schottische. The moment Punch set foot on shore he commenced polking with his two burdens, in spite of the crimson indignation of old Milyun, and the calm, stern eyes Without answering Mrs. Glace placed her hands on the table, and raised her delicate head in a posture of passionate longing. Even Punch was subdued; and no one spoke or moved for some moments. At last she started up sud-of Professor Glace. denly, exclaiming: "I am on the deck of the Fairy. The island! the island! I see it through the mists of sunrise." She reeled, and would have fallen had not the Professor caught her and laid her on a sofa. "We may venture upon going," he said; "but we must go in the earliest morning." No inhabitants appeared on the island; its verdure undulated before us in deserted serenity; but in the limpid distance we saw gabled dwellings and slender spires. We moved on in a sort of procession, over rolling meadows and through lanes fringed with roses, toward the unearthly village. Miss Schottische made a garland of some of the choicest flowers, declaring, with a look of sweet devotion, that now, if never after, she would deck her brow with the blooms of Paradise. We halted at the entrance of a neatly kept square, faced by gabled and pinnacled houses of the old Tudor style, so fantastic, and yet so dignified with antiquity, that Punch broke the holy silence with a roar of laughter, and De Cockayne swore in his elegant astonishment. We dispersed. Our story ran before us. Every one was anxious to see the famous island; and by early four o'clock at least thirty people stood on the hospitable deck of the Fairy. All our company of the parlor scene was there. Mrs. Glace stood by the helmsman, in an attitude of inspiration, extending her hands toward the ocean as if impressing the winds and waves into our service. The enthusiastic Peppergrass had brought along his wife and four sleepy little Peppergrasses. Mr. and Mrs. Milyun came with a basket of old white port, thereby securing the affectionate attentions of Punch Punner. I beheld the Tanners, the Schumakers, the Toph- He dragged the giggling lady through a gate, ets, old Hinnom and his sons, that severely or-and, making his way over some flower-beds to thodox preacher Doctor Armageddon, and final- a window, looked in through the small lozengely a modest young minister from the country shaped panes. named Henry Howard. Mainsail, foresail, jibs, and gaff-topsails, ascended spectrally through the grayness of dawn; and with a motion as slow, calm, and spiritual as the tones of Professor Glace, the Fairy drew away from its anchorage. Mighty indeed was the potency of the spirits which now befriended us at the command of that pale, delicate woman who stood by the helm. The water lay still, unrippled, reflecting the faint sky and the withdrawing stars like a mirror. A feather would not have shivered on deck, so deprived was the air around us of all motion. The wind filled the upper sails only, drawing far above our heads with a steady, silent power, seeming to us as if spirits held the points of the masts and fanned the highest canvas with soundless pinions. An hour we glided slowly thus; and then the sun orbed himself gloriously on the "Lord, what a queer old place!" said Punch. "Nobody up. Come along Mrs. Milyun. I'm going to have a peep through those funny old windows." "Family prayers!" he presently called to us in a stentorian whisper; "I'll be hanged if they ain't reading a Bible!" "Not really!" exclaimed the wonder-struck De Cockayne. "There they go, on "Fact," said Punch. their knees." We all paused, dubious, but inclined on the whole to await the close of the devotions within. I saw Henry Howard with his arms folded and his head bowed, as if he were joining in the very soul of those unheard supplications. Miss Schottische whispered to me that she had never been more moved at Grace Church. Mrs. Glace rolled her fine eyes, and murmered some very sweet original poetry about her sainted darling. "Holy men!" said Doctor Armageddon, spreading out his great hands, broad enough to cover Canaan. "Very eminent Christians. |