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Title: The Subterranean World
Author: Hartwig, George
Language: English
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preparation.
THE
SUBTERRANEAN WORLD.
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
[Illustration: CARBONIFEROUS FOREST, CARBONIFEROUS PERIOD.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
SUBTERRANEAN WORLD.
BY
DR. GEORGE HARTWIG,
AUTHOR OF
‘THE SEA AND ITS LIVING WONDERS,’ ‘THE TROPICAL WORLD,’ ‘THE POLAR
WORLD,’
AND ‘THE HARMONIES OF NATURE.’
_WITH THREE MAPS AND NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD._
NEW YORK:
SCRIBNER, WELFORD, AND CO.
1871.
PREFACE.
-------
Nature displays her wonders not only in the starry heavens or in the
boundless variety of animal and vegetable life on the surface of our
earth. In the dark regions underground she likewise shows us much that
is remarkable or beautiful, or carries on gigantic operations, which are
sometimes beneficent and sometimes disastrous to mankind.
There lie concealed the mysterious laboratories of fire, which reveal to
us their existence in earthquakes and volcanic explosions. There, in
successive strata, repose the remains of extinct animals and plants.
There many a wonderful cavern may be seen, with its fantastic
stalactites, its rushing waters, and its noble halls. There have been
deposited the rich stores of mineral wealth—the metals, the coals, the
salt, the sulphur, &c.—without whose aid man would never have been more
than a savage.
The aim of the present work has been to describe the wonders of this
hidden world in their various relations to man, now raising him to
wealth, and now dooming him to destruction.
The author trusts that he may have succeeded in giving a sketch of the
phenomena resulting from the action of subterranean forces, which, with
his account of the wonders of the sea, of the tropics, and of the frozen
regions, may impart to the reader a fair idea of the history and present
condition of the wonderful world in which we live.
SALON, NEAR LUDWIGSBURG:
_July 6, 1871_.
CONTENTS.
-------
CHAPTER I.
GEOLOGICAL REVOLUTIONS.
The Eternal Strife between Water and Fire—Strata of
Aqueous Origin—Tabular View of their Chronological
Succession—Enormous Time required for their Formation—
Igneous Action—Metamorphic Rocks—Upheaval and
Depression—-Fossils—Uninterrupted Succession of Organic
Life Page 1
CHAPTER II.
FOSSILS.
General Remarks—Eozoon Canadense—Trilobites—Brachiopods—
Pterichthys Milleri—Oldest Reptiles—Wonderful
Preservation of Colour in Petrified Shells—Primæval
Corals and Sponges—Sea-lilies—Orthoceratites and
Ammonites—-Belemnites—Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus—
Pterodactyli—Iguanodon—Tertiary Quadrupeds—Dinotherium—
Colossochelys Atlas—Megatherium—Mylodon—Glyptodon—
Mammoth—Mastodon—Sivatherium Giganteum—Fossil Ripple-
marks, Rain-drops, and Footprints—Harmony has reigned
from the beginning 8
CHAPTER III.
SUBTERRANEAN HEAT.
Zone of invariable Temperature—Increasing Temperature of
the Earth at a greater Depth—Proofs found in Mines and
Artesian Wells, in Hot Springs and Volcanic Eruptions—
The whole Earth probably at one time a fluid mass 31
CHAPTER IV.
SUBTERRANEAN UPHEAVALS AND DEPRESSIONS.
Oscillations of the Earth’s Surface taking place in the
present day—First ascertained in Sweden—Examples of
Contemporaneous Upheaval and Depression in France and
England—Probable Causes of the Phenomenon 34
CHAPTER V.
SUBTERRANEAN WATERS AND ARTESIAN WELLS.
Subterranean Distribution of the Waters—Admirable
Provisions of Nature—Hydrostatic Laws regulating the
Flow of Springs—Thermal Springs—Intermittent Springs—The
Geysir—Bunsen’s Theory—Artesian Wells—Le Puits de
Grenelle—Deep Borings—Various Uses of Artesian Wells—
Artesian Wells in Venice and in the Desert of Sahara 39
CHAPTER VI.
VOLCANOES.
Volcanic Mountains—Extinct and active Craters—Their Size—
Dangerous Crater-explorations—Dr. Judd in the Kilauea
Pit—Extinct Craters—Their Beauty—The Crater of Mount
Vultur in Apulia—Volcanoes still constantly forming—
Jorullo and Isalco—Submarine Volcanoes—Sabrina and
Graham’s Island—Santorin—Number of Volcanoes—Their
Distribution—Volcanoes in a constant state of eruption—
Stromboli—Fumaroles—The Lava-lakes of Kilauea—Volcanic
Paroxysms—Column of Smoke and Ashes—Detonations—
Explosion of Cones—Disastrous Effects of Showers of
Ashes and Lapilli—Mud Streams—Fish disgorged from
Volcanic Caverns—Eruptions of Lava—Parasitic Cones—
Phenomena attending the Flow of a Lava Stream—Baron
Papalardo—Meeting of Lava and Water—Scoriæ—Lava and Ice—
Vast Dimensions of several Lava Streams—Scenes of
Desolation—Volcanoes considered as Safety-valves—
Probable Causes of Volcanoes 53
CHAPTER VII.
DESTRUCTION OF HERCULANEUM AND POMPEII.
State of Vesuvius before the eruption in the year 79 A.C.—
Spartacus—Premonitory Earthquakes—Letter of Pliny the
Younger to Tacitus, relating the death of his uncle,
Pliny the Elder—Benevolence of the Emperor Titus—
Herculaneum and Pompeii buried under a muddy alluvium—
Herculaneum first discovered in 1713 81
CHAPTER VIII.
GAS SPRINGS AND MUD VOLCANOES.
Carbonic-acid Springs—Grotto del Cane—The Valley of Death
in Java—Exaggerated Descriptions—Carburetted Hydrogen
Springs—The Holy Fires of Baku—Description of the
Temple—Mud Volcanoes—The Macaluba in Sicily—Crimean Mud
Volcanoes—Volcanic Origin of Mud Volcanoes 88
CHAPTER IX.
EARTHQUAKES.
Extent of Misery inflicted by great Earthquakes—Earthquake
Regions—Earthquakes in England—Great Number of
Earthquakes—Vertical and Undulatory Shocks—Warnings of
Earthquakes—Sounds attending Earthquakes—Remarkable
Displacements of Objects—Extent and Force of Seismic
Wave Motion—Effects of Earthquakes on the Sea—Enormous
Waves on Coasts—Oscillations of the Ocean—Fissures,
Landslips, and shattering Falls of Rock caused by
Earthquakes—Causes of Earthquakes—Probable Depth of
Focus—Opinions of Sir Charles Lyell and Mr. Poulett
Scrope—Impressions produced on Man and Animals by
Earthquakes 97
CHAPTER X.
THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE OF LISBON.
A dreadful All Saints’ Day—The Victims of a Minute—Report
of an Eye-witness—Conflagration—Banditti—Pombal brings
Chaos into Order—Intrigues of the Jesuits—Damages caused
by the Earthquake in other places; at Cadiz; in Barbary—
Widespread Alarm—Remarks of Goethe on the Earthquake 114
CHAPTER XI.
LANDSLIPS.
Igneous and Aqueous Causes of Landslips—Fall of the
Diablerets in 1714 and 1749—Escape of a Peasant from his
living Tomb—Vitaliano Donati on the Fall of a Mountain
near Sallenches—The Destruction of Goldau in 1806—
Wonderful Preservation of a Child—Burial of Velleja and
Tauretunum, of Plürs and Scilano—Landslip near Axmouth
in Dorsetshire—Falling in of Cavern-roofs—Dollinas and
Jamas in Carniola and Dalmatia—Bursting of Bogs—
Crateriform Hollows in the Eifel 121
CHAPTER XII.
ON CAVES IN GENERAL.
Their various Forms—Natural Tunnels—The Ventanillas of
Gualgayoc—Eimeo—Torgatten—Hole in the Mürtschenstock—The
Trebich Cave—Grotto of Antiparos—Vast Dimensions of the
Cave of Adelsberg and of the Mammoth Cave—Discovery of
Baumann’s Cave—Limestone Caves—Causes of their
Excavation—Stalactites and Stalagmites—Their Origin—
Variety of Forms—Marine Caves—Shetland—Fingal’s Cave—The
Azure Cave—Cave under Bonifacio—Grotta di Nettuno, near
Syracuse—The Bufador of Papa Luna—Volcanic Caves—The
Fossa della Palomba—Caves of San Miguel—The Surtshellir 133
CHAPTER XIII.
CAVE RIVERS.
The Fountain of Vaucluse—The Fontaine-sans-fond—The
Katabothra in Morea—Subterranean Rivers in Carniola—
Subterranean Navigation of the Poik in the Cave of
Planina—‘The Stalactital Paradise’—The Piuka Jama 149
CHAPTER XIV.
SUBTERRANEAN LIFE.
Subterranean Vegetation—Fungi—Enormous Fungus in a Tunnel
near Doncaster—Artificial Mushroom-beds near Paris—
Subterranean Animals—The Guacharo—Wholesale Slaughter—
Insects in the Cave of Adelsberg—The Leptodirus and the
Blothrus—The Stalita tænaria—The Olm or Proteus—The Lake
of Cirknitz—The Archduke Ferdinand and Charon—The Blind
Rat and the Blind Fish of the Mammoth Cave 156
CHAPTER XV.
CAVES AS PLACES OF REFUGE.
The Cave of Adullam—Mahomet in the Cave of Thaur—The Cave
of Longara—The Cave of Egg—The Caves of Rathlin—The Cave
of Yeermalik—The Caves of Grenada—Aben Aboo, the Morisco
King—The Caves of Gortyna and Melidoni—Atrocities of
French Warfare in Algeria—The Caves of the Dahra—The
Cave of Shelas—St. Arnaud 169
CHAPTER XVI.
HERMIT CAVES—ROCK TEMPLES—ROCK CHURCHES.
St. Paul of Thebes—St. Anthony—His visit to Alexandria,
and death—Numerous Cave Hermits in the East—St. Benedict
in the Cave of Subiaco—St. Cuthbert—St. Beatus—Rock
Temples of Kanara—The Wonders of Ellora—Ipsamboul—Rock
Churches of Lalibala in Abyssinia—The Cave of
Trophonios—The Grotto of St. Rosolia near Palermo—The
Chapel of Agios Niketas in Greece—The Chapel of
Oberstein on the Nahe—The repentant fratricide 178
CHAPTER XVII.
ICE CAVES AND WIND-HOLES.
Ice-caves of St. Georges and St. Livres—Beautiful Ice-
stalagmites in the Cave of La Baume—The Schafloch—Ice
Cataract in the Upper Glacière of St. Livres—Ice Cavern
of Eisenerz—The Cave of Yeermalik—Volcanic Ice-caves—
Æolian Caverns of Terni—Causes of the low temperature of
Ice-caves 192
CHAPTER XVIII.
ROCK TOMBS AND CATACOMBS.
Biban-el-Moluk, the Royal Tombs of Thebes—The Roman
Catacombs—Their Extent—Their Mode of Excavation—Touching
Sepulchral Inscriptions—Antony Bosio, the Columbus of
the Catacombs—The Cavaliere di Rossi—The Catacombs of
Naples and Syracuse—The Catacombs of Paris 202
CHAPTER XIX.
CAVES CONTAINING REMAINS OF EXTINCT ANIMALS.
The Cave Hyena and the Cave Bear—The Cavern of Kirkdale—
The Moa Caves in New Zealand—Various Species of Moas—
Their enormous size 213
CHAPTER XX.
SUBTERRANEAN RELICS OF PREHISTORIC MAN.
The Peat Mosses of Denmark—Shell-Mounds—Swiss Lacustrine
Dwellings—Ancient Mounds in the Valley of the
Mississippi—The Caves in the Valley of the Meuse—Dr.
Schmerling—Human Skulls in the Cave of Engis—
Explorations of Sir Charles Lyell in the Cave of
Engihoul—Caverns of Brixham—Caves of Gower—The
Sepulchral Grotto of Aurignac—Flint Implements
discovered in the Valley of the Somme—Gray’s Inn Lane an
ancient Hunting-Ground for Mammoths 221
CHAPTER XXI.
TROGLODYTES OR CAVE-DWELLERS. CANNIBAL CAVES.
Cave Dwellings in the Val d’Ispica—The Sicanians—Cannibal
Caves in South Africa—The Rock City of the Themud—
Legendary Tale of its Destruction 232
CHAPTER XXII.
TUNNELS.
Subterranean London—The Mont Cenis Tunnel—Its Length—
Ingenious Boring Apparatus—The Grotto of the Pausilippo—
The Tomb of Virgil 237
CHAPTER XXIII.
ON MINES IN GENERAL.
Perils of the Miner’s Life—Number of Casualties in British
and Foreign Coal Mines—Life in a Mine—Occurrence of
Ores—Extent and Depth of Metallic Veins—Mines frequently
discovered by Chance—The Divining Rod—Experimental
Borings—Stirring Emotions during their Progress—Sinking
of Shafts—Precautions against Influx of Water—Expense—
Shaft Accidents—Various Methods of working Mineral
Substances—Working in Direct and Reverse Steps—Working
by Transverse Attacks—Open Quarry Workings—Pillar and
Stall System—Long Wall System—Dangerous Extraction of
Pillars—Mining Implements—Blasting—Heroes in Humble
Life—Firing in the Mine of Rammelsberg—Transport of
Minerals Underground—Modern Improvements—Various Modes
of Descent—Corfs—Wonderful Preservation of a Girl at
Fahlun—The Loop—Safety Cage—Man Machines—Timbering and
Walling of Galleries—Drainage by Adit Levels—Remarkable
Adits—The Great Cornish Adit—The Georg Stollen in the
Hartz—The Ernst August Stollen—Steam Pumps—Drowning of
Mines—Irruption of the Sea into Workington Colliery—
Hubert Goffin—Irruption of the River Garnock into a
Mine—Ventilation of Mines—Upcast Shafts—Fire Damp—
Dreadful Explosions—The Safety Lamp—The Choke Damp—
Conflagrations of Mines—The Burning Hill in
Staffordshire 244
CHAPTER XXIV.
GOLD.
The Golden Fleece—Golden Statues in ancient Temples—A
Free-thinking Soldier—Treasures of ancient Monarchs—
First Gold Coins—Ophir—Spanish Gold Mines—Bohemian Gold
Mines—Discovery of America—Siberian Gold Mines—
California—Marshall—Rush to the Placers—Discovery of
Gold in Australia—The Chinaman’s Hole—New El Dorados—
Alluvial Gold Deposits in California and Australia—
Washing—Quartz-crushing 285
CHAPTER XXV.
SILVER.
Its ancient Discovery—Its Uses among the luxurious Romans—
The Mines of Laurium—Silver Mines of Bohemia, Saxony,
and Hungary—Colossal Nuggets—Silver Ores—Silver
Production of Europe—Mexican Silver Mines—The Veta Madre
of Guanaxuato—The Conde de la Valenciana—Zacatecas and
Catorce—Adventures of a Steam Engine—La Bolsa de Dios
Padre—The Conde de la Regia—Ill-fated English Companies—
Indian Carriers—The Dressing of Silver Ores—Amalgamating
Process—Enormous Production of Mexican Mines—Potosi—
Cerro de Pasco—Gualgayoc—The Mine of Salcedo—Hostility
of the Indians—The Monk’s Rosary—Chilian Mines—The
Comstock Lode 297
CHAPTER XXVI.
COPPER.
Its valuable Qualities—English Copper Mines—Their
comparatively recent Importance—Dreary Aspect of the
Cornwall Copper Country—Botallack—Submarine Copper
Mines—A Blind Miner—Swansea—Smelting Process—The Mines
of Fahlun—their Ancient Records—Alten Fjord—Drontheim—
The Mines of Röraas—The Mines of Mansfeldt—Lake
Superior—Mysterious Discoveries—Burra Burra—Remarkable
Instances of Good Fortune in Copper Mining 315
CHAPTER XXVII.
TIN.
Tin known from the most remote antiquity—Phœnician
Traders—The Cassiterides—Diodorus Siculus—His account of
the Cornish Tin Trade—The Age of Bronze—Valuable
Qualities of Tin—Tin Countries—Cornish Tin Lodes—Tin
Streams—Wheal Vor—A Subterranean Blacksmith—Huel Wherry,
a Tin Mine under the Sea—Carclaze Tin Mine—Dressing of
Tin Ores—Smelting—The Cornish Miner 332
CHAPTER XXVIII.
IRON.
Iron the most valuable of Metals—Its wide Diffusion over
the Earth—Meteoric Iron—Iron very anciently known—
Extension of its Uses in Modern Times—British Iron
Production—Causes of its Rise—Hot Blast—Puddling—Coal
Smelting—The Cleveland District—Rapid Rise of
Middlesborough—British Iron Ores—Production of Foreign
Countries—The Magnetic Mountain in Russia—The Eisenerz
Mountain in Styria—Dannemora—Elba—The United States—The
Pilot Knob—The Cerro del Mercado 345
CHAPTER XXIX.
LEAD.
Its Properties and extensive Uses—Alston Moor—Belgian Lead
Mines—Galena in America—Extraction of Silver from Lead
Ores—Pattinson’s Process—A great part of our wealth is
due to the laboratory 364
CHAPTER XXX.
MERCURY.
Not considered as a true Metal by the Ancients—Its
Properties and Uses—Almaden—Formerly worked by Convicts—
Diseases of the Miners—Idria—Its Discovery—Conflagration
of the Mine—Its Produce—Huancavelica—New Almaden 370
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE NEW METALS.
Zinc—The Ores, but not the Metal, known to the Ancients—
Rapid increase of its Production—Chief Zinc-producing
Countries—Platinum—Antimony—Bismuth—Cobalt and Nickel—
Wolfram—Arsenic—Chrome—Manganese—Cadmium—Titanium—
Molybdenum—Aluminium—Aluminium Bronze—Magnesium—Sodium—
Palladium—Rhodium—Thallium 380
CHAPTER XXXII.
COAL.
The Age of Coal—Plants of the Carboniferous Age—Hugh
Miller’s Description of a Coal Forest—Vast Time required
for the Formation of the Coal-fields—Derangements and
Dislocations—Faults—Their Disadvantages and Advantages—
Bituminous Coals—Anthracites—Our Black Diamonds—
Advantageous Position of our Coal-Mines—The South Welsh
Coal-field—Great Central and Manchester Coal-fields—The
Whitehaven Basin and the Dudley Area—Newcastle and
Durham Coal-fields—Costly Winnings—A Ball in a Coal-pit—
Submarine Coal Mines—Newcastle—View from Tynemouth
Priory—Hewers—Cutting Machines—Putters—Onsetters—
Shifters—Trapper-boys—George Stephenson—Rise of Coal
Production—Probable Duration of our Supply—Prussian Coal
Mines—Belgian Coal Mines—Coal Mines in various other
countries—Maunch Chunck 390
CHAPTER XXXIII.
BITUMINOUS SUBSTANCES.
Formation of Petroleum—Enormous Production of the
Pennsylvanian Wells—Asphalte used by the Ancients—
Asphalte Pavements—The Pitch Lake of Trinidad—Jet—Its
Manufacture in Whitby 426
CHAPTER XXXIV.
SALT.
Geological Position of Rock Salt—Mines of Northwich—Their
immense Excavations—Droitwich and Stoke—Wieliczka—
Berchtesgaden and Reichenhall—Admirable Machinery—
Stassfurt—Processes employed in the Manufacture of Salt—
Origin of Rock-salt Deposits 431
CHAPTER XXXV.
SULPHUR.
Sulphur Mines of Sicily—Conflagration of a Sulphur Mine—
The Solfataras of Krisuvick—Iwogasima in Japan—Solfatara
of Puzzuoli—Crater of Teneriffe—Alaghez—Büdöshegy in
Transylvania—Sulphur from the Throat of Popocatepetl—
Sulphurous Springs—Pyrites—Mines of San Domingo in
Portugal—The Baron of Pommorão 441
CHAPTER XXXVI.
AMBER.
Various Modes of its Collection on the Prussian Coast—What
is Amber?—The extinct Amber Tree—Insects of the Miocene
Period inclosed in Amber—Formidable Spiders—Ancient and
Modern Trade in Amber 449
CHAPTER XXXVII.
MISCELLANEOUS MINERAL SUBSTANCES USED IN THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS.
Alum—Alum Mines of Tolfa—Borax—The Suffioni in the
Florentine Lagoons—China-clay—How formed?—Its
Manufacture in Cornwall—Plumbago—Emery—Tripolite 458
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CELEBRATED QUARRIES.
Carrara—The Pentelikon—The Parian Quarries—Rosso antico
and Verde antico—The Porphyry of Elfdal—The Gypsum of
Montmartre—The Alabaster of Volterra—The Slate Quarries
of Wales—‘Princesses’ and ‘Duchesses’—‘Ladies’ and ‘Fat
Ladies’—St. Peter’s Mount near Maestricht—Egyptian
Quarries—Haggar Silsilis—The Latomiæ of Syracuse—A
Triumph of Poetry 464
CHAPTER XXXIX.
PRECIOUS STONES.
Diamonds—Diamond Cutting—Rose Diamonds—Brilliants—The
Diamond District in Brazil—Diamond Lavras—The great
Russian Diamond—The Regent—The Koh-i-Noor—Its History—
The Star of the South—Diamonds used for Industrial
Purposes—The Oriental Ruby and Sapphire—The Spinel—The
Chrysoberyl—The Emerald—The Beryl—The Zircon—The Topaz—
The Oriental Turquoise—The Garnet—Lapis Lazuli—The Noble
Opal—Inferior Precious Stones—The Agate-Cutters of
Oberstein—Rock Crystal—The Rock-crystal Grotto of the
Galenstock 477
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
MAPS.
Of the World, showing the distribution of Volcanoes and the
Districts visited by Earthquakes _to face page_ 60
Of Great Britain, showing the Coal-fields and chief Mining
Districts 400
Of America, showing the Coal-fields and Mineral Districts 410
WOODCUTS.
PAGE
Carboniferous Forest _engraved by_ G. Pearson, _to face
title_
Tabular Geological Profile of
Strata with corresponding _engraved by_ G. Pearson
Fossils 3
Aqueous Strata disturbed by
Igneous Formations ” ” 4
_Ammonites Henleyi_ (Middle _from_ Haughton’s ‘Manual of
Lias) Geology’ 9
Trilobite _from_ Kemp’s ‘Phasis of Matter’ 11
Magnified Eye of Trilobite ” ” 11
_Pterygotus acuminatus_ _from_ Haughton’s ‘Manual of
(Eurypterid) Geology’ 12
_Spirifer princeps_ (Brachiopod) ” ” 12
_Pterichthys Milleri_, restored
(Old Red Sandstone of Scotland) ” ” 14
_Ventriculites_, Fossil Sponge
(Chalk) ” ” 16
_Siphonia costata_, Fossil
Sponge, (Green Sand, ” ”
Warminster) 16
_Encrinus liliiformis_
(Muschelkalk, Germany) ” ” 17
_Pentacrinus briareus_ ” ” 17
_Marsupites ornatus_ (Chalk) ” ” 18
_Turrilites tuberculatum_ ” ” 19
Restored Belemnite ” ” 19
_Ichthyosaurus communis_ ” ” 20
_Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus_
(British Museum—found in the _from_ Haughton’s ‘Manual of
Lias of Street, near Geology’
Glastonbury) 21
_Glyptodon clavipes_ ” ” 25
Diagram illustrating action of _engraved by_ G. Pearson
Syphon 44
Section of an Intermittent Spring ” ” 45
Geysirs of Iceland ” ” 46
Porous Strata, Artesian Well sunk
in the London Basin ” ” 49
Middle and Valley Lake Craters, _from_ Wood’s ‘Australia’ _to face
Mount Gambier, South page_
Australia 53
Extinct Crater of Haleakala _from_ Webb’s ‘Celestial Objects’ 57
Eruption of Vesuvius, Bay of _engraved by_ G. Pearson, _to face
Naples page_ 81
Mud Volcanoes of Trinidad _engraved by_ G. Pearson 94
Great Earthquake at Lisbon _engraved by_ G. Pearson, _to face
page_ 114
Axmouth Landslip _engraved by_ G. Pearson 128
Stalactital Cavern at Aggtelek: _engraved by_ G. Pearson, _to face
the Cave of Borodla page_ 133
Entrance to the Cave of _engraved by_ G. Pearson
Adelsberg 137
Stalactital Cavern in Australia _from_ Wood’s ‘Australia’ 141
Cave under Bonifacio _from_ Forester’s ‘Corsica’ 145
_Leptodirus Höchenwartii_ _engraved by_ G. Pearson 163
The _Proteus anguinus_ ” ” 165
Blind Fish (_Amblyopsis spelæus_) ” ” 168
Indian Rock-cut Temple _engraved by_ G. Pearson, _to face
page_ 178
Rock Temples of Ajunta (general _engraved by_ G. Pearson
view) 182
Lower Glacière of St. Livres _from_ Browne’s ‘Ice Caves’ 193
Ice Streams in the Upper Glacière
of St. Livres ” ” 196
Entrance to the Glacière of St.
Georges ” ” 201
Gallery with Tombs _from_ Northcote and Brownlow’s
‘Roma Sotterranea’ 206
Cave in Dream Lead Mine, near _engraved by_ G. Pearson
Wirksworth, Derbyshire 216
Boring Machine in the Tunnel, _taken from the_ ‘Illustrated
Mont Cenis { }
London News’ _by
permission_ 238
Boring Machine in the Second
Working Gallery, Mont Cenis
Tunnel ” ” 239
Process of Boring _engraved by_ G. Pearson 251
Section of a Lead Mine in _from_ Ure’s ‘Dictionary of
Cardiganshire { Arts, }
Manufacture, and
Mines’. 252
Part of a Colliery laid out in
four panels ” ” 255
General View of Mining _engraved_ by G. Pearson
Operations 257
Tools used by Miners in _from_ Ure’s ‘Dictionary of
Cornwall { Arts, }
Manufactures, and
Mines’ 258
Conveyance of Minerals _engraved by_ G. Pearson
underground 262
Miners descending Shaft in Owen’s
Safety Cage ” ” 265
Timbering of a Mine _from_ Ure’s ‘Dictionary of
{ Arts, }
Manufactures, and Mines’ 258
Transverse Sections of Walled
Drain Galleries ” ” 269
Drainage of a Mine by Adit Levels ” ” 269
Safety Lamp ” ” 280
Gold-washing in Australia _engraved by_ G. Pearson 292
Stamping Mill _from_ Ure’s ‘Dictionary of Arts,
Manufactures, and Mines’ 306
Grinding Mill ” ” 307
The Botallack Mine, Cornwall _engraved by_ G. Pearson 317
St. Michael’s Mount, Cornwall ” ” 333
Blast Furnace _from_ Ure’s ‘Dictionary of Arts,
Manufactures, and Mines’ 352
Pecopteris adiantoides _from_ Haughton’s ‘Manual of
Geology’ 391
Sphenopteris affinis ” ” 391
Lepidodendron elegans ” ” 392
Asterophyllites comosa ” ” 392
Sigillaria oculata ” ” 392
Calamites nodosus ” ” 393
Coalbeds rendered available by _from_ ‘Our Coal and Our Coal Pits’
elevation, 397
Section of Coal-field south of { _from_ Ure’s ‘Dictionary of }
Malmesbury Arts, Manufactures, and Mines’ 398
Coal-basin of Clackmannanshire ” ” 403
Dudley Coal-field _from_ Howitt’s ‘Visits to
Remarkable Places’ 407
Shipping Coal ” ” 412
Coal Hewers at Work _engraved by_ G. Pearson 415
Pitch Lake of Trinidad _engraved by_ G. Pearson, _to face
page_ 429
Insects and Vegetable _engraved by_ G. Pearson
Substances inclosed in Amber, 452
Penrhyn Slate Quarry, North _engraved by_ G. Pearson, _to face
Wales page_ 469
The following is a list of the full-page illustrations, included in the
foregoing list, all of which, except No. 2, are engraved by G. Pearson:—
1. Carboniferous Forest _to face title_
2. Middle and Valley Lake Craters, Mount
Gambier, South Australia _to face page_ 53
3. Eruption of Vesuvius, Bay of Naples ” 81
4. Great Earthquake at Lisbon ” 114
5. Stalactital Cavern at Aggtelek; the Cave
of Borodla ” 133
6. Indian Rock-cut Temple: Porch of the
Chaitya Cave Temple, Ajunta ” 178
7. Pitch Lake of Trinidad ” 429
8. Penrhyn Slate Quarry, North Wales ” 469
CHAPTER I.
GEOLOGICAL REVOLUTIONS.
The Eternal Strife between Water and Fire—Strata of Aqueous Origin—
Tabular View of their Chronological Succession—Enormous Time required
for their Formation—Igneous Action—Metamorphic Rocks—Upheaval and
Depression—Fossils—Uninterrupted Succession of Organic Life.
Geology teaches us that, from times of the remoteness of which the human
mind can form no conception, the surface of the earth has been the scene
of perpetual change, resulting from the action and counter-action of two
mighty agents—water and subterranean heat.
Ever since the first separation between the dry land and the sea took
place, the breakers of a turbulent ocean, the tides and currents, the
torrents and rivers, the expansive power of ice, which is able to split
the hardest rock, and the grinding force of the glacier, have been
constantly wearing away the coasts and the mountains, and transporting
the spoils of continents and islands from a higher to a lower level.
During our short historical period of three or four thousand years, the
waters, in spite of their restless activity and the considerable local
changes effected by their means, have indeed produced no marked
alteration in the great outlines of the sea and land; but when we
consider that their influence has extended over countless ages, we can
no longer wonder at the enormous thickness of the stratified rocks of
aqueous origin which, superposed one above the other in successive
layers, constitute by far the greater part of the earth-rind.
Our knowledge of these sedimentary formations is indeed as yet but
incomplete, for large portions of the surface of the globe have never
yet been scientifically explored; but a careful examination and
comparison of the various strata composing the rocky foundations of
numerous countries, have already enabled the geologist to classify them
into the following chronological systems or groups, arranged in an
ascending series, or beginning with the oldest.
1. Laurentian, named from its discovery northward of the River St.
Lawrence in Canada.
2. Cambrian } These three groups owe their name to their
3. Silurian } occurrence in Wales and Devonshire,
4. Devonian } where they were first scientifically explored.
5. Carboniferous. In this group the most important coal-fields are
found.
6. Permian, from the Russian province of Permia.
7. Triassic.
8. Lias.
9. Oolite.
10. Cretaceous.
11. Tertiary: subdivided into Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene.
12. Recent marine and lacustrine strata.
Each of these systems consists again of numerous sections and alternate
layers, sometimes of marine, sometimes of freshwater formation, the mere
naming of which would fill several pages.
When we reflect that the Laurentian system alone has a thickness of
30,000 feet; that many of the numerous subdivisions of the Triassic or
Oolitic group are 600, 800, or even several thousand feet thick, and
that each of these enormous sedimentary formations owes its existence to
the disintegration of pre-existing mountain masses—we can form at least
a faint notion of the enormous time which the whole system required for
its completion.
TABULAR GEOLOGICAL PROFILE.
STRATA CHARACTERISTICS
FOSSIL REMAINS
+--------+--------+------------------------
T { 1. RECENT DEPOSITS | | | 1. RECENT DEPOSITS
E { ------------------- | | |
R { 2. PLIOCENE | I | I |
T -{ ------------------- | | | _Irish Elk._
I { 3. MIOCENE | L | L |
A { ------------------- | | |
R { 4. EOCENE | L | L |
Y ------------------- + | |------------------------
{ | U | U | 2. PLIOCENE.
{ | | | _Mastodon._
{ 5. CRETACEOUS | S | S |
{ } | |------------------------
{ --------------------+ T | T | 3. MIOCENE.
{ | | |
S { | R | R | (1) _Cerithium._
E { | | | (2) _Segnoia._
C { | A | A |------------------------
O { | | | 4. EOCENE.
N -{ | T | T |
D { | | | (1) _Nummulites._
A { 6. OOLITIC | I | I | (2) _Natica._
R { | | |------------------------
Y { | O | O | 5. CRETACEOUS.
{ | | |
{ | N | N | (1) _Inoceramus._
{ ------------------- | | | (2) _Turrilites._
{ 7. LIAS | | | (3) _Pecten._
{ | | | (4) _Hamites._
{ ------------------- + | +------------------------
{ 8. TRIASSIC | | | 6. OOLITIC.
{ | | |
{ | | | (1) _Pholadomya._
{ ------------------- + | | (2) _Trigonia._
{ 9. PERMIAN | | | (3) _Mantellia._
{ | | | (4) _Nerinæa._
{ ------------------- + | +------------------------
{ | | | 7. LIAS.
{ | | |
{ | | | (1) _Icthyosaurus._
{ | | | (2) _Ammonites._
{ | | +------------------------
{ 10. CARBONIFEROUS | | | 8. TRIASSIC.
{ | | |
{ | | | (1) _Labyrinthodon._
{ | | | (2) _Encrinus._
{ | | +------------------------
{ | | | 9. Permian.
{ ------------------- + | |
{ | | | (1) _Bakewellia._
{ | | | (2) _Productus._
{ | I | I | (3) _Palæoniscus._
{ + | +------------------------
{ 11. DEVONIAN | L | L | 10. CARBONIFEROUS.
{ | | |
{ | L | L | (1) _Goniatites._
{ | | | (2) _Lepidodendron._
{ | L | I | (3) _Calamites._
{ ------------------- + | +------------------------
P { | U | U | 11. DEVONIAN.
R { | | |
I { | S | S | _Pterichthys._
M -{ | | +------------------------
A { 12. SILURIAN | T | T | 12. SILURIAN.
R { | | |
Y { | R | R | (1) _Strophomena._
{ | | | (2) _Lingula._
{ | A | A | (3) _Pentamerus._
{ | | | (4) _Calymene._
{ ------------------- + T | T +------------------------
{ | | | 13. CAMBRIAN.
{ | I | I |
{ 13. CAMBRIAN | | | _Oldhamia._
{ | O | O +------------------------
{ ------------------- + | | 14. LAURENTIAN.
{ 14. LAURENTIAN | N | N |
{ | | | _Eozoon._
--------------------+--------+--------+------------------------
Had the levelling power of water never met with an antagonistic force,
there can be no doubt that the last remains of the dry land, supposing
it could ever have risen above the ocean, must long since have been
swept into the sea. But while water has been constantly tending to
reduce the irregularities of the earth’s surface to one dull level, the
expansive force of subterranean heat has been no less unceasingly active
in
restoring the unevenness of the external crust by the ejection or
protrusion of new masses of stone (porphyry, trachyte, basalt, lava,
&c.), and by the consequent disturbance, in a variety of ways, of the
stratified rocks.
[Illustration:
AQUEOUS STRATA DISTURBED BY IGNEOUS FORMATIONS.
B C D, aqueous strata, originally horizontal, raised by protrusion of
A, granitic rock.
]
Plutonic and volcanic eruptions and upheavings, in their reaction
against the levelling tendencies of water, have in many places deranged,
broken, fractured, contorted, or raised strata deposited in horizontal
layers at the bottom of the sea, or of large inland lakes. Sometimes a
huge mass of crystalline rock, glowing from the furnaces of the deep,
has, by its irresistible expansion, slowly forced its way through the
superincumbent sedimentary formations, which, yielding to the pressure
from below, now form vast mountain slopes, or vertical rock walls, or
have even been so totally inverted that strata of a more ancient
formation now overlie those of more modern date, and excite the wonder
of the puzzled geologist.
Sometimes, also, volcanic eruptions, repeated through a long lapse of
ages and constantly accumulating lavas and cinders, have at length piled
up large islands, such as Iceland or Madeira, which now raise their
summits thousands of feet above the ocean.
But subterranean fire, and its assistant, steam, have not only produced
vast mechanical changes; they have also been the frequent causes of
great chymical metamorphoses in the rocks subjected to their action. To
the calcining, decomposing, and vapour-generating effects of heat, we
trace the origin of the marble of Carrara, of alabaster, of gypsum, and
all those various species of stone which geologists include under the
name of metamorphic rocks.
Besides the more paroxysmal and violent revolutions resulting from the
action of subterranean fire, we find that the earth-rind has at all
times been subject to slow oscillatory movements of upheaval and
subsidence, frequently alternating on the same spot with long periods of
rest. The greater part of the actual dry land has been deep sea, and
then again land and ocean many times in succession; and doubtless the
actual sea bottom would exhibit similar alternations were we able to
explore it. The same materials have repeatedly been exposed to all these
changes—now raised or poured out by subterranean fires, and then again
swept away by the waters; now changed from solid rock into sand and mud,
and then again converted, by pressure or heat, into solid rock. Thus the
history of the earth-rind opens to us a vista into time no less grand
and magnificent than the vista into space afforded by the contemplation
of the starry heavens.
The oldest and the newest stratified rocks are composed of the same
mineral substances; for clay, sandstone, and limestone occur in the
Silurian and in the Carboniferous formation; in the Cretaceous and
Triassic systems; in the Tertiary and in the Alluvial deposits, which
have immediately preceded the present epoch.
Where then, it may be asked, does the geologist find a chronological
guide to lead him through the vast series of strata which, in the course
of countless ages, have been deposited in the water? How is he able to
distinguish the boundaries of the various periods of creation? Where are
the precise indications which enable him to decipher the enigmas which
the endless feuds of fire and water have written in the annals of our
globe?
The fossil remains of animals and plants wonderfully furnish the
guidance which he needs. The corals and shells, the ferns and conifera,
the teeth and bones found in the various strata of the earth-rind are
the landmarks which point out to him his way through the labyrinth of
the primitive ages of our globe, as the compass directs the mariner over
the pathless sea. Every leading fossil has its fixed chronological
character, and thus the age of the formation in which it occurs may be
ascertained, and its place determined in the geological scale. It would,
however, be erroneous to suppose that each successive formation has been
the seat of a totally distinct creation, and that the organic remains
found in one particular stratum are separated by an impassable barrier
from those which characterise the preceding or following sedimentary
deposits.
As on the surface of the earth or along the shores of the sea, each land
or each coast has not only its peculiar plants or animals, but also
harbours many of the organic forms of the neighbouring countries or
conterminous shores; as the tropical organisations gradually pass into
those of the temperate zones, and these again merge into those of the
polar regions, so also the stream of life has from the first flowed
uninterruptedly, in gradually changing forms, through every following
age. New genera and species have arisen, and others have disappeared,
some after a comparatively short duration, others after having outlasted
several formations; but every extinct form has but made way for others,
and thus each period has not only witnessed the decay of many previously
flourishing genera and species, but has also marked a new creation.
No doubt the numerous local disturbances above mentioned have frequently
broken the chain of created beings; but a gradual progress from related
to related forms, a continuous development from lower to more highly
organised species, genera, orders, and classes, has from the beginning
been the general and constant law of organic life. Universal
destructions of existing forms, revolutions covering the whole surface
of the earth with ruin, have most assuredly never occurred in the annals
of our globe.
Nor must it be supposed that the whole scale of sedimentary formations
is to be found superimposed in one spot; for as in our times new strata
are chiefly growing at the mouths of rivers, or where submarine currents
deposit at the bottom of the ocean the fine mud or sand which is
conveyed into the sea by the disintegration of distant mountain chains,
so also from the beginning each stratum could only have been deposited
in similar localities; and while it was slowly increasing, and not
seldom acquiring colossal dimensions in some parts of the globe, others
remained comparatively but little altered, until new oscillatory
movements produced a change in their former position, and opening new
paths to the rolling waters, here set bounds to the progress of one
formation, and there favoured the deposition of another.
A complete study of all the various transformations by fire or water
which the surface of our earth has undergone would require an elaborate
treatise of geology, and lies far beyond the scope or the pretensions of
a popular volume which is chiefly devoted to the description of caves
and mines. But I should be neglecting some of the most interesting
features of the subterranean world, were I to omit all mention of the
fossils imbedded in its various strata; of its internal heat; of the
upheavals and subsidences which have played so conspicuous a part in the
history of the earth-rind, and are still proceeding at the present day;
of the water percolating or flowing beneath the earth’s crust, and
finally of the volcanoes and earthquakes, which prove to us that the
ancient subterranean fires, far from being extinct, are still as
powerful as ever in remodelling its surface.
CHAPTER II.
FOSSILS.
General Remarks—Eozoon Canadense—Trilobites—Brachiopods—Pterichthys
Milleri—Oldest Reptiles—Wonderful Preservation of Colour in Petrified
Shells—Primæval Corals and Sponges—Sea-lilies—Orthoceratites and
Ammonites—Belemnites—Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus—Pterodactyli—
Iguanodon—Tertiary Quadrupeds—Dinotherium—Colossochelys Atlas—
Megatherium—Mylodon—Glyptodon—Mammoth—Mastodon—Sivatherium Giganteum—
Fossil Ripple-marks, Rain-drops, and Footprints—Harmony has reigned
from the beginning.
The fossil remains of plants and animals, which have successively
flourished, and passed away since the first dawn of organic life, occupy
a prominent place among the wonders of the subterranean world. A medal
that has survived the ruin of empires is no doubt a venerable relic, but
it seems to have been struck but yesterday when compared with a shell or
a leaf that has been buried millions of years ago in the drift of the
primeval ocean, and now serves the geologist as a waymark through the
past epochs of the earth’s history.
[Illustration: AMMONITES HENLEYI (MIDDLE LIAS).]
If we examine the condition in which the fossils have been preserved in
the strata successively deposited on the surface of our globe, we find
that in general only parts of the original plant or animal have escaped
destruction, and in these fragments also the primitive substance has
often been replaced by other materials, so that only their form or their
impression has triumphed over time. While soft and delicate textures
have either been utterly swept away, or could only be preserved under
the rarest circumstances (as, for instance, the insects and flowers
inclosed in amber), a greater degree of hardness or solidity naturally
gave a better chance of escaping destruction. Thus among plants the most
frequent fossil-remains are furnished by stems, roots, branches, fruit-
stones, leaves; and, among animals, by corals, shells, calcareous
crusts, teeth, scales, and bones. But the few memorials that have thus
survived the lapse of ages enable us to form some idea of the multitudes
that have entirely perished; and the petrified shell of the Ammonite, or
the jointed arms of the Encrinite, are proofs of the existence of the
world of tiny beings which served them for their nourishment and have
been utterly swept away. If we consider that the number of all the known
species of fossil plants hardly amounts to 3,000, while the Flora of the
present day, as far as it has been examined by systematical botanists,
numbers at least 250,000 species; that the host of living insects is
probably still more numerous, although not much more than 1,500 extinct
species of this class are known to us; and that, finally, the remains of
all the extinct crustaceous fishes, reptiles, and warm-blooded animals
are far outnumbered by the species actually living—we may form some idea
of the vast multitudes that have left no trace behind, and whose total
loss will for ever confine within narrow limits our knowledge of the
past phases of organic creation. This loss appears still greater when we
consider the enormous extent of time during which the fossils known to
us have successively existed, and that a part only of the comparatively
small number of the orders, genera, and species to which they belong
existed at one and the same epoch. But as, owing to the hard texture and
mode of life which are so eminently favourable for the preservation of
shells, we have been enabled to collect about 11,000 fossil species, a
number not much inferior to that of the molluscs of the present day, we
may justly conclude that the more perishable forms of life, of which,
consequently, fewer vestiges have been preserved, were comparatively as
numerous, and that ever since the first dawn of organic life our earth
has borne an immense variety of plants and animals.
Though comparatively but few species have been preserved, yet sometimes
the accumulation of fossil remains is truly astonishing. In the
carboniferous strata we not seldom find more than one hundred beds of
coal interstratified with sandstones, shales, and limestones, and
extending for miles and miles in every direction. How luxuriant must
have been the growth of the forests that could produce masses such as
these, and what countless multitudes of herbivorous insects must have
fed upon their foliage or afforded food to carnivorous hordes scarcely
less numerous than themselves! The remains of corals, encrinites, and
shells often form the greater part of whole mountain ranges, and, what
is still more remarkable, mighty strata of limestone or flint are not
seldom almost entirely composed of the aggregated remains of
microscopical animals.
After these remarks on fossils in general, I will now briefly point out
some of the most striking of the species so preserved to us as they
successively appeared upon the stage of life.
In the Lower Laurentian Rocks, the most ancient strata known, only one
fossil has hitherto been found. The _Eozoon canadense_, as it has been
called, belonged to the Rhizopods, which occupy about the lowest grade
in the scale of animal existence. Its massive skeletons, composed of
innumerable cells, would seem to have extended themselves over submarine
rocks, their base upwards of twelve inches in width and their thickness
from four to six inches. Such is the antiquity of the Eozoon that the
distance of time which separated it from the Trilobites of the Cambrian
formation may be equal to the vast period which elapsed between these
and the Tertiary ages. In other words, it is beyond our imagination to
conceive.
[Illustration: TRILOBITE.]
[Illustration: MAGNIFIED EYE OF TRILOBITE.]
In the next following Cambrian formation we find, besides some zoophytes
and shells, a number of Trilobites, which, however, appear to have been
most abundant in the Silurian seas, where they probably swarmed as
abundantly as the crabs and shrimps in the waters of the present age.
Few fossils are more curious than these strange crustaceans, which so
widely differ from their modern relatives. The jointed carapace is
divided into three lobes, the middle prominent one forming the axis of
the body, while the lateral ones were free appendages, under which the
soft membranaceous swimming feet were concealed. Large eyes, resembling
those of a dragon-fly, projected from the odd crescent-shaped head, and,
being composed of many hundred spherical facets, commanded a wide view
of the horizon. Provided with such complicated organs of vision, the
helpless animal could betimes perceive the approaching enemy, or more
easily espy its prey, consisting, most likely, of the smaller marine
annelides or molluscs. From the structure of these remarkable eyes we
may conclude that the waters of the old Cambrian or Silurian Ocean were
as limpid as those of the present seas, and that the natural relations
of light to the eye and of the eye to light cannot have greatly changed
since that period. Many, if not all, of the Trilobites were capable of
rolling themselves up into a ball, like wood-lice; and accordingly it is
found that in many of them the contour of the head and tail is so
constructed that they fit accurately when rolled up. Most probably the
Trilobites either swam in an inverted position, the belly upwards, or
crawled slowly along at the bottom of the shallow coast waters, where
they lived gregariously in vast numbers.
[Illustration: PTERYGOTUS ACUMINATUS (EURYPTERID).]
[Illustration: SPIRIFER PRINCEPS (BRACHIOPOD).]
Contemporaneous with the Trilobites were the Eurypterids, which vary
from one foot to five or six feet in length. One of the most striking
characteristics of this remarkable order of crustaceans is the
formidable pair of pincers with which they were armed. As their whole
structure shows them to have been active swimmers, they must have made
considerable havoc among the smaller fry of the Devonian and Silurian
seas.
Then also abounded in hundreds of species the Brachiopods, a class of
molluscs now but feebly represented by a scanty remnant. The greater
part of the interior of the shell, consisting of two unequal valves, is
occupied with branching arms, furnished with cilia, which cause a
constant current to flow towards the mouth of the mollusc, and thus
provide for its nourishment. The arms, as in the family of the
Spiriferidæ, are sometimes supported by calcareous skeletons, arranged
like loops or spirals.
Some Brachiopods are attached to stones, like oysters; in others the
larger valve is perforated, and a sinewy kind of foot, passing through
the aperture, serves as a holdfast to the animal.
Most of these helpless creatures did not survive the Carboniferous
period, but the Terebratulæ, which still have their representatives in
the modern seas, existed even then, so that their genealogical tree may
justly boast of a very high antiquity.
The fishes, of which the oldest known specimen has been found in the
Upper Silurian group (Lower Ludlow), become more frequent in the next
following Devonian epoch, where they appear in a variety of wonderful
forms, widely different from those of the present day. While in nearly
all the existing fishes the scales are flexible, and generally either of
a more or less circular form (cycloid), as in the salmon, herring,
roach, &c., or provided with comb-like teeth, projecting from the
posterior margin (ctenoid), as in the sole or perch, the fishes of the
Devonian, Permian, and Carboniferous periods were decked with hard bony
scales, either covered with a brilliant enamel, as in our sturgeons
(ganoid), and arranged in regular rows, the posterior edges of each
slightly overlapping the anterior ones of the next, or irregular in
their shape, and separately imbedded in the skin (placoid), as in the
sharks and rays of the present day. With rare exceptions their skeleton
was cartilaginous; but the less perfect ossification of their bones was
amply compensated by the solid texture of their enamelled coat of mail,
which afforded them a better protection against enemies and injuries
from without than is possessed by any bony-skeletoned fish of our days.
They were, in fact, comparatively as well prepared for a hostile
encounter as an ancient knight in armour, or as one of our modern iron-
plated war ships. One of the most remarkable of these mail-clad Ganoids
was the _Pterichthys Milleri_ of the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland. In
most of our fishes the pectoral fins are but weakly developed; here they
constitute real arms, moved by strong muscles, and resembling the paddle
of the turtle.
[Illustration: PTERICHTHYS MILLERI—RESTORED. (OLD RED SANDSTONE OF
SCOTLAND.)]
Besides the enormous masses of vegetable matter which distinguish the
Carboniferous period, the stone beds of that formation likewise contain
a vast number of animal remains. From the reptiles and fishes down to
the corals and sponges, many new families, genera, and species crowd
upon the scene, while many of the previously flourishing races have
either entirely disappeared, or are evidently declining. Thus the
Trilobites, formerly so numerous, are reduced to a few species in the
Carboniferous period, and vanish towards its close.
In 1847 the oldest known reptiles were found in the coal field of
Saarbrück, in the centre of spheroidal concretions of clay iron-stone,
which not only faithfully preserved the skulls, teeth, and the greater
portions of the skeletons of these ancient lizards, but even a large
part of their skin, consisting of long, narrow, wedge-shaped, tile-like,
and horny scales, arranged in rows. What a lesson for human pride! The
pyramid of the Pharaoh Cheops, reared by the labour of thousands of
slaves, has been unable to preserve his remains from spoliation even for
the short space of a few thousand years, and here a vile reptile has
been safely imbedded in a sarcophagus of iron ore during the vast period
of many geological formations.
Still more recently (1854) other wonders have been brought to light in
the clay iron-stone of Saarbrück. The wing of a grasshopper, with all
its nerves as distinctly marked as if the creature had been hopping
about but yesterday, some white ants or termites (now confined to the
warmer regions of the globe), a beetle, and several cockroaches, give us
some idea of the insects that lived at the time when our coal-beds were
forming. Another highly interesting circumstance, relating to the
fossils of that distant period, is that in several of them the patterns
of their colouring have been preserved. Thus _Terebratula hastata_ often
retains the marks of the original coloured stripes which ornamented the
living shell. In _Aviculopecten sublobatus_ dark stripes alternate with
a light ground, and wavy blotches are displayed in _Pleurotomaria
carinata_. From these facts Professor Forbes inferred that the depth of
the seas in which the Mountain Limestone was formed did not exceed fifty
fathoms, as in the existing seas the Testacea, which have shells and
well-defined patterns, rarely inhabit a greater depth.
The Magnesian Limestone or Permian group is remarkable chiefly for the
vast number of fishes that have been found in some of its members, such
as the marl slate of Durham and the Kupferschiefer, or copper slate, of
Thuringia. From the curved form of their impressions, as if they had
been spasmodically contracted, the fossil fish of the latter locality
are supposed to have perished by a sudden death before they sank down
into the mud in which they were entombed. Probably the copper which
impregnates the stratum in which they occur is connected with this
phenomenon. Mighty volcanic eruptions corrupted the water with poisonous
metallic salts, and destroyed in a short time whole legions of its finny
inhabitants.
[Illustration: VENTRICULITES—FOSSIL SPONGE (CHALK).]
From the earliest ages the corals play a conspicuous part in fossil
history; and as in our days we find them encircling islands and fringing
continents with huge ramparts of limestone, so many an ancient reef, now
far inland, and raised several thousand feet above the level of the sea,
bears witness to the vast terrestrial changes that have taken place
since it was first piled up by the growth of countless zoophytes.
[Illustration: SIPHONIA COSTATA—FOSSIL SPONGE (GREEN SAND, WARMINSTER).]
With regard to the dimensions of the fossil corals we do not find that
any of them exceeded in size their modern relatives; but their
construction was widely different.
The fossil sponges of the primitive seas are likewise very unlike those
of the present day.
Thus in all the ancient strata we find abundant spongidæ with a stony
skeleton, while all the modern sponges possess a horny frame. The
Petrospongidæ, or stone sponges, which have long since disappeared, are
frequently shapeless masses; but a large number are cup-shaped, with a
central tubular cavity, lined, as well as the outer surface, with pores
more or less regularly arranged.
[Illustration:
ENCRINUS LILIIFORMIS.
(Muschelkalk, Germany.)
]
[Illustration: PENTACRINUS BRIAREUS.]
The Crinoids, or Sea-lilies, now almost entirely extinct, were extremely
common in the primeval seas. Unlike our modern sea-stars, to which they
are allies, they did not move about freely from place to place, but were
affixed, like flowers, to a slender flexible stalk, composed of numerous
calcareous joints connected together by a fleshy coat. The Carboniferous
Mountain Limestone is loaded with their remains, and the _Encrinus
liliiformis_ is one of the leading fossils of the Muschelkalk of the
Triassic group. The _Pentacrinus briareus_ is of more modern date, and
occurs in tangled masses, forming thin beds of considerable extent in
the Lower Lias. This beautiful Crinoid, with its innumerable tentacular
arms, appears to have been frequently attached to the drift wood of the
Liassic sea, like the floating barnacles of the present day. In the
still more recent Chalk group is found a remarkable form of star-fish,
the _Marsupites ornatus_, which resembles in all respects the Crinoids,
except that it is not and never was provided with a stem. It seems to
have been rolled lazily to and fro, by the influence of the waves, at
the bottom of the sea, and to have been anchored in its place by the
action of gravity alone.
[Illustration: MARSUPITES ORNATUS. CHALK.]
Of all the changes that have taken place in organic life, none perhaps
are more remarkable than the transformations which the Cephalopod
molluscs have undergone during the various geological eras. In the more
ancient Palæozoic seas flourished the Orthoceratites, or straight-
chambered shells, resembling a nautilus uncoiled. In the Carboniferous
ages the Goniatites acquired their highest development. These shells
were spirally wound, having the lobes of the chambers free from lateral
denticulations or crenatures, so as to form continuous and uninterrupted
outlines.
Both Orthoceratites and Goniatites disappear in the Triassic times, and
are replaced by hosts of Ammonites, which successively flourished in
more than 600 species, and are characterised by an external siphon and
chambers of complicated, often foliated, pattern. This foliated
structure gives a remarkable character to the intersection of the
chamber partitions with the shell, and must have added greatly to the
strength of the shell, which was always delicate and often very
beautiful. The Ammonites, which made their first appearance towards the
end of the Triassic period, abounded in the Oolitic and Cretaceous
periods, and were replaced by new forms before the Tertiary beds were
deposited. Among these we find the _Ancyloceras gigas_, which may be
regarded as an Ammonite partially unrolled, and the _Turrilites
tuberculatus_, which has the form and peculiar symmetry of a univalve
shell.
[Illustration: TURRILITES TUBERCULATUS.]
[Illustration: RESTORED BELEMNITE.]
In several of the older rocks, especially the Lias and Oolite,
Belemnites are frequently met with. These singular dart- or arrow-shaped
fossils were supposed by the ancients to be the thunderbolts of Jove,
but are now known to be the petrified internal bones of a race of
voracious cuttle-fishes, whose importance in the Oolitic or Cretaceous
Seas may be judged of by the frequency of their remains and the 120
species that have been hitherto discovered.
Belemnites two feet long have been found, so that, to judge by
analogies, the animals to which they belonged as cuttle-bones must have
measured eighteen or twenty feet from end to end. Provided with
prehensile hooks on their long arms, and with a formidable parrot-like
bill, these huge creatures must have proved most dangerous antagonists,
even to the well-protected fishes that lived in the same seas. But of
all the denizens of the Mesozoic Ocean none were more powerful than the
large marine or enaliosaurian reptiles, which, flourishing throughout
the whole of the Triassic period, were lords of all they surveyed down
to the end of the Cretaceous epoch. First among these monsters appears
the gigantic Ichthyosaurus, which has been found no less than forty feet
long—a creature half fish, half lizard, and combining, in strange
juxtaposition, the snout of the porpoise, the teeth of the crocodile,
and the paddles of the whale. But the most remarkable of its features is
the eye, surpassing a man’s head in size, and wonderfully adapted for
vision both far and near.
[Illustration: ICHTHYOSAURUS COMMUNIS.]
[Illustration:
PLESIOSAURUS DOLICHODEIRUS.
(British Museum—Found in the Lias of Street, near
Glastonbury.)
]
In the quarries of Caen in Normandy, at Lyme Regis in Dorsetshire, and
particularly at Kloster Banz in Franconia, where the largest known
specimen has been discovered, entire skeletons of the formidable
Ichthyosaurus have been exhumed from the Liassic shale—memorials of the
ages long since past, when lands now far removed from the ocean still
lay at the bottom of the sea, and formed the domain of gigantic lizards.
The enormous jaw-bones of the Ichthyosauri, which in the full-grown
animal could be opened seven feet wide, were armed along their whole
length with powerful conical teeth, showing them to have been
carnivorous, and the half-digested remains of fishes and reptiles found
within their skeletons indicate the precise nature of their food. The
size of the swallowed object proves also that the cavity of the stomach
must have corresponded with the wide opening of the jaws. Thus
powerfully equipped for offensive warfare; excellent swimmers from their
compressed cuneiform trunk, their long broad paddles, and their stout
vertical tail-fin; provided, moreover, with eyes capable of piercing the
dim light of the ocean depths, they must have been formidable indeed to
the contemporaneous fishes.
The Ichthyosaurus was admirably formed for cleaving the waves of an
agitated sea; but the Plesiosaurus was equally well organised for
pursuing its prey in shallow creeks and bays defended from heavy
breakers. Its long swan-like neck no doubt enabled it to drag many a
victim from its hiding-place. While these huge lizards were the terror
of the seas, the Pterodactyles, a race of winged lizards, armed with
long jaws and sharp teeth, hovered in the air. With the exception of the
greatly elongated fifth finger, to which, as well as to the whole length
of the arm and body, the membranous wing or organ of flight was
attached, the fingers of this strange animal were provided with sharp
claws, so that it was probably enabled, like the bat, to suspend itself
from precipitous rock-walls.
It is a remarkable fact, that, whereas the Pterodactyles of the older
Lias beds did not exceed ten or twelve inches in length, the later
forms, found fossil in the Greensand and Wealden beds of the Lower
Cretaceous formation, must have been at least 16½ feet long. That these
reptiles were not the only vertebrated animals capable of hovering in
the air at the time when the huge Ichthyosaurus was lord of the seas, is
proved by a bird about the size of a rook, which was discovered in 1862,
in the lithographic slate of Solenhofen in Bavaria, a stone-bed
belonging to the period of the Upper Oolite. The skeleton of this
valuable specimen, now in the British Museum, is almost entire, with the
exception of the head, and retains even its feathers. Still older fossil
mammalia have been found near Stuttgard, in the uppermost bed of the
Triassic deposits, and in the Lower Oolite of Oxfordshire. These
interesting remains, which carry back the existence of the mammals to a
very remote period, belong to small marsupial, or opossum-like, animals.
The jaws, which are the principal parts preserved, are exceedingly
minute, and remarkable for the number and distribution of their teeth,
which prove them to have been either insectivorous or rodent.
The remains of the Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri occur chiefly in the
Liassic group, but the more recent Cretaceous (Wealden) formation is
distinguished by the presence of still more enormous land saurians. On
their massive legs and unwieldy feet these monsters stood much higher
than any reptile of our days, and resembled in bulk and stature the
elephants of the present world.
The carnivorous Megalosaurus (for its sharply serrated teeth indicate
this mode of life) appears to have preceded the gigantic Iguanodon,
whose dentition denotes a vegetable food. Like the giant sloths of South
America—the Megatherium and the Mylodon—the Iguanodon was provided with
a long prehensile tongue and fleshy lips to seize the leaves and
branches on which it fed. Professor Owen estimates its probable length
at between fifty and sixty feet, and to judge by the proportions of its
extremities, and particularly of its huge feet, it must have exceeded
the bulk of the elephant eightfold.
During the following Upper Cretaceous epoch flourished the Mosasaurus, a
marine saurian, first discovered in the quarries of St. Peter’s Mount,
near Maestricht,[1] and supposed to have been twenty-four feet in
length. But the supremacy of the reptiles was now drawing to its close,
and in the Tertiary period we at length see the Mammalia assume a
prominent place on the scene of life. The oldest of these tertiary
quadrupeds differ so widely from those of the present day as to form
distinct genera. The Palæotheriums, for instance, of which there are
seventeen species, varying in dimensions from the size of a rhinoceros
to that of a hog, combine in their skeleton many of the characters of
the tapir, the rhinoceros, and the horse, while the Anoplotheriums,
whose size varied from that of a hare to that of a dwarf ass, resembled
in some respects the rhinoceros and the horse, and in others the
hippopotamus, the hog, and the camel.
Footnote 1:
Chapter XXXVIII
In the Miocene epoch many of these more ancient quadrupeds no longer
appear upon the scene, while others still flourish in its upper period
along with still existing genera, and with forms long since extinct,
such as the Dinotherium. This huge animal is particularly remarkable for
its two large and heavy tusks, placed at the extremity of the lower jaw,
and curved downwards like those in the upper jaw of the walrus. It was
formerly supposed to be an herbivorous cretacean, and to have used its
anterior limbs principally in the act of digging for roots. The remains
on which these speculations were founded were the huge jaws and
shoulder-blade discovered at Epplesheim in Hesse Darmstadt; but an
immense pelvis of the animal, measuring six feet in breadth and four and
a quarter feet in height, discovered by Father Sanno Solaro, in the
department of the Haute Garonne, proves that this supposed aquatic
pachyderm was a gigantic marsupial, and that the dependent trunks of the
unwieldy animal, instead of serving the purpose of anchoring it to the
banks of rivers, answered the more homely, but equally important office,
of lifting the young into the maternal pouch. ‘The remarkable history of
the successive discovery of its bones,’ says Professor Haughton, ‘and
the change of views consequent thereupon, should teach geologists
modesty in the expression of their opinion.’ During this period also
flourished in India, along with many other strange forms of life, the
Colossochelys Atlas, a tortoise of the most gigantic proportions,
measuring, probably, nearly twenty feet on the curve of the carapace,
and dwarfing into insignificance the great Indian tortoise of the
present day.
The nearer we approach our own times, the greater becomes the proportion
of still existing genera and species; and it is remarkable that as early
as the Pliocene epoch we find a geographical distribution of mammalian
life analogous to that which now characterises the various regions of
the earth.
Thus the fossil monkeys of South America have the nostrils wide apart
like all the existing simiæ of the new world, and fossil monkeys with
approximated nostrils, the characteristic mark of all the old world
quadrumana, are exclusively found in Asia and in Europe, where now a
small species of monkey is confined to the Rock of Gibraltar, but where,
in the Upper Miocene times, large long-armed apes, equalling man in
stature, lived in the oak forests of France. Thus also South America,
where alone sloths and armadilloes exist at the present day, is the only
part of the world where, in the younger tertiary rocks, the remains of
analogous mammals—the Megatherium, the Mylodon, and the Glyptodon—have
been found.
The Mylodon was a colossal sloth, eleven feet long and with a
corresponding girth. When we consider the huge size of the pelvis and
the massiveness of the limbs, we must needs conclude that Professor Owen
could not possibly have given the unwieldy animal a more appropriate
surname than that of _robustus_.
The Megatherium was of still larger size. Its length was as much as
eighteen feet, the breadth of its pelvis was six feet, and the tail,
where it was attached to the body, must have measured six feet in
circumference. The thigh bone was nearly three times as great as that of
the largest known elephant, the bones of the instep and those of the
foot being also of corresponding size. The general proportions both of
the Megatherium and Mylodon resembled those of the elephant, the body
being relatively as large, the legs shorter and thicker, and the neck
very little longer. The Megatherium may have had a short proboscis, but
the Mylodon exhibits no mark of such contrivance.
It is evident, from the bulk and construction of these huge animals,
that they did not, like the sloths of the present day, crawl along the
under side of the boughs till they had reached a commodious feeding
place, but that, firmly seated on the strong tripod of their two hind
legs and powerful tail, they uprooted trees or wrenched off branches
with their fore limbs, which were well adapted for grasping the trunk or
larger branches of a tree. The long and powerful claws were also, no
doubt, useful in the preliminary process of scratching away the soil
from the roots of the trees to be prostrated. This task accomplished,
the long and curved fore claws would next be applied to the opposite
sides of the loosened trunk. ‘The tree being thus partly undermined and
firmly grappled with, the muscles of the trunk, the pelvis, and hind
limbs, animated by the nervous influence of the unusually large spinal
cord, would combine their forces with those of the anterior members in
the efforts at prostration. If now we picture to ourselves the massive
frame of the Megatherium, convulsed with the mighty wrestling, every
vibrating fibre reacting upon its bony attachment with a force which the
sharp and strong crests and apophyses loudly bespeak, we may suppose
that that tree must have been strong indeed which, rocked to and fro, to
right and left, in such an embrace, could long withstand the efforts of
its ponderous assailant.’
[Illustration: GLYPTODON CLAVIPES.]
The Glyptodon, a colossal armadillo of the size of an ox, was covered
with a thick heavy tessellated bony armour, which, when detached from
the body, resembled the section of a large cask. This harness measured
on its curve from head to tail at least six feet, and four feet from
side to side, so that a Laplander might have squatted comfortably under
its roof.
In the superficial deposits of diluvial drift, in Germany and England,
in Italy and Spain, in Northern Asia as well as in North America,
between the latitudes of 40° and 75°, the bones of the large extinct
Pachyderms have been found, and become more and more abundant as we
approach the ice-bound regions within the Arctic Circle. The Siberian
tundras, and the islands in the Polar Sea beyond, are, above all, so
rich in the fossil remains of the Mammoth, or primitive elephant, that
its tusks form a not unimportant branch of commerce. From the presence
of so large an animal in treeless wilds, where now only small rodents or
their persecutors, the Arctic fox and snow owl, find the means of
subsistence, it has been inferred that Siberia must in those times have
enjoyed a tropical climate; but many weighty arguments have been arrayed
against this opinion. The musk-ox, it is well known, prefers the stinted
herbage of the Arctic regions, while the allied buffalo can only thrive
in a warm country, and different species of bears are found in all
zones; so also the primitive elephant was formed for a temperate or cold
climate. Instead of being naked, like his living Asiatic and African
relations, the Mammoth was covered with a warm clothing, well fitted to
brave a low temperature, a fact sufficiently proved by the carcass of
one of these animals which was found, in the year 1803, imbedded in a
mass of ice on the bank of the Lena in latitude 70°. Its skin was
covered first with black bristles, thicker than horse-hair, from twelve
to sixteen inches in length, secondly with hair of a reddish-brown
colour, about four inches long, and thirdly with wool of the same colour
as the hair, about an inch in length.
The discoveries of Middendorff on the banks of the Taymur likewise show
that in those times the climate of Siberia was by no means tropical, for
in latitude 75° 15′ he found the trunk of a larch imbedded with the
bones of a Mammoth in an alluvial stratum fifteen feet above the level
of the sea. Fragments of pine leaves have likewise been extracted from
cavities in the molar teeth of a fossil rhinoceros, discovered on the
banks of the Wiljui, in latitude 64°. The numerous land and freshwater
shells accompanying the Mammoth in the highest latitudes are also,
almost without exception, identical with those now existing in Siberia.
The Mastodon, though not uncommon among the fossils of the old world, is
more abundantly found in North America. The molar teeth of this huge
animal, whose grinding surfaces had their crowns studded with conical
eminences, more or less resembling the teats of a cow, differed greatly
from the flat-crowned grinders of the Mammoth; but both had twenty ribs
like the living elephant, and must have been similar in size and general
appearance. The body of the Mastodon would seem to have been longer, its
limbs thicker and shorter, and, perhaps, its form, on the whole, rather
approaching that of the hippopotamus, which it probably resembled also
in some of its habits. Its mouth was broader than that of the elephant,
and although it was certainly provided with a long trunk, it must have
lived on soft succulent food, and it seems to have rarely left the
marshes and muddy ponds, in which it would find ample food.
The most complete, and probably the largest, specimen of the Mastodon
ever found was exhumed in 1845, in the town of Newbury, New York, the
length of the skeleton being twenty-five feet, and its height twelve
feet. From another specimen, found in the same year, in Warren County,
New Jersey, the clay in the interior within the ribs, just where the
contents of the stomach might naturally have been looked for, furnished
some bushels of vegetable substance. A microscopic examination proved
this matter to consist of pieces of small twigs of a coniferous tree of
the cypress family, probably the young shoots of the white cedar (_Thuja
occidentalis_) which is still a native of North America.
This interesting discovery likewise proves that the climate of North
America was then, like that of Siberia, not very different from that of
the present day.
The most remarkable of the fossil Ruminants are found among the deer
tribe. The largest of these is the _Sivatherium giganteum_, discovered
in the Tertiary beds of the sub-Himalayan hills. It was a deer with four
horns, and, to judge by the size of its bones, must have exceeded the
elephant in its dimensions. Near this huge ‘antlered monarch of the
waste’ the extinct _Cervus megaceros_, found in the bogs and shallow
marls of Ireland, appears as a mere dwarf, in spite of its large
branching palmate horns, often weighing eighty pounds, and a
corresponding stature far exceeding that of our modern deer.
The colossal size of many of the extinct plants and animals might seem
to favour the belief that organic life has degenerated from its former
powers; but a survey of existing creation soon proves the vital
principle to be as strong and flourishing as ever.
No fossil tree has yet been found to equal the towering height of the
huge Sequoias and Wellingtonias of California; and though the Horsetails
and Clubmosses of the Carboniferous ages may well be called colossal
when compared with their diminutive representatives of the present day,
yet their height by no means exceeded that of the tall bamboo of India.
No fossil bivalve is as large as the Tridacna of the tropical seas; and
though our nautilus is a mere pigmy when compared with many of the
Ammonites, our naked cuttlefishes are probably as bulky as those of any
of the former geological formations. The living crustaceans and fishes
are not inferior to their predecessors in size, and though the giant
saurians of the past were much larger than our crocodiles, yet they do
not completely dwarf them by comparison. The extinct Dinornis[2] far
surpassed the ostrich in size, but the Mammoth and the Mastodon find
their equal in our elephant; and though the sloths of the present day
are mere pigmies when compared with the Megatherium, yet no extinct
mammal attains the size of the Greenland whale.
Footnote 2:
Chapter XIX.
The perfect preservation of so many fossil remains of animals and
plants, which enables us to trace the progress of organic life on earth
from one vast epoch to another, is surely wonderful enough; but we must
consider it as a still greater wonder that phenomena usually so
evanescent as foot-prints, ripple-marks, and rain-prints should in some
cases have been permanently engraved in stone, and appear as distinct
after millions of years as if their traces had been left but yesterday.
All these marks were at first printed on soft argillaceous mud, on the
sea-shore, or on the borders of lakes and rivers, which retained them as
they became dry. Sand or clay having then been drifted into the mould by
the wind, or deposited in its cavity by the next tide, a permanent cast
was made, indented in the lower stratum and standing out in relief on
the upper one.
Thus rain-drops on greenish slates of the Coal period, with several worm
tracks, such as usually accompany rain-marks on the recent mud of modern
beaches, have been discovered near Sydney, in Cape Breton. As the drops
resemble in their average size those which now fall from the clouds, we
may presume that the atmosphere of the Carboniferous period corresponded
in density with that now investing the globe, and that different
currents of air varied then as now in temperature, so as, by their
mixture, to give rise to the condensation of aqueous vapour.
In like manner it has been possible to detect the footprints of
reptiles, even in shales as old as the Cambrian formation, and to follow
their trail as they walked or crawled along.
In the Upper New Red Sandstone (Lower Trias), near Hildburghausen, in
Saxony, a strange unknown animal, supposed to belong to the frog order,
has left foot-prints bearing a striking resemblance to the impressions
made by a human hand; and in the still older red sandstone of
Connecticut, a gigantic bird has marked a foot four times larger than
that of the ostrich. It existed long before the Ichthyosaurus was seen
on earth, and yet by a singular chance its traces, printed on a
foundation proverbially unstable, have outlived the wreck of so many
ages.
However brief and defective the foregoing review of the fossil world may
have been, it has still sufficed to point out the existence on our
planet of so many habitable surfaces, each distinct in time, and peopled
with its peculiar races of aquatic and terrestrial beings, all admirably
fitted for the new states of the globe as they arose, or they would not
have increased and multiplied and endured for indefinite periods.
‘The proofs now accumulated,’ says Sir Charles Lyell, ‘of the close
analogy between extinct and recent species are such as to leave no doubt
on the mind that the same harmony of parts and beauty of contrivance
which we admire in the living creation has equally characterised the
organic world at remote periods. Thus, as we increase our knowledge of
the inexhaustible variety displayed in living nature, our admiration is
multiplied by the reflection that it is only the last of a great series
of pre-existing creations, of which we cannot estimate the number or
limit in times past.’
CHAPTER III.
SUBTERRANEAN HEAT.
Zone of invariable Temperature—Increasing Temperature of the Earth at a
greater Depth—Proofs found in Mines and Artesian Wells, in Hot Springs
and Volcanic Eruptions—The whole Earth probably at one time a fluid
mass.
Born neither to soar into the air, nor to inhabit the deep waters, nor
to pass his life in subterranean darkness, man is unable to depart to
any considerable distance from the earth’s surface. If he ascends in a
balloon, he soon reaches the limits where the rarefied atmosphere
renders breathing impossible; a few thousand feet limit his efforts to
pierce the earth’s crust; and should he be cast out into the sea, he is
soon drowned. But beyond the limits to which his body is confined, his
mind soars into space, and plunging into the unknown interior of our
globe, seeks to unravel the mystery of its formation. In the following
pages I purpose briefly to point out the circumstances which guide him
in his speculations, and enable him to roam, at least in spirit, through
the profound abysses of the subterranean world.
As we all know, the temperature of the atmosphere soon communicates its
changes to the surface of the earth; and our meadows, which when warmed
by the rays of the sun are green and covered with flowers, harden in
winter into a lifeless plain. But the influence of the sun’s heat upon
the soil is merely superficial, so that in the temperate zones the
annual fluctuations of the thermometer are no longer perceptible at a
depth of from 60 to 80 feet.
Thus, in the cellars of the Parisian observatory, a thermometer, placed
many years ago 86 feet below the surface, invariably indicates +11°7
Celsius; the summer above may be ever so intensely hot, or the winter
ever so cold, the column of mercury never deviates a hair’s breadth from
the height it has once attained. Below these limits the warmth of the
earth gradually increases—a fact placed beyond all doubt by the
innumerable observations that have been made in mines, and during the
boring of Artesian wells. For wherever sinkings have been made, a rising
of the thermometer has always been found to take place as the auger
penetrates to a greater depth below the surface. Thus, to cite but a few
examples, the temperature of the Artesian well of Grenelle in Paris,
which, at a depth of 917 French feet, amounted to +22°2 C., increased at
the depth of 1,555 feet to +26°43, and the water, which now gashes forth
from the depth of 1,684 feet, constantly maintains the same lukewarm
temperature of +27°70.
During the boring of the well of Neusalzwerk, in Westphalia, the
temperature rose at the various depths of 580, 1,285, and 1,935 feet
from +19°7 C. to +27°5 and +31°4, until, finally, when the depth of
2,144 feet was attained, the saline spring issued forth with a constant
temperature of +33°6. As from the experience acquired in mines and
Artesian wells, the temperature is found to increase by one degree for
about every successive 80 or 100 feet, the internal warmth of the earth,
supposing it to increase in the same proportion towards the centre,
would, at the depth of 10,000 feet, be equal to that of boiling water,
and at that of 80 or 100 miles sufficiently great to melt the hardest
rock.
Whether this steady increase really takes place is of course only matter
of conjecture; but the history of hot springs and volcanic eruptions
shows us that everywhere a very high degree of heat exists at
considerable depths below the surface.
Most springs in the temperate zone, without being warm in a remarkable
degree, still possess a higher temperature than the average warmth of
the air in the locality where they gush forth, while in the tropical
zone they are frequently cooler—a proof that in both cases they issue
from a depth independent of the fluctuating atmospherical influences of
the surface. While these cool or cold springs, spread in immense numbers
over the earth, attest the existence everywhere of a subterranean source
of heat, the warm and hot springs remind us of its intensity at more
considerable depths. These thermal sources are confined to no climate,
for in the cold land of the Tschuktschi, where the soil must be
perpetually frozen to a depth of several hundred feet, boiling water is
found to gush forth, as well as in the tropical Feejee Islands.
The hot springs, though of frequent occurrence in all parts of the
world, are not the only or principal vents of subterranean heat. Far
greater quantities of caloric are constantly pouring forth from the
numerous volcanoes and solfataras, which are likewise distributed all
over the surface of the globe. The violent convulsions which attend
every outflow of lava are proofs that these torrents of liquid stone
must have been forced upwards from a far greater depth than the water of
the hot springs. The temperature necessary for their production likewise
points to this fact, for to melt stones a heat of at least 2,000°C. is
required. But volcanoes, like hot springs, are found in every zone;
beyond the Arctic Circle, as well as in the most southern land attained
by Sir James Ross in his memorable voyage. They line the coasts of the
Pacific, as well as those of the Sea of Kamtschatka. They desolate
Iceland, as they devoured Pompeii and Herculaneum; and everywhere they
pour forth the same masses of fluid stone; so that the geologist is not
able to distinguish the lavas of the Andes chain from those of Etna or
Vesuvius. But phenomena so much alike in character, common to all parts
of the globe, can hardly be dependent upon mere local circumstances, and
speak loudly in favour of the theory which supposes our earth to have
been at one time a ball of liquid fire. Wandering through space during a
course of unnumbered ages, this huge mass of molten stones and metals
gradually cooled, and at length got covered with a solid crust, below
which the ancient furnaces are still burning, and striving to burst
their fetters. Well may we say with Horace—
‘_Incedimus_ per ignes
Suppositos cineri doloso.’
CHAPTER IV.
SUBTERRANEAN UPHEAVALS AND DEPRESSIONS.
Oscillations of the Earth’s Surface taking place in the present day—
First ascertained in Sweden—Examples of Contemporaneous Upheaval and
Depression in France and England—Probable Causes of the Phenomenon.
While the sea and the atmospheric ocean are subject to perpetual
fluctuations, and the poet justly compares the uncertain tenure of human
prosperity with the restless wave or the inconstant wind, the solid
earth is generally regarded as the emblem of stability. But an
examination of the various strata of aqueous origin which constitute by
far the greater part of the actual dry land soon shows the fallacy of
this opinion.
The fossils of marine origin which occur in so many of our oldest rocks,
now situated far above the level of the ocean, must necessarily have
been raised from the deep. On the towering Andes, fifteen thousand feet
above the tide-marks of the Pacific, the geologist finds sea-shells
imbedded in the rock, and high above the snow-line the chamois-hunter of
the Alps wonders at the sight of spirally-wound Ammonites that once
enjoyed life at the bottom of the Liassic Sea. In strata of a more
modern date, we find, on the banks of the river Senegal, far inland,
large deposits of the _Arca senilis_, a mollusc still living on the
neighbouring coast. On the borders of Loch Lomond, twenty feet above the
level of the sea, shells of the edible cockle and sea-urchin repose in a
layer of brown clay, and the banks of the Forth and of the Clyde, thirty
feet higher than the storm tides, inclose remains of common shells of
the present period, such as the oyster, the mussel, and the limpet.
Along the shores of the Mediterranean, at Monte Video and at Valparaiso,
in the isles of the Pacific and at the Cape, in California and Haiti, we
meet with similar instances of elevation, which, though geologically
recent, may yet be of a sufficiently ancient date to have preceded the
appearance of man on earth. But proofs are not wanting that the
upheaving power which has wrought so many changes in the past is still
actively employed in remodelling the surface of the earth.
This important geological fact was first ascertained on the coast of
Sweden, where the peculiar configuration of the shore makes it easy to
appreciate slight changes in the relative level of land and water. For
the continent is fringed with countless rocky islands, called the
‘skär,’ within which boats and small vessels sail in smooth water even
when the sea without is strongly agitated. But the navigation is very
intricate, and the pilot must possess a perfect knowledge of the breadth
and depth of every narrow channel, and the position of innumerable
sunken rocks. On such a coast even a slight change of level could not
fail to become known to the mariner, and to attract the attention of the
learned, as soon as the book of nature began to be more accurately
studied.
Early in the last century the Swedish naturalist Celsius collected
numerous observations, all pointing to the fact of a slow elevation of
the land. Rocks both on the shore of the Baltic and the German Ocean,
known to have been once sunken reefs, were in his time above water;
small islands in the Gulf of Bothnia had been joined to the continent,
and old fishing grounds deserted, as being too shallow or entirely dried
up. These changes of level, which he estimated at about three feet in a
century, Celsius attributed to a sinking of the waters of the Baltic,
owing possibly to the channel, by which it discharges its surplus waters
into the Atlantic, having been gradually widened and deepened by the
waves and currents. But the lowering of level would in that case have
been uniform and universal over that inland sea, and the waters could
not have sunk at Torneo while they retained their former level at
Copenhagen, Wismar, Stralsund, and other towns which are now as close to
the water’s edge as at the time of their foundation. Playfair (1802) and
Leopold von Buch (1807) first attributed the change of level to the slow
and insensible rising of the land, and the subsequent investigations of
Sir Charles Lyell in 1834 have placed the fact beyond a doubt.
The attention of geologists having once been directed to the partial
upheaval of the Scandinavian peninsula, similar facts were soon pointed
out in other countries. At Bourgneuf, near La Rochelle, the remains of a
ship wrecked on an oyster bank in the year 1752, now lie in a cultivated
field, fifteen feet above the level of the sea; and, within a period of
twenty-five years the parish has gained at least 1,500 acres, a very
acceptable gift of the subterranean plutonic power. Port Bahaud, where
formerly the Dutchmen used to take in cargoes of salt, is now 9,000 feet
from the sea, and the Island of Olonne is at present surrounded only by
swamps and meadows. These and similar phenomena, such as the constant
rise of the chalk cliffs at Marennes, cannot possibly be explained by
recent driftings, but evidently proceed from a slow upheaval of the
coasts and the adjacent sea-bed.
On the opposite shores of the Atlantic, we find Newfoundland undergoing
a similar process of elevation; for cliffs over which, thirty or forty
years ago, schooners used to sail with perfect safety, are now quite
close to the surface; and in the Pacific the depth of the channel
leading to the port of Honolulu is gradually decreasing from the same
cause.
While many coasts thus show signs of progressive elevation, others
afford no less striking proofs of subsidence, frequently in close
proximity to regions of upheaval.
Thus on the south-west coast of England, in Cornwall, Devon, and
Somerset, submarine forests, consisting of the species still flourishing
in the neighbourhood, are of such frequent occurrence that, according to
Sir Henry de la Beche, ‘it is difficult not to find traces of them at
the mouths of all the numerous valleys which open upon the sea.’
Sometimes they are covered with mud or sand, and generally the roots are
found in the situation where they originally grew, while the trunks have
been horizontally levelled. At Bann Bridge, specimens of ancient Roman
pottery have been discovered twelve feet below the level of the sea, and
the remains of an old Roman road, now submerged six feet deep, prove
that the subsidence of the land has been going on since the times of
Julius Cæsar and Agricola.
On the east coast the phenomenon is still more striking, particularly in
the Wash, that shallow bay between Lincolnshire and Norfolk on whose
opposite shores a submarine forest extends, the trunks and stubbles of
which become apparent at ebb-tide. On the coasts of Normandy and
Brittany we likewise find traces of depression, pointing to some future
time when perhaps many a bluff headland, now boldly fronting the ocean,
may have disappeared beneath the waves.
Huts of the Esquimaux and of the early Danish colonists on the coast of
Greenland, now submerged at high tide, could not possibly have been
originally constructed in so inconvenient a situation; and at Puynipet,
in the South Sea, habitations sunk beneath the water likewise prove a
gradual subsidence of the land.
On many coasts and islands modern scientific explorers have hewn marks
in the rock, to enable future generations to judge of the changes which
are slowly but surely altering the configuration of the land and tracing
new boundaries to the ocean. Had our forefathers left us similar
memorials, we should know much more about the oscillatory movements of
the earth-rind than we know now; but, unfortunately, experimental
natural philosophy is but of recent date, and the marks chiselled out
upon the Swedish rocks in the years 1731 and 1752 are the earliest
records by which the chronological progress of elevation or subsidence
can be distinctly ascertained.
This phenomenon, which has played so important a part in the physical
annals of our globe, having once been accurately determined, enables the
geologist to explain many facts for which, before it became known, it
was impossible to account.
We now need not wonder at seeing sea-shells imbedded in the highest
mountains or buried hundreds of fathoms under the ground, at alternating
layers of marine and sweet-water deposits being frequently storied one
above the other, or at originally horizontal strata being now found at
every possible angle of inclination.
The imperceptible slowness with which many of these vast changes are
actually taking place warrants the inference that violent volcanic
revolutions have no doubt been far less instrumental in moulding the
earth-rind to its present form than the slow oscillatory movements of
elevation and depression which from time immemorial have been constantly
altering its surface.
The causes of these oscillatory movements are still very imperfectly
known, though a probable hypothesis attributes them to the expansion by
increased temperature of extensive deep-seated masses of matter. As the
elevation of some tracts seems to coincide with the proportionate
depression of others at a greater or less distance, these alternating
upheavals and subsidences may possibly be the result rather of the
lateral shifting of the flow of heat from one mass of subterranean
matter to a neighbouring mass than of its positive increase on the
whole. ‘Such a lateral diversion of the outward flow of heat,’ says Mr.
Poulett Scrope, ‘we may presume to be caused by the deposition over
certain areas of thick newly-formed beds of any matter imperfectly
conducting heat, like sedimentary sands, gravels, clays, shales, or
calcareous mud, by which the outward transmission of heat being checked,
it must accumulate beneath, while a portion of it will pass off
laterally to augment the temperature of mineral matter in neighbouring
areas; just as the water of a spring, if its usual issue is blocked up,
will accumulate in the fissures or pores of the rock containing it,
until it finds a vent on either side and at a higher level. Owing to
this increase, the resistance opposed by the overlying rocks in that
quarter may be sooner or later overcome, and their elevation brought
about, through the dilatation of the mineral matter beneath.’
CHAPTER V.
SUBTERRANEAN WATERS AND ARTESIAN WELLS.
Subterranean Distribution of the Waters—Admirable Provisions of Nature—
Hydrostatic Laws regulating the Flow of Springs—Thermal Springs—
Intermittent Springs—The Geysir—Bunsen’s Theory—Artesian Wells—Le
Puits de Grenelle—Deep Borings—Various Uses of Artesian Wells—Artesian
Wells in Venice and in the Desert of Sahara.
In every zone the evaporating power of the sun raises from the surface
of the ocean vapours, which hover in the air until, condensed by cold,
they descend in rain upon the earth. Here part of them are soon restored
to the sea by the swollen rivers; another part is once more volatilised;
but by far the larger quantity finds its slow way into the bowels of the
earth, where it serves for the perennial supply of wells and springs.
The distribution of these subterranean waters, and the simple laws which
regulate their circulation, afford us one of the most interesting
glimpses into the physical economy of our globe. We know that the
greater part of the earth’s surface is composed of stratified rocks, or
alternate beds of impermeable clay and porous limestone or sand, which
were originally deposited in horizontal layers, but have since been more
or less displaced and set on edge by upheaving forces. Wherever
permeable beds of limestone or sand crop out on the surface of the land,
the residuary portions of rain-water which are not disposed of by floods
or by evaporation, must necessarily penetrate into the pores and
fissures, and descend lower and lower, until they finally reach an
impermeable stratum which forbids their further progress to a greater
depth.
The granite, gneiss, porphyry, lava, and other unstratified and
crystalline rocks of igneous origin, which cover about a third part of
the habitable globe, are likewise intersected by innumerable fissures
and interstices, which, in a similar manner, collect and transmit rain-
water.
Thus the plutonic or volcanic forces which have gradually moulded the
dry land into its present form have also provided it with the necessary
filters, drains, reservoirs, and conduits, for the constant
replenishment of springs, brooks, and rivers. As every porous layer is
more or less saturated with moisture, the stratified rocks are
frequently traversed at various depths by distinct sheets of water, or
rather, in most cases, by permanently drenched or waterlogged sheets of
chalk or sand. Thus, in a boring undertaken in search of coal at St.
Nicolas d’Aliermont, near Dieppe, no less than seven very abundant
aquiferous layers or beds of stone were met with from about 75 to 1,000
feet below the surface. In an Artesian boring at Paris, five distinct
sheets of water, each of them capable of ascension, were ascertained;
and similar perforations executed in the United States, and other
countries, have in the same manner traversed successive stages of
aqueous deposits.
Thus there can be no doubt that vast quantities of water are everywhere
accumulated in the porous strata of which a great part of the
superficial earth-rind is composed, the rapidity with which they
circulate varying of course with the amount of hydrostatic pressure to
which they are subjected, and the more or less porous and permeable
nature of the beds through which they percolate. Were the ground we
stand on composed of transparent crystal, and the subterranean water-
courses tinged with some vivid colour, we should then see the upper
earth-crust traversed in every direction by aqueous veins, and
frequently as saturated with water as the internal parts of our body are
with blood. But Nature not only perennially feeds our springs and brooks
from the inexhaustible fountains of the deep; it is also one of her
infinitely wise provisions that the same water which, if placed in casks
or open tanks, becomes putrid, continues fresh so long as it remains in
the cavities and interstices of the terrestrial strata. While filtering
through the earth, it is generally cleansed of all the organic
substances whose decay would inevitably taint its purity, and comes
forth salubrious and refreshing, a source of health and enjoyment to the
whole animal creation.
The extreme limits to which the waters descend into the earth of course
escape our direct observation, as the lowest point to which the
subterranean regions have been probed is less than 2,000 or 2,500 feet
below the level of the sea; but as we know from the formation of many
basins that the strata of which they are composed attain in many cases a
thickness of from 20,000 to 30,000 feet, there can hardly be a doubt
that they are permeated by water to an equal depth.
As steam plays so great a part in volcanic phenomena, the seat or
effective cause of which must needs be sought for at an immense distance
below the surface of the earth, we have another proof of the vast depth
to which the subterranean migrations of water are able to attain.
After this brief glimpse into the reservoirs of the deep, we have to
ascertain the power which raises their liquid contents and forces them
to reappear upon the surface of the earth. If we pour water into a tube,
bent in the form of the letter U, it will rise to an equal level in both
branches. We will now suppose that the left branch of the tube opens at
the top into a vast reservoir, which is able to keep it constantly
filled, and that the right branch is cut off near the bottom, so that
only a small vertical piece remains. The pressure of the water column in
the left branch will in this case force the liquid to gush out of the
orifice of the shortened right branch to the level which it occupied
while the branch was still entire.
These two hydrostatic laws, or rather these two modifications of the
same law, have been frequently put to practical uses, as, for instance,
in the communicating tubes which distribute the waters of an elevated
source or reservoir to the various districts of a town, or in the
subterranean conduits which serve to create fountains, such as those of
Versailles or the Crystal Palace.
When the Romans intended to lead water from one hill to another, they
constructed, at a vast expense, magnificent aqueducts across the
intermediate valley; but the Turks, whom we look upon as ignorant
barbarians, obtain the same result in a much more economical manner, and
in this respect far surpass the ancients, who, had they been better
acquainted with the first principles of hydrostatics, would indeed have
left us fewer specimens of their architectural skill, but would at the
same time have saved themselves a great deal of unnecessary expense.
Down the slope of the hill from which the water is to be conducted, the
Turks lay a tube of brick or metal, which, crossing the valley, moulds
itself to its different inflections, and ultimately ascends the
declivity of the hill on the opposite side, where, in virtue of the law
above cited, the water rises as high as on that from which it descended.
If we suppose the descending branch of the tube to be prolonged only as
far as the level of the valley, with a superficial orifice, then the
liquid will of course gush forth in a vertical column, and form a _jet
d’eau_, or fountain, its height being determined by the elevation of the
sheet of water by which it is fed, and the consequent degree of pressure
which acts upon it. This is the principle on which all artificial
fountains are constructed. The conduit, for instance, which feeds the
grand fountain of the Tuileries receives its water from a reservoir
situated on the heights of Chaillot.
Whatever the form of the tube may be in which the liquid is contained,
the simple hydrostatic law which regulates its level remains unmodified.
Let the tube be circular, elliptic, or square, with a single orifice or
with many—let it be open or choked with pebbles or permeable sand—in
every case the water will invariably rise to the same height, provided
the tube be perfectly water-tight; or else gush forth wherever it finds
an opening below the highest level.
This hydrostatic principle so perfectly illustrates the origin of
springs, that it is almost superfluous to enter into any further details
on the subject.
When we consider that porous or absorbent strata, alternating with
impermeable strata, frequently crop out on the back or on the slope of
hills or mountains, and then, having reached their base, extend
horizontally beneath the plain, there can be no doubt that they are
placed in the same hydrostatic conditions as ordinary water-conducting
tubes, and that wherever any fissure or opening occurs in the
superincumbent impervious strata at any point below the highest level of
the water, springs must necessarily be formed.
As the same strata often extend over many hundreds of miles, we cannot
wonder that sources frequently issue from the centre of immense plains,
for the hydrostatic pressure which causes them to gush forth may have
its seat at a very considerable distance.
As the waters by which the springs are fed have often vast subterranean
journeys to perform, their temperature is naturally independent of that
of the seasons or of the changes of the atmosphere. Thus, cold springs
occur in a tropical climate, when their subterranean channels descend
from high mountains, and boiling sources gush forth in the Arctic
regions when forced upwards from a considerable depth.
While the waters filter through the earth, they also naturally dissolve
a variety of substances, and hence all springs are more or less
impregnated with extraneous particles. But many of them, particularly
such as are of a higher temperature, contain either a larger quantity or
so peculiar a combination of mineral substances as to acquire medicinal
virtues of the highest order.
The geological phenomena which favour the production of thermal springs
are extremely interesting, and point to a deep-seated origin. By far the
greater number of these fountains arise near the scene of some great
subterranean disturbance, either connected with volcanic action, or with
the elevation of a chain of mountains, or lastly by cliffs and fissures
caused by disruption. Thus the thermal springs of Matlock and Bath
accompany great natural fissures in the mountain limestone, and the hot
springs of Wiesbaden and Ems, of Carlsbad and Toeplitz, all lie
contiguous to remarkable dislocations, or to great lines of elevation,
or to the neighbourhood of a volcanic focus.
One of the most remarkable phenomena of thermal springs is the constant
invariableness of their temperature and their mineral impregnation.
During the last fifty or sixty years, ever since accurate thermometrical
observations and chemical analyses have been made, the most celebrated
mineral sources of Germany have been found to contain the same
proportion of mineral substances. This is truly astonishing when we
consider that the latter are merely dissolved by the waters while
passing through the bowels of the earth, and that a considerable number
of them are frequently found together in the same source.
Another remarkable fact is, that, even in countries exposed to violent
and frequent earthquakes, so many subterranean watercourses have
remained unaltered for 2,000 years at least. The sources of Greece still
flow apparently as in the times of Hellenic antiquity. The spring of
Erasinos, two leagues south of Argos, on the declivity of the Chaonian
mountains, is mentioned by Herodotus. At Delphi the Cassotis (now Wells
of Saint Nicholas) still flow under the ruins of the temple of Apollo,
and the hot baths of Aidepsos still exist in which Sylla bathed during
the Mithridatic war.
Many springs exhibit the singular phenomenon of an intermittence which
is independent of the quantity of rain falling in the district, or of
the flux and reflux of the tide in a neighbouring river. In many cases
the simple and well-known hydrostatical law exemplified in the common
siphon[3] affords a very ready and sufficient explanation of the
phenomenon.
Footnote 3:
A siphon, as is well known, is a bent tube, having one leg longer than
the other. When this tube is filled with any liquid, and the shorter
end is immersed in a vessel containing liquid of the same kind, the
weight of the column in the longer leg will cause the liquid to begin
to run out, and it will continue running till the vessel is emptied.
This arises from the pressure of air on the exposed surface of fluid,
forcing it up through the tube to prevent vacuum, which would
otherwise be formed at the highest point; and the extreme limit of
length at which the siphon will act is therefore determined by the
height of a column of the fluid equal to the pressure of the
atmosphere (fifteen pounds on the square inch). The limit in the case
of water is something more than thirty feet.
[Illustration: siphon]
In the annexed diagram the vessel _a_ communicates, by a tube _c_, with
the siphon tube _b_, and it is manifest that when the water in a rises
above the level of the top of _b_, it will begin to flow over and
escape, as at _d_. But as soon as this is the case the tube _b_ begins
to act as a siphon, and draws off all the water in _a_, so that if a
constant supply is poured into _a_, but at a rate slower than the rate
of the discharge at _d_, there will be an intermittent discharge, the
interval depending on the relation of the rate of filling to that of
emptying.
[Illustration: SECTION OF AN INTERMITTENT SPRING.]
The case of a subterranean cavity in a limestone rock, slowly fed by
drainage from the cracks and fissures of the rock above, and
communicating at a distant point with the surface by a bent or siphon
tube, is evidently strictly analogous.
[Illustration: GEYSIRS OF ICELAND.]
Iceland, pre-eminently the land of volcanic wonders, possesses in the
Great Geysir the most remarkable intermittent fountain in the world. ‘At
the foot of the Laugarfjall hill, in a green plain, through which
several rivers meander like threads of silver, and where chains of dark-
coloured mountains, overtopped here and there by distant snow-peaks,
form a grand but melancholy picture, dense volumes of steam indicate
from afar the site of a whole system of thermal springs congregated on a
small piece of ground not exceeding twelve acres in extent. In any other
spot the smallest of these boiling fountains would arrest the
traveller’s attention, but here his whole mind is absorbed by the Great
Geysir. In the course of countless ages, this monarch of springs has
formed out of the silica which it deposits a mound which rises to about
thirty feet above the general surface of the plain, and slopes on all
sides, to the distance of a hundred feet or thereabouts, from the border
of a large circular basin situated in its centre, and measuring about
fifty-six feet in the greatest diameter and fifty-two feet in the
narrowest. In the middle of this basin, forming as it were a gigantic
funnel, there is a pipe or tube, which at its opening in the basin is
eighteen or sixteen feet in diameter, but narrows considerably at a
little distance from the mouth, and then appears to be not more than ten
or twelve feet in diameter. It has been probed to a depth of seventy
feet, but it is more than probable that hidden channels ramify further
into the bowels of the earth. The sides of the tube are smoothly
polished, and so hard that it is not possible to strike off a piece of
it with a hammer. Generally the whole basin is found filled up to the
brim with sea-green water as pure as crystal, and of a temperature of
from 180° to 190°. Astonished at the placid tranquillity of the pool,
the traveller can hardly believe that he is really standing on the brink
of the far-famed Geysir; but suddenly a subterranean thunder is heard,
the ground trembles under his feet, the water in the basin begins to
simmer, and large bubbles of steam rise from the tube and burst on
reaching the surface, throwing up small jets of spray to the height of
several feet. Every instant he expects to witness the grand spectacle
which has chiefly induced him to visit this northern land; but soon the
basin becomes tranquil as before, and the dense vapours produced by the
ebullition are wafted away by the breeze. These smaller eruptions are
regularly repeated every eighty or ninety minutes, but frequently the
traveller is obliged to wait a whole day or even longer before he sees
the whole power of the Geysir. A detonation louder than usual precedes
one of these grand eruptions; the water in the basin is violently
agitated; the tube boils vehemently; and suddenly a magnificent column
of water, clothed in vapour of a dazzling whiteness, shoots up into the
air with immense impetuosity, to the height of eighty or ninety feet,
and, radiating at its apex, showers water and steam in every direction.
A second eruption and a third rapidly follow, and after a few minutes
the fairy spectacle has passed away like a fantastic vision. The basin
is now completely dried up, and on looking down into the shaft, the
traveller is astonished to see the water about six feet from the rim,
and as tranquil as in an ordinary well. After about thirty or forty
minutes it again begins to rise, and after a few hours reaches the brim
of the basin. Soon the subterranean thunder, the shaking of the ground,
the simmering above the tube begin again—a new gigantic explosion takes
place, to be followed by a new period of rest—and thus this wonderful
play of nature goes on, day after day, year after year, and century
after century. The mound of the Geysir bears witness to its immense
antiquity, as its water contains but a minute portion of silica.’[4]
Footnote 4:
‘The Polar World,’ p. 54.
The explanation of these wonderful phenomena has exercised the ingenuity
of many natural philosophers; but Professor Bunsen’s theory seems the
most plausible. Having first ascertained, by experiment, that the water
at the mouth of the tube has a temperature, corresponding to the
pressure of the atmosphere, of about 212° F., he found it much hotter at
a certain depth below; a thermometer, suspended by a string in the pipe,
rising to 266° F., or no less than 48° above the boiling point. By
letting down stones, suspended by strings, to various depths, he next
came to the conclusion that the tube itself is the main seat or focus of
the mechanical power which forces the huge water column upwards. For the
stones which were sunk, to greater distances from the surface were not
cast up again when the next eruption of the Geysir took place, whereas
those nearer the mouth of the tube were ejected to a considerable height
by the ascending water-column. Other experiments also were made, tending
to demonstrate the singular fact that there is often scarcely any motion
below when a violent rush of steam and water is taking place above. It
seems that when a lofty column of water possesses a temperature
increasing with the depth, any slight ebullition, or disturbance of
equilibrium, in the upper portion may first force up water into the
basin, and then cause it to flow over the edge. A lower portion, thus
suddenly relieved of part of its pressure, expands, and is converted
into vapour more rapidly than the first, owing to its greater heat. This
allows the next subjacent stratum, which is much hotter, to rise and
flash into a gaseous form; and this process goes on till the ebullition
has descended from the middle to near the bottom of the funnel.[5]
Footnote 5:
Liebig’s ‘Annalen,’ translated in ‘Reports and Memoirs of the
Cavendish Society,’ London, 1848, p. 351.
In many geological basins, the deep subterranean waters are frequently
inclosed over a surface of many square miles between impermeable beds of
clay or hard rock, which nowhere permit them to escape; but if a hole be
bored deep enough to reach a permeable bed, it is evident that they will
then gush forth more or less violently, according to the degree of
hydrostatic pressure which acts upon them. This is the simple theory of
the Artesian Wells, so called from the French province of Artois, where,
as far back as the beginning of the twelfth century, springs of water
were artificially obtained by perforating the soil to a certain depth in
places where no indication of springs existed at the surface. The
barbarous inhabitants of the Sahara seem, however, to have long preceded
the Artesians in the art of sinking deep wells, for Olympiodorus, a
writer who flourished at Alexandria about the middle of the sixth
century, mentions pits sunk in the oasis to the depth of 200 or 300
yards, and pouring forth streams of water, used for irrigation.
By the aid of geological science, and of greater mechanical skill,
Artesian borings[6] are at present frequently undertaken in civilised
countries, wherever the nature of the ground promises success, and the
want of water is sufficiently great to warrant the attempt. Sometimes
the water is reached at a moderate distance from the surface, but not
seldom it has been found necessary to bore to a depth of 200 or 300
fathoms. Often efforts, even on this large scale, have proved vain, and
the work has been abandoned in despair.
Footnote 6:
See Chapter on Mines in general, for a short account of earth-boring
operations.
One of the most remarkable instances on record of a successful sinking
for water is that of the Artesian well of Grenelle, one of the Parisian
suburbs.
[Illustration: POROUS STRATA. ARTESIAN WELL SUNK IN THE LONDON BASIN.]
The work was begun with an auger of about a foot in diameter, and the
borings showed successively the alluvial soil and subsoil, and the
tertiary sands, gravels, clays, lignite, &c., until the chalk was
reached. The work was then carried on regularly through the hard upper
chalk down to the lower chalk with green grains, the dimension of the
auger being reduced at 500 feet to a nine-inch, and at 1,300 feet to a
six-inch aperture. When the calculated depth of 1,500 feet had been
reached, and as yet no result appeared, the Government began to be
disheartened. Still, upon the urgent representations of the celebrated
Arago, the sinking was continued, until at length, at the depth of 1,800
feet, the auger, after a violent shock which made the ground tremble,
suddenly turned without an effort. ‘Either the auger is broken, or we
have gained our end,’ exclaimed the director of the work; and a few
moments after, a large column of water gushed out of the orifice. It
took more than seven years to accomplish this grand work (1833–41),
which was retarded by numberless difficulties and accidents. About half-
a-million gallons of perfectly limpid water of a temperature of 82°
Fahr. are daily supplied by the Puits de Grenelle, and amply repay its
cost (362,432 fr. 65 centimes = 14,500_l._).
The high temperature of Artesian springs, when rising from considerable
depths, has been turned to various practical uses. Thus, near Canstadt,
in Wurtemberg, several mills are kept in work, during the severest cold
of winter, by means of the warm water of Artesian wells which has been
turned into the mill-ponds, and at Heilbronn several proprietors save
the expense of fuel by leading Artesian water in pipes through their
green-houses. In some localities the pure and constantly temperate
Artesian waters are made use of for the cultivation of cress. The
vigorous growth of this salutary herb in the beds of rivulets, where
natural springs gush forth, gave the idea of this application, which is
so profitable that the cress nurseries of Erfurt yield a produce of
12,000_l_. a year. Fish ponds have also been improved by such warm
springs being passed through them.
Among the localities benefited by the boring of Artesian wells, Venice
deserves to be particularly noticed. Formerly the City of the Doges had
no other supply of water but that which was conveyed by boats from the
Brenta, or obtained from the rain collected in cisterns. Hence the joy
of the inhabitants may be imagined, when, in 1846, an Artesian boring in
the Piazza San Paolo began to disgorge its water at the rate of forty
gallons per minute, and when other undertakings of the same kind proved
equally successful.
Wherever a well gushes forth in the Sahara, it brings life into the
wilderness; the date-tree flourishes as far as its fertilising waters
extend, and the wandering Arab changes into a sedentary cultivator of
the soil. Thus the boring of Artesian wells on the desert confines of
South Algeria has been the means of wonderful improvement, and if the
French have too often marked their dominion in Africa by a barbarous
oppression of the Arabs, they, in this respect at least, appear in the
more amiable light of public benefactors.
A boring apparatus was first landed at Philippeville in April 1856, and
conveyed with immense difficulty to the Oasis Wad Rir at Tamerna. The
work was begun in May, and on the 19th of June, a spring, to which the
grateful inhabitants gave the name of the ‘Well of Peace,’ gushed forth.
Soon after another source was tapped at Tamelhat, in the Oasis Temacen,
and received the name of the ‘Well of God’s blessing.’
The beneficent instrument of abundance was now conveyed to the Oasis
Sidi Rasched, fifteen miles beyond Tuggurt. Here the auger had scarcely
reached a depth of 120 feet when a perfect stream gushed forth, which,
according to the praiseworthy Arab custom, received the name of the
‘Well of Thanks.’ The opening of this wonderful source gave rise to many
touching scenes. The Arabs came in throngs to witness the joyful
spectacle: each of them poured some of the water over his head, and the
mothers bathed their children in the gushing flood. An old scheik,
unable to conceal his emotion, fell down upon his knees, and shedding
tears of joy, fervently thanked God for having allowed him to witness
such a day.
The next triumph was the boring of four wells in the desert of Morran,
where previously no spring had existed. In the full expectation of
success, everything had been prepared to turn this new source of wealth
to immediate use, and part of a nomadic tribe instantly settled on the
spot, and planted 1,200 date-trees. A dreary solitude was changed, as if
by magic, into a scene of busy life.
These few examples suffice to show the vast services which Artesian
wells are destined at some future time to render to many of the arid
regions of Africa. Both in the Sahara and in the basin-shaped deserts,
which extend, under various names, from the Cape Colony to the
neighbourhood of Lake Ngami, there are, beyond all doubt, numberless
spots where water, the fertilising element, may be extracted from the
bowels of the earth.
In the droughty plains of Australia also a vast sphere of utility is
reserved to the Artesian wells. Here, also, they will subdue the desert,
unite one coast to another by creating stations in the wilderness, and,
with every new source which they call to life, promote both material
progress and intellectual improvement.
[Illustration: MIDDLE AND VALLEY LAKE CRATERS, MOUNT GAMBIER, SOUTH
AUSTRALIA.]
CHAPTER VI.
VOLCANOES.
Volcanic Mountains—Extinct and Active Craters—Their Size—Dangerous
Crater-explorations—Dr. Judd in the Kilauea Pit—Extinct Craters—Their
Beauty—The Crater of Mount Vultur in Apulia—Volcanoes still constantly
forming—Jorullo and Isalco—Submarine Volcanoes—Sabrina and Graham’s
Island—Santorin—Number of Volcanoes—Their Distribution—Volcanoes in a
constant state of eruption—Stromboli—Fumaroles—The Lava Lakes in
Kilauea—Volcanic Paroxysms—Column of Smoke and Ashes—Detonations—
Explosion of Cones—Disastrous Effects of Showers of Ashes and Lapilli—
Mud Streams—Fish disgorged from Volcanic Caverns—Eruption of Lava—
Parasitic Cones—Phenomena attending the Flow of a Lava Stream—Baron
Papalardo—Meeting of Lava and Water—Scoriæ—Lava and Ice—Vast
Dimensions of several Lava Streams—Scenes of Desolation—Volcanoes
considered as safety-valves—Probable Causes of Volcanoes.
Volcanoes are vents which either have communicated, or still
communicate, by one or several chimney-like canals or shafts, with a
focus of subterranean fire, emitting, or having once emitted, heated
matter in a solid, semi-liquid, or gaseous state. The first eruption of
a volcano necessarily leaves a mound of scoriæ and lava, while numerous
eruptions at length raise mountains, which are frequently of an amazing
extent and height. These mountains, which are generally called
volcanoes, though in reality they are but an effect of volcanic action
situated far beneath their base, are called _extinct_ when for many
centuries they have exhibited no signs of combustion—_active_, when,
either perpetually or from time to time, eruptions or exhalations of
lava, scoriæ, or gases take place from their summits, or from vents in
their sides. Their shape is generally that of a more or less truncated
cone; but while some, like Cotopaxi or the Peak of Teneriffe, rise with
abrupt declivities in the shape of a sugar-loaf, others, like Mauna Loa
in the island of Hawaii, gradually, and almost imperceptibly, ascend
from a vast base embracing many miles in circuit.
Their heights also vary greatly. While some, like Madana in Santa Cruz,
or Djebel Teir on the coast of the Red Sea, scarcely raise their summits
a few hundred feet above the level of the ocean, others, like
Chuquibamba (21,000 feet), or Aconcagua (22,434 feet), hold a
conspicuous rank among mountains of the first class.
The summit of a volcano generally terminates in a central cavity or
crater, where the eruptive channel finds its vent. Craters are sometimes
regularly funnel-shaped, descending with slanting sides to the eruptive
mouth, but more commonly they are surrounded with high precipitous rock-
walls, while their bottom forms a plain, which is frequently completely
horizontal, and sometimes of a considerable extent. Its surface is rough
and uneven, from the mounds of volcanic sand, of scoriæ, or of hardened
lava with which it is covered, and generally exhibits a scene of
dreadful desolation, rendered still more impressive by the steam and
smoke, which, as long as the volcano continues in an active state, issue
from its crevices.
Within this plain, the eruptive orifice or mouth of the volcano is
almost universally surrounded by an elevation, composed of ejected
fragments of scoriæ thrown from the vent. Such cones are forming
constantly at Vesuvius, one being no sooner destroyed by any great
eruption, before another begins to take shape and is enlarged, till
often it reaches a height of several hundred feet.
Thus the crater of an active volcano is the scene of perpetual change—of
a continual construction and re-construction, and the sands of the sea
do not afford a more striking image of inconstancy.
The various craters are of very different dimensions. While the chief
crater of Stromboli has a diameter of only fifty feet, that of Gunong
Tenger, in Java, measures four miles from end to end; and, though the
depth of a crater rarely exceeds 1,000 or 1,500 feet, the spectator,
standing on the brink of the great crater of Popocatepetl, looks down
into a gulf of 8,000 feet.
From the colossal dimensions of the larger craters, it may well be
imagined that their aspect exhibits some of the sublimest though most
gloomy scenery in nature—the picture of old Chaos with all its horrors.
The volcano Gunong Tjerimai, in Java, which rises to the height of 9,000
feet, is covered with a dense vegetation up to the crater’s brink. On
emerging from the thicket, the wanderer suddenly stands on the verge of
an immense excavation encircled with naked rocks. He is obliged to hold
himself by the branches of trees, or to stretch himself flat upon the
ground, so as to be able to look down into the yawning gulf. The deep
and inaccessible bottom of the crater loses itself in misty obscurity,
and glimmers indistinctly through the vapours which are there slowly and
incessantly ascending from its mysterious depths. All is desolate and
silent, save when a solitary falcon, hovering over the vast chasm,
awakes with her discordant screech the echoes of the precipice. Through
a telescope may be seen, in various parts of the huge crater walls,
swarms of small swallows, which have there built their nests, flying
backwards and forwards. The eye can detect no other signs of life, the
ear distinguish no other sound.
Humboldt describes the view down the crater of the Rucu-Pichincha—a
volcano which towers above the town of Quito to a height of 15,000 feet—
as the grandest he ever beheld during all his long wanderings. Guided by
an Indian, he ascended the mountain in 1802, and after scaling, with
great difficulty and no small danger, its steep and rocky sides, he at
length looked down upon the black and dismal abyss, whence clouds of
sulphurous vapour were rising as from the gates of hell.
The descent into the crater of an active volcano is at all times a
difficult and hazardous enterprise, both from the steepness of its
encircling rock walls, and the suffocating vapours rising from its
bottom; but it is rare indeed that a traveller has either the temerity
or the good fortune to penetrate as far as the very mouth of the
eruptive channel, and to gain a glimpse of its mysterious horrors. When
M. Houel visited Mount Etna in 1769, he ventured to scale the cone of
stones and ashes which had been thrown up in the centre of the crater,
where thirty years before there was only a prodigious chasm or gulf. On
ascending this mound, which emitted smoke from every pore, the
adventurous traveller sunk about mid-leg at every step, and was in
constant terror of being swallowed up. At last, when the summit was
reached, the looseness of the soil obliged him to throw himself down
flat upon the ground, that so he might be in less danger of sinking,
while at the same time the sulphurous exhalations arising from the
funnel-shaped cavity threatened suffocation, and so irritated his lungs
as to produce a very troublesome and incessant cough. In this posture
the traveller viewed the wide unfathomable gulf in the middle of the
crater, but could discover nothing except a cloud of smoke, which issued
from a number of small apertures scattered all around. From time to time
dreadful sounds issued from the bowels of the volcano, as if the roar of
artillery were rebellowed throughout all the hollows of the mountain.
They were no doubt occasioned by the explosions of pent-up gases
striking against the sides of these immense caverns, and multiplied by
their echoes in an extraordinary manner. After the first unavoidable
impression of terror had been overcome, nothing could be more sublime
than these awful sounds, which seemed like a warning of Etna not to pry
too deeply into his secrets.
Dr. Judd, an American naturalist, who, in 1841, descended into the
crater of Kilauea, on Mauna Loa, in Hawaii, well-nigh fell a victim to
his curiosity. At that time, the smallest of the two lava pools which
boil at the bottom of that extraordinary pit appeared almost inactive,
giving out only vapours, with an occasional jet of lava at its centre.
Dr. Judd, considering the quiet favourable for dipping up some of the
liquid with an iron ladle, descended for the purpose to a narrow ledge
bordering the pool. While he was preparing to carry out his plans, his
attention was excited by a sudden sinking of its surface; the next
instant it began to rise, and then followed an explosion, throwing the
lava higher than his head. He had scarcely escaped from his dangerous
situation, the moment after, by the aid of a native, before the lava
boiled up, covered the place where he stood, and, flowing out over the
northern side, extended in a stream a mile wide to a distance of more
than a mile and a half!
In extinct volcanoes, the picture of desolation originally shown by
their craters has not seldom been changed into one of charming
loveliness. Tall forest trees cover the bottom of the Tofua crater in
Upolu, one of the Samoan group; and in the same island, a circular lake
of crystal purity, belted with a girdle of the richest green, has formed
in the depth of the Lanuto crater.
[Illustration: EXTINCT CRATER OF HALEAKALA.]
The lakes of Averno near Naples, and of Bolsena, Bracciano, and
Ronciglione, likewise fill the hollows of extinct craters, constituting
scenes of surpassing beauty, rendered still more impressive by the
remembrance of the stormy past which preceded their present epoch of
tranquillity and peace. Mr. Mallet describes, with glowing colours, the
singular beauty of
the forest scenery around the two extinct craters of Mount Vultur in
Apulia, which time has converted into two deep circular lakes.
‘I descend amongst aged trunks and overarching limbs, and pass over
masses of rounded lava-blocks and cemented lapilli. All is quietude; the
soft breeze of a quiet winter’s afternoon fans across the embosomed
water, from the early wheat-fields and the furrowed acres of the
opposite steep slopes, and brings the gentle ripple lapping amongst the
roots of the old hazels at my feet.
‘Off before me, and to my left, crowning the slope, are the grey ruins
of some ancient church or castle, and far above me to the right, nestled
against the lava crags, behind and above it, standing out white and
clear, I see the strong buttressed mass of the monastery of St. Michael.
How hard it is to realise that this noble and lovely scene, full of
every leafy beauty, was once the innermost bowl of a volcano; that every
stone around me, now glorious in colour with moss and lichen, sedum and
geranium, was once a glowing mass, vomited from out that fiery and
undiscovered abyss, which these placid waters now bury in their secret
chambers.’
The line of demarcation between active and extinct volcanoes is not
easily drawn, as eruptions have sometimes taken place after such long
intervals of repose as to warrant the belief that the vents from which
they issued had long since been completely obliterated. Thus, though
nearly six centuries have passed since the last eruption of Epomeo in
the island of Ischia, we are not entitled to suppose it extinct, since
nearly seventeen centuries elapsed between this last explosion and the
one which preceded it. Since the beginning of the fourteenth century
Vesuvius also enjoyed a long rest of nearly three hundred years. During
this time the crater got covered with grass and shrubs, oak and chestnut
trees grew around it, and some warm pools of water alone reminded the
visitor of the former condition of the mountain, when, suddenly, in
December 1631, it resumed its ancient activity, and seven streams of
lava at once burst forth from its subterranean furnaces.
While, in many volcanic districts, such as that of the Eifel on the left
bank of the Rhine, and of Auvergne, in Central France, the once active
subterranean fires have long since been extinguished, and no eruption of
lava has been recorded during the whole period of the historic ages, new
volcanoes, situated at a considerable distance from all previously
active vents, have arisen from the bowels of the earth, almost within
the memory of living man. From the era of the discovery of the New World
to the middle of the last century, the country between the mountains
Toluca and Colima, in Mexico, had remained undisturbed, and the space,
now the site of Jorullo, which is one hundred miles distant from each of
the above-mentioned volcanoes, was occupied by fertile fields of
sugarcane and indigo, and watered by two brooks. In the month of June
1759, hollow sounds of an alarming nature were heard, and earthquakes
succeeded each other for two months, until, at the end of September,
flames issued from the ground, and fragments of burning rocks were
thrown to prodigious heights. Six volcanic cones, composed of scoriæ and
fragmentary lava, were formed on the line of a chasm, which ran in the
direction of N.E. to S.W. The least of the cones was 300 feet in height,
and Jorullo, the central volcano, was elevated 1,600 feet above the
level of the plain. The ground where now, in Central America, Isalco
towers in proud eminence, was formerly the seat of an estancia or
cattle-estate. Towards the end of the year 1769, the inhabitants were
frequently disturbed by subterranean rumblings and shocks, which
constantly increased in violence, until on February 23, 1770, the earth
opened, and pouring out quantities of lava, ashes, and cinders gave
birth to a new volcanic mountain.
Besides those volcanic vents which are situated on the dry land, there
are others which, hidden beneath the surface of the sea, reveal their
existence by subaqueous eruptions. Columns of fire and smoke are seen to
rise from the discoloured and agitated waters, and sometimes new islands
are gradually piled up by the masses of scoriæ and ashes ejected from
the mouth of the submarine volcano. In this manner the island of Sabrina
rose from the bottom of the sea, near St. Michael’s in the Azores, in
the year 1811; and still more recently, in 1831, Graham’s Island was
formed in the Mediterranean, between the coast of Sicily and that
projecting part of the African coast where ancient Carthage stood.
Slight earthquake shocks preceded its appearance, then a column of water
like a water-spout, 60 feet high and 800 yards in circumference, rose
from the sea, and soon afterwards dense volumes of steam, which ascended
to the height of 1,800 feet. Then a small island, a few feet high with a
crater in its centre, ejecting volcanic matter, and immense columns of
vapour, emerged from the agitated waters, and in a fortnight swelled to
the ample proportions of a height of 200 feet, and a circumference of
three miles. But both Sabrina and Graham’s Island, being built of loose
scoriæ, were soon corroded by the waves, and their last traces have long
since disappeared under the surface of the ocean.
Near Pondicherry, in India; near Iceland, in the Atlantic Ocean; half a
degree to the south of the equator in the prolongation of a line drawn
from St. Helena to Ascension; near Juan Fernandez, &c., similar
phenomena have occurred within the last hundred years, but, probably,
nowhere on a grander scale than in the Aleutian Archipelago, where,
about thirty miles to the north of Unalaska, near the isle of Umnack, a
new island, now several thousand feet high and two or three miles in
circumference, was formed in 1796. The whole bottom of the sea between
this new creation of the volcanic powers and Umnack has been raised by
the eruptive throes which gave it birth; and where Cook freely sailed in
1778, numberless cliffs and reefs now obstruct the passage of the
mariner.
The famous subaqueous volcano which, in the year 186 before the
Christian era, began its series of historically recorded eruptions, by
raising the islet of Hiera (the ‘Sacred’) in the centre of the Bay of
Santorin, opened two new vents in 1866. Amid a tremendous roar of steam
and the shooting up of prodigious masses of rock and ashes, two islets
were formed, which ultimately rose to the height of 60 and 200 feet. The
eruption continued for many months, to the delight and wonder of the
numerous geologists who came from all sides to witness the extraordinary
spectacle. Thus, in many parts of the ocean, we see the submarine
volcanic fires laying the foundations of new islands and archipelagos,
which, after repeated eruptions following each other in the course of
ages, will probably, like Iceland, extend over a considerable space and
become the seats of civilised man.
[Illustration:
Map of the World
_Showing the Distribution of_
VOLCANOES
& the Districts visited by
EARTHQUAKES
]
As a very considerable part of the globe has never yet been
scientifically explored, it is, of course, impossible to determine the
exact number of the extinct and active volcanoes which are scattered
over its surface. Werner gives a list of 193 volcanoes, and Humboldt
mentions 407, of which 225 are still in a state of activity. The newest
computation of Dr. Fuchs, of Heidelberg,[7] increases the number to a
total of 672, of which 270 are active. Future geographical discoveries
will, no doubt, make further additions to the list, and show that at
least through a thousand different vents the subterranean fires have, at
various periods of the earth’s history, piled up their cones of scoriæ
and lava.
Footnote 7:
‘Die vulcanischen Erscheinungen der Erde.’ Liepzig, 1865.
The volcanoes are very unequally distributed over the surface of the
globe, for, while in some parts they are thickly clustered together in
groups or rows, we find in other parts vast areas of land without the
least sign of volcanic action.
An almost uninterrupted range of volcanoes extends in a sinuous line
from the Gulf of Bengal, through the East Indian Archipelago, the
Moluccas, the Philippines, Formosa, Japan, and the Kuriles, to
Kamtschatka. This desolate peninsula is particularly remarkable for the
energy of its subterranean fires, as Ermann mentions no less than
twenty-one active volcanoes, ranged in two parallel lines throughout its
whole length, and separated from each other by a central range of
mountains, containing a large and unknown number of extinct craters.
In Java, where more than thirty volcanoes are more or less active, the
furnaces of the subterranean world are still more concentrated and
dreadful.
The immense mountain-chains which run parallel to the western coasts of
America are likewise crowned with numerous volcanic peaks. Chili alone
has fourteen active volcanoes, Bolivia and Peru three, Quito eleven. In
Central America we find twenty-one volcanoes, which are chiefly grouped
near the Lake of Nicaragua, and to the west of the town of Guatemala.
The peninsula of Aljaska, and the chain of the Aleütes, possess no less
than thirty-six volcanos, scattered over a line about 700 miles long;
and thus we find the eastern, western, and northern boundaries of the
Pacific encircled with a girdle of volcanic vents, while the
subterranean fires have left the western shores of the Atlantic
comparatively undisturbed.
With the exception of Iceland, which is famous for the widely
devastating eruptions of its burning mountains, the volcanic energies of
Europe are at present limited to the submarine crater of Santorin, and
to the small area of Etna, Vesuvius, and the Lipari Islands. But,
situated in the centre of the ancient seats of civilisation, and for so
many centuries the object of the naturalist’s researches, of the
traveller’s curiosity, and of the poet’s song, they surpass in renown
all other volcanic regions in the world. Most other volcanoes vent their
fury over lands either so wild or so remote that the history of their
eruptions almost sounds like a legend from another planet; but thousands
of us have visited Etna and Vesuvius, and the explosion of their rage
menaces towns and countries which classical remembrances have almost
invested with the interest of home.
Some volcanoes are in a continual state of eruption. Isalco, born, as we
have seen, in 1770, has remained ever since so active as to deserve the
name of the Faro (lighthouse) of San Salvador. Its explosions occur
regularly, at intervals of from ten to twenty minutes, and throw up a
dense smoke and clouds of ashes and stones. These, as they fall, add to
the height and bulk of the cone, which is now about 2,500 feet high. For
more than two thousand years, the fires of Stromboli have never been
extinct, nor has it ever failed to be a beacon to the mariner while
sailing after nightfall through the Tyrrhenian Sea. Mr. Poulett Scrope,
who visited Stromboli in 1820, and looked down from the edge of the
crater into the mouth of the volcano, some 300 feet beneath him, found
the phenomena precisely such as Spallanzani described them in 1788. ‘Two
rude openings show themselves among the black chaotic rocks of scoriform
lava which form the floor of the crater. One, is to appearance, empty,
but from it there proceeds, at intervals of a few minutes, a rush of
vapour, with a roaring sound, like that of a smelting furnace when the
door is opened, but infinitely louder. It lasts about a minute. Within
the other aperture, which is perhaps twenty feet in diameter, and but a
few yards distant, may be distinctly perceived a body of molten matter,
having a vivid glow even by day, approaching to that of white heat,
which rises and falls at intervals of from ten to fifteen minutes. Each
time that it reaches in its rise the lip of the orifice, it opens at the
centre, like a great bubble bursting, and discharges upwards an
explosive volume of dense vapour, with a shower of fragments of
incandescent lava and ragged scoriæ, which rise to a height of several
hundred feet above the lip of the crater.’
The volcanoes of Masaya, near the lake of the same name in Nicaragua; of
Sioa, in the Moluccas; and of Tofua, in the Friendly Islands, are also,
like Stromboli, in a state of permanent eruption. But far more commonly
the volcanoes burst forth only from time to time in violent paroxysms,
separated from each other by longer phases of moderate activity, during
which their phenomena are confined to the exhalation of vapours and
gases, sometimes also to the ejection of scoriæ or ashes; to the
oscillations of lava rising or subsiding in the shaft of the crater, to
the gentle outflow of small streams of lava from its eruptive cone, and
to slight commotions of its border. A continual or periodical exhalation
of steam and gases from the shaft of the crater or from chasms and
fissures in its bottom, is the commonest phenomenon shown by an active
volcano while in a state of tranquillity. Aqueous vapours compose the
chief part of these exhalations, and along with other volatile
substances, such as sulphuretted hydrogen, sulphurous acid, muriatic
acid, and carbonic acid, form the steam-jets or _fumaroles_, which
escape with a hissing or roaring noise from all the crevices and chasms
of the crater, and, uniting as they ascend in a single vapour-cloud,
ultimately compose the lofty column of steam which forms so conspicuous
a feature in the picturesque beauty of Etna or Vesuvius. High on the
summit of Mauna Loa, where all vegetation has long since ceased, the
warm steam of the fumaroles gives rise to a splendid growth of ferns in
crevices sheltered from the wind; and on the island of Pantellaria, the
shepherds, by laying brushwood before the fumaroles, condense the steam,
and thus procure a supply of water for their goats.
The gentle fluctuations of lava in a crater while in a state of moderate
activity are nowhere exhibited on a grander scale than in the pit of
Kilauea on Mauna Loa. The mountain rises so gradually as almost to
resemble a plain, and the crater appears like a vast gulf excavated in
its flanks. The traveller perceives his approach to it by a few small
clouds of steam, rising from fissures not far from his path. While
gazing for a second indication, he stands unexpectedly upon the brink of
the pit. A vast amphitheatre seven miles and a half in circuit has
opened to view. Beneath a gray rocky precipice of 650 feet, a narrow
plain of hardened lava extends, like a vast gallery, around the whole
interior. Within this gallery, below another similar precipice of 340
feet, lies the bottom, a wide plain of bare rock more than two miles in
length. Here all is black monotonous desolation, excepting certain spots
of a blood-red colour, which appear to be in constant yet gentle
agitation.
When Professor Dana visited Kilauea (December 1840), he was surprised at
the stillness of the scene. The incessant motion in the blood-red pools
was like that of a cauldron in constant ebullition. The lava in each
boiled with such activity as to cause a rapid play of jets over its
surface. One pool, the largest of the three then in action, was
afterwards ascertained by survey to measure 1,500 feet in one diameter
and 1,000 in another; and this whole area was boiling, as seemed from
above, with nearly the mobility of water. Still all went on quietly. Not
a whisper was heard from the fires below. White vapours rose in fleecy
wreaths from the pools and numerous fissures, and above the large lake
they collected into a broad canopy of clouds, not unlike the snowy heaps
or cumuli that lie near the horizon on a clear day, though their
fanciful shapes changed more rapidly.
On descending afterwards to the black ledge or gallery at the verge of
the lower pit, a half-smothered gurgling sound was all that could be
heard from the pools of lava. Occasionally, there was a report like that
of musketry, which died away, and left the same murmuring sound, the
stifled mutterings of a boiling fluid.
Such was the scene by day—awful, melancholy, dismal—but at night it
assumed a character of indescribable sublimity. The large cauldron, in
place of its bloody glare, now glowed with intense brilliancy, and the
surface sparkled with shifting points of dazzling light, occasioned by
the jets in constant play. The broad canopy of clouds above the pit,
which seemed to rest on a column of wreaths and curling heaps of lighted
vapour, and the amphitheatre of rocks around the lower depths, were
brightly illuminated from the boiling lavas, while a lurid red tinged
the distant parts of the inclosing walls and threw their cavernous
recesses into deeper shades of darkness. Over this scene of restless
fires and fiery vapours, the heavens by contrast seemed unnaturally
black, with only here and there a star, like a dim point of light.
A paroxysmal eruption is generally announced by the intensification of
the phenomena above described. Slight earthquakes are felt in the
neighbourhood of the volcano, and follow each other in more rapid
succession and with greater violence as the catastrophe draws near. A
deep noise like the rolling of thunder, or like the roar of distant
artillery, is heard under the ground; the white steam from the crater
ascends in denser clouds, which soon acquire a darker tinge; and now the
bottom of the crater suddenly bursts with a terrific crash, and with the
rapidity of lightning, an immense column of black smoke shoots up into
the air, and, expanding at its upper end into a broad horizontal canopy,
assumes a shape which has been compared with that of the Italian pine,
the graceful tree of the South. As the column of smoke spreads over the
sky, it obscures the light of the sun and changes day into night. Along
with the smoke, showers of glowing lava are cast high up into the air,
and, rising like rockets, either fall back into the crater or rattle
down the declivity of the cone.
At night the scene assumes a character of matchless grandeur, when the
column of smoke—or, more properly speaking, of scoriæ, vapour, and
impalpable dust—is illuminated by the vivid light of the lava glowing in
the crater beneath. It then appears as an immense pillar of fire, rising
with steady majesty in the midst of the uproar of all the elements, and
ever and anon traversed by flashes of still greater brilliancy from the
masses of liquid lava hurled forth by the volcano.
The detonations which accompany an eruption are sometimes heard as
single crashes, at others as a rolling thunder or as a continuous
roaring. They are frequently audible at an astonishing distance, over
areas of many thousand square miles, and with such violence that they
may be supposed to proceed from the immediate neighbourhood. Thus,
during the eruption of Cosiguina in Nicaragua, which took place in the
year 1834, the detonations were heard as loud as a thunderstorm in the
neighbourhood of Kingston in Jamaica, and even at Santa Fé de Bogota,
which is a thousand miles distant from the volcano. With the increase of
steam generated during an eruption, the quantity of ejected scoriæ
likewise increases in an astonishing manner, so that the volcano’s mouth
resembles a constantly discharging mine of the most gigantic dimensions.
The stones and ashes projected during a volcanic eruption vary
considerably in size, from blocks twelve or fifteen feet in diameter to
the finest dust. Both their immense quantity, and the force with which
they are hurled into the air, show the utter insignificance of the
strength displayed by the most formidable engines invented by man when
compared with elementary power. Huge blocks are shot forth, as from the
cannon’s mouth, to a perpendicular elevation of 6,000 feet, and La
Condamine relates that in 1533 Cotopaxi hurled stones of eight feet in
diameter in an oblique direction to the distance of seven miles. The
lighter scoriæ, carried far away by the winds, not seldom bury whole
provinces under a deluge of sand and ashes; and their disastrous
effects, spreading over an immense area, are frequently greater than
those of the lava-streams, whose destructive power is necessarily
confined to a narrower space. To cite but a few examples, the rain of
sand and ashes which in 1812 menaced the Island of St. Vincent with the
fate of Pompeii soon buried every trace of vegetation, and the
affrighted planters and negroes fled to the town. But here also the
black sand, along with many larger stones, fell rattling like hail upon
the roofs of the houses, while at the same time a tremendous
subterranean thunder increased the horrors of the scene. Even Barbadoes,
though eighty miles from St. Vincent’s, was covered with ashes. A black
cloud, approaching from the sea, brought with it such pitchy darkness
that in the rooms it was impossible to distinguish the windows, and a
white pocket-handkerchief could not be seen at a distance of five
inches.
The fall of ashes caused in April 1815 by the eruption of the Temboro,
in Sumbawa, not only devastated the greater part of the island, but
extended in a westerly direction to Java, and to the north, as far as
Celebes, with such an intensity that it became perfectly dark at noon.
The roofs of houses at the distance of forty miles were broken in by the
weight of the ashes that fell upon them. To the west of Sumatra the
surface of the sea was covered two feet deep with a layer of floating
pumice or scoriæ, through which ships with difficulty forced their way.
By the terrific eruption of Cosiguina in the Gulf of Fonseca, in Central
America, in 1835, all the ground within a radius of twenty-five miles
was loaded with scoriæ and ashes to the depth of ten feet and upwards,
while the lightest and finest ash was carried by the winds to places
more than 700 miles distant. Eight leagues to the southward of the
crater the ashes covered the ground to the depth of three yards and a
half, destroying the woods and dwellings. Thousands of cattle perished,
their bodies being in many instances one mass of scorched flesh. Deer
and other wild animals sought the towns for protection; birds and beasts
were found suffocated in the ashes, and the neighbouring streams were
strewed with dead fish.
When we consider the amazing quantity of stones and ashes ejected in
these and similar instances by volcanic power, we cannot wonder that
considerable mountains have frequently been piled up by one single
eruption. Thus in the Bay of Baiæ near Naples, Monte Nuovo, a hill 440
feet high, and with a base of more than a mile and a half in
circumference, formed, in less than twelve hours, on September 29, 1538;
and a few days gave birth to Monte Minardo, near Bronte, on the slopes
of Etna, which rises to the still more considerable height of 700 feet.
It would be curious to calculate how many thousands of workmen, and what
length of time, man would need to raise mounds like these, produced by
an almost instantaneous effort of nature.
In other cases the expansive power of the elastic vapours, which cast up
these prodigious masses from the bowels of the earth, is such as to blow
to pieces the volcanic cone through which it seeks its vent.
In Quito there is an ancient tradition that Capac Urcu, which means ‘the
chief,’ was once the highest volcano near the equator, being higher than
Chimborazo, but at the beginning of the fifteenth century a prodigious
eruption took place which broke it down. The fragments of trachyte, says
Mr. Boussingault, which once formed the conical summit of this
celebrated mountain, are at this day spread over the plain. On August
11, 1772, the Pepandajan, in Java, formerly one of the highest mountains
of the island, broke out in eruption; the inhabitants of the country
around prepared for flight, but, before they could escape, the greater
part of its summit was shivered to pieces and covered the neighbourhood
with its ruins, so that in the upper part of the Gurat valley forty
villages were completely buried. During the dreadful eruption of 1815,
the Temboro, in Sumbawa, is said to have lost at least one-third of its
height from the explosion of its summit, and similar instances are
mentioned as having occurred among the volcanoes of Japan.
In the year 1638 a colossal cone called the Peak, in the Isle of Timor,
one of the Moluccas, was entirely destroyed by a paroxysmal explosion.
The whole mountain, which was before this continually active, and so
high that its light was visible, it is said, three hundred miles off,
was blown up and replaced by a concavity now containing a lake.
Again, according to M. Moreau de Jonnes, in 1718, on March 6–7, at St.
Vincent’s, one of the Leeward Isles, the shock of a terrific earthquake
was felt, and clouds of ashes were driven into the air, with violent
detonations, from a mountain situated at the eastern end of the island.
When the eruption had ceased, it was found that the whole mountain had
disappeared like the baseless fabric of a dream.
The disastrous effects of the showers of sand, pumice, and lapilli
ejected by a volcanic eruption are increased by the transporting power
of water. The aqueous vapours which are evolved so copiously from
volcanic craters during eruptions, and often for a long time
subsequently to the discharge of scoriæ and lava, are condensed as they
ascend in the cold atmosphere surrounding the high volcanic peak; and
the clouds thus formed, being in a state of high electrical tension,
give rise to terrific thunderstorms. The lightning flashes in all
directions from the black canopy overhanging the mountain, the
perpetually rolling thunder adds its loud voice to the dreadful roar of
the labouring volcano, while torrents of rain, sweeping along the light
dust and scoriæ which they carry down with them from the air, or meet
with on their way, produce currents of mud, often more dreaded than
streams of lava, from the far greater velocity with which they move.
It not seldom happens that the eruptions of volcanoes rising above the
limits of perpetual snow are preceded or accompanied by the rapid
dissolution of the ice which clothes their summits or their sides, owing
to the high temperature imparted to the whole mass of the mountain by
the vast conflict raging within. Thus in January 1803 one single night
sufficed to dissolve or sweep away the enormous bed of snow which in
times of rest covers the steep cone of Cotopaxi (18,858 feet high), so
that on the following morning the dark mountain, divested of its
brilliant robe, gave warning to the affrighted neighbourhood of the
terrific scenes that were about to follow. The volcanoes of Iceland,
which mostly rise in the midst of vast fields of perpetual ice,
frequently exhibit this phenomenon. On October 17, 1758, the eruptive
labouring of Kötlingia gave birth to three enormous torrents, which
carried along with them such masses of glacier fragments, sand, and
stones as to cover a space fifty miles long and twenty-five miles broad.
Blocks of ice as large as houses, and partly bearing immense pieces of
stone on their backs, were hurried along by the floods; and soon after
the eruption took place with a terrific noise.
A very singular phenomenon sometimes occurs in the gigantic volcanoes of
the Andes. By the infiltration of water into the crevices of the
trachytic rock of which they are composed, the caverns situated at their
declivities or at their foot are gradually changed into subterranean
lakes or ponds, which frequently communicate by narrow apertures with
the Alpine brooks of the highlands of Quito. The fish from these brooks
live and multiply in these subterranean reservoirs thus formed, and when
the earthquakes which precede every eruption of the Andes chain shake
the whole mass of the volcano, the caverns suddenly open and discharge
enormous quantities of water, mud, and small fish.
When in the night between the 19th and 20th of June 1698, the summit of
Carguairazo (18,000 feet high) was blown up, so that of the whole
crater-rim but two enormous peaks remained, the inundated fields were
covered, over a surface of nearly fifty square miles, with fluid tuff
and clay-mud enveloping thousands of dead fish. Seven years before, the
malignant fever which prevailed in the mountain-town of Ibarra to the
north of Quito was attributed to the effluvia arising from the putrid
fish ejected by the volcano of Imbaburu.
Amidst all these terrible phenomena—the dreadful noise, the quaking of
the earth, the ejection of stones and ashes—which, often continuing for
weeks or months, shake the deepest foundations of the volcano, fiery
streams of liquid lava gush forth sooner or later as from a vase that is
boiling over. Their appearance generally indicates the crisis of the
subterranean revolution, for the rage of the elements, which until then
had been constantly increasing, diminishes as soon as the torrent has
found an outlet. The lava rarely issues from the summit crater of the
mountain; much more frequently it flows from a lateral rent in the
volcano’s side, which, weakened and dislocated in its texture by
repeated shocks, at length gives way to the immense pressure of the lava
column boiling within. From the vast size of these eruptive rents, we
may form some idea of the gigantic power of the forces which give them
birth.
Thus during the great eruption of Etna in 1669, the south-east flank of
the mountain was split open by an enormous rent twelve miles long, at
the bottom of which incandescent lava was seen. The extreme length of
the fissure which gave lateral issue to the lava of Kilauea in 1840 was
twenty-five miles, as could distinctly be traced through the disturbance
of the surface rocks above; and in the terrific eruption of Skaptar
Jökul, which devastated the west coast of Iceland in 1783, lava gushed
forth from several vents along a fissure of not less than 100 miles in
length. In some cases the whole mass of the volcano has been cleft in
two. Vesuvius was thus rent in October 1822 by an enormous fissure
broken across its cone in a direction N.W.—S.E.
Here and there along the line of such a rent, cones of eruption are
thrown up in succession at points where the gaseous matter obtains the
freest access to the surface, and has power to force up lava and scoriæ.
Few indeed, if any, of the greater volcanic mountains are unattended by
such minor elevations, clustering about its sides like the satellites of
a planet. Professor Dana found Mauna Loa covered with numerous parasitic
cones, and Mr. Darwin counted several thousands on one of the Gallapagos
Islands. On the flanks of Etna, according to Professor Sartorius von
Waltershausen, more than 700 of them are to be seen, almost all
possessing craters, and each marking the source of a current of lava.
Though they appear but trifling irregularities when viewed from a
distance as subordinate parts of so imposing and colossal a mountain,
many of them would nevertheless be deemed hills of considerable height
in almost any other region. The double hill near Nicolosi, called Monte
Rossi, formed in 1669, is 450 feet high and two miles in circumference
at its base; and Monte Minardo, near Bronte, on the east of the great
volcano, is upwards of 700 feet in height.[8]
Footnote 8:
See p. 67.
‘On looking down from the lower borders of the desert region of Etna,’
says Sir Charles Lyell, ‘these minor volcanoes, which are most abundant
in the woody region, present us with one of the most delightful and
characteristic scenes in Europe. They afford every variety of height and
size, and are arranged in beautiful and picturesque groups. However
uniform they may appear when seen from the sea, or the plains below,
nothing can be more diversified than their shape when we look from above
into their craters, one side of which, as we have seen, is generally
broken down. There are indeed, few objects in nature more picturesque
than a wooded volcanic crater. The cones situated in the higher parts of
the forest zone are chiefly clothed with lofty pines, while those at a
lower elevation are adorned with chestnuts, oaks, and beech-trees.’
As the point where a lava-current finds a vent is often situated at a
considerable distance below the surface of the liquid column in the
internal chimney of the volcano, the pressure from above not seldom
causes the lava to spout forth in a jet, until its level in the crater
shaft has been reduced to that of the newly-formed orifice. Thus, when
Vesuvius was rent by the dreadful paroxysmal eruption of 1794, the lava
was seen to shoot up in magnificent fountains as it issued from the
openings along the fissure.
Further on, the lava flows down the mountain’s side according to the
same laws which regulate the movements of any other stream, whether of
water, mud, or ice: more rapidly down an abrupt declivity, slower where
the slope is more gradual; now accumulating in narrow ravines, then
spreading out in plains; sometimes rushing in fiery cascades down
precipices, and, where insurmountable obstacles oppose its progress, not
seldom breaking off into several branches, each of which pursues its
independent course.
At the point where it issues, the lava flows in perfect solution, but,
as its surface rapidly cools when exposed to the air, it soon gets
covered with scoriæ, which are dashed over each other in wild confusion,
by successive floods of liquid stone, so as to resemble a stormy sea
covered with ice-blocks. But the liquefied stone not only hardens on its
external surface; it also becomes solid below, where it touches the
colder soil, so that the fluid lava literally moves along in a crust of
scoriæ, which lengthens in the same proportion as the stream advances.
The movements of the lava-current are of course considerably retarded by
the formation of scoriæ, so that, unless where a greater inclination of
the soil gives it a new impulse, it flows slower and slower. Thus the
lava-stream which was ejected by Etna during the great eruption of 1669,
performed the first thirteen Italian miles of its course in twenty days,
or at the average rate of 162 feet per hour, but required no less than
twenty-three days for the last two miles. While moving on, its surface
was in general a mass of solid rock; and its mode of advancing, as is
usual with lava streams, was by the occasional fissuring of the solid
walls. Yet, in spite of the tardiness of its progress, the inhabitants
of Catania watched its advance with dismay, and rushed into the churches
to invoke the aid of the Madonna and the Saints. One citizen only, a
certain Baron Papalardo, relied more upon his own efforts than upon
supernatural assistance, and set out with a party of fifty men, dressed
in skins to protect them from the heat, and armed with iron crows and
hooks for the purpose of breaking open one of the solid walls of scoriæ
that flanked the liquid current, so as to divert it from the menaced
city. A passage was thus opened for a rivulet of melted matter, which
flowed in the direction of Paterno; but the inhabitants of that town
being alarmed for their safety, took up arms against Papalardo, whose
fifty workmen would hardly have been able to cope with the powers of
nature. Thus, slowly but irresistibly, the lava advanced up to the walls
of Catania, which, being formed of huge Cyclopean blocks, and no less
than sixty feet high, at first stemmed the fiery stream. But the glowing
floods, pressing against the rampart, rose higher and higher, and
finally reaching its summit, rushed over it in fiery cataracts, and
destroying part of the town, at length disgorged themselves into the
sea, where they formed a not inconsiderable promontory.
A truly gigantic conflict might naturally be expected from the meeting
of two such powerful and hostile bodies as fire and water. This,
however, is by no means the case, for as soon as the lava enters the
sea, the rapid evaporation of the water that comes into immediate
contact with it accelerates the cooling of the surface and thickens the
hard external crust to such a degree that very soon all communication is
cut off between the water and the fiery mass. While the lava continues
to advance from the land, the crust of scoriæ is prolonged in the same
proportion, and should it be rent here and there, steam is at once
developed with such violence as to prevent all further access of the
water into the interior of the fissures. Thus, Breislak informs us that,
in 1794, the eruption of a lava-stream into the Bay of Naples, near
Torre del Greco, took place with the greatest tranquillity, so that he
himself was able to observe the advancing of the lava into the sea while
seated in a boat immediately near it, without being disturbed by
explosions or any other violent phenomenon.
As the crust of scoriæ is so bad a conductor of heat, it occasions a
very slow cooling and hardening in the interior of the lava-stream,
forming as it were a vessel in which the liquid fire can be retained and
preserved for a long time. When Elie de Beaumont visited the lava-stream
of Etna, nearly two years after its eruption in 1832, its interior was
still so warm that he could not hold his finger in the hot steam issuing
from its crevices. It has also been proved, on trustworthy evidence,
that after twenty-five and thirty years, many lava-streams of Etna still
continued to emit heat and steam; and after twenty-one years it was
possible to light a cigar in the crevices of the lava that issued from
Jorullo in 1759.
Another extremely curious effect of the scoriæ being such bad conductors
of heat is, that masses of snow will remain unmelted, though a lava-
stream rolls over them. Thus, in 1787, the lava of Etna flowed over a
large deposit of snow, which, however, was by no means fully liquefied,
but remained for the greatest part entire, and gradually changed into a
granular and solid mass of ice. This was traced in 1828, by the
geologist Gemellaro, for a distance of several hundred feet under the
lava, and most likely still reposes under it as in an ice-cellar. The
cliffs which form the vast crater-ring of the Isle of Deception, in the
extreme Southern Atlantic, are likewise composed of alternate layers of
ice and lava. Probably in both these cases the ice-beds had been covered
before the lava flowed over them, by a rain of scoriæ and volcanic sand,
which is so well known among the shepherds in the higher regions of Etna
as a bad conductor of caloric, that, to obtain a supply of water for
their herds during the summer, they cover some snow a few inches deep
with volcanic sand, which entirely prevents the penetration of solar
heat.
Most of the recent lava-streams evolve from all their fissures and rents
a quantity of vapour, so as to be dotted with innumerable fumaroles, and
to exhibit, as they flow along, a smoking surface by day and a luminous
one by night. At first these fumaroles are so impetuous that they
frequently puff up the lava-crust around their orifices into little
cones or hillocks, consisting of blocks of scoriæ irregularly piled up
over each other, and from whose summit the vapours continue to ascend.
As the mass cools, they are naturally lessened in numbers and in power;
but in 1803 Humboldt still saw fumaroles from twenty to thirty feet
high, rising from the small cones which covered by thousands the great
lava-stream of Jorullo of the year 1759.
The vast dimensions of single lava-streams give proof of the enormous
powers which forced them out of the bowels of the earth. The lava-stream
of Vesuvius which destroyed Torre del Greco in 1794, is 17,500 French
feet long, and when it reached the town was more than 2,000 feet wide
and forty feet deep. While this mighty mass of molten stone, the volume
of which has been reckoned at about 457 millions of cubic feet, was
descending towards the sea, another stream, whose mass is computed at
about one-half of that of the former, was flowing in the direction of
Mauro. This single eruption has therefore furnished more than 685
millions of cubic feet of lava, equal to a cube of 882 feet, in which at
least a dozen of the largest churches, palaces, and pyramids on earth
might conveniently find room. If to the solid lava we add the
astonishing quantities of scoriæ, sand, and ashes thrown out by this
same eruption, we may form some idea of the masses of matter which were
in this one instance ejected from the interior of the earth.
The volume of the lava-stream which flowed from the volcano of the Isle
of Bourbon in the year 1787 is estimated at 2,526 millions of cubic
feet; but even this astonishing ejection of molten stone is surpassed by
that which took place during the eruption of Skaptar Jökull[9] in 1783,
when the lava rolled on to a length of fifty miles, and, on reaching the
plain, expanded into broad lakes, twelve and fifteen miles in diameter
and a hundred feet deep.
Footnote 9:
A detailed account of this eruption, one of the most dreadful on
record, is given in ‘The Polar World,’ chap. vi. p. 81.
In the great eruption of Mauna Loa, which commenced on the 30th of May
1840, the lava began to flow from a small pit-crater called Avare, about
six miles from Kilauea. The light was seen at a distance, but, as there
was no population in that direction, it was supposed to proceed from a
jungle on fire. The next day another outbreak was perceived farther
towards the coast, and general alarm prevailed among the natives, now
aware of the impending catastrophe. Other openings followed, and by
Monday the 1st of June the large flow had begun, which formed a
continuous stream to the sea, which it reached on the 3rd. This flood
issued from several fissures along its whole course, instead of being an
overflow of lava from a single opening; it started from an elevation of
1,244 feet, as determined by Captain Wilkes, at a point twenty-two miles
distant from the first outbreak, and twelve from the shore. The scene of
the flowing lava, as we are told by those who saw it, was indescribably
magnificent. As it rolled along it swept away forests in its course, at
times parting and inclosing islets of earth and shrubbery, and at other
times undermining and bearing along masses of rock and vegetation on its
surface. Finally, it plunged into the sea with loud detonations, and for
three weeks continued to disgorge itself with little abatement.
The light which it emitted converted night into day over all eastern
Hawaii. It was distinctly visible for more than one hundred miles at
sea, and at the distance of forty miles fine print could be read at
midnight. As previous to the eruption, the whole vast pit of Kilauea had
been filled to the brim with the lava, which, bursting through the
flanks of the mountain, thus found a vent towards the sea, we have some
means of estimating the volume of the ejected masses in the actual cubic
contents of the emptied pit. The area of the lower pit, as determined by
the surveys of the American Exploring Expedition, is equal to 38,500,000
square feet. Multiplying this by 400 feet, the depth of the pit after
the eruption, we have 15,400,000,000 cubic feet for the solid contents
of the space occupied by lava before the eruption, and therefore the
actual amount of the material which flowed from Kilauea. This is
equivalent to a triangular range 800 feet high, two miles long, and over
a mile wide at base!
Though generally symptoms of violent disturbance, such as shakings of
the earth and loud thundering noises, precede the eruption of lava, yet
this is not always the case. Thus the craters of Mount Kea have
frequently disgorged their masses of molten stone without such
accompanying phenomena. In 1843, when the volcano poured out a flood of
lava, reaching for twenty-five miles down its side, all took place so
quietly that persons at the foot of the mountain were unaware of it,
except from the glare of light after the action had begun. Through its
progress no sounds were heard below, nor did it cause any perceptible
vibrations, except in the region of the outbreak, and there none of much
violence.
The lava sometimes cools down with a smooth, solid, undulating surface,
marked with rope-like lines and concentric folds, such as are seen on
any densely viscid liquid if drawn out as it hardens; but much more
frequently it appears as if shattered to a chaos of ruins. The fragments
vary from one to hundreds of cubic feet, or from a half-bushel measure
to a house of moderate size. They are of all shapes, often in angular
blocks, and sometimes in slabs, and are horribly rough, having deep
recesses everywhere among them. The traveller shudders as his path leads
him over a lava-field, thus bristling with myriads of spikes, where the
least false step would precipitate him into the deep cavities, among the
jagged surfaces and edges. This scene of horrid confusion often extends
for miles in every direction, and, viewed from its central part, the
whole horizon around is one wide waste of gray and black desolation,
beyond the power of words to describe.
The breaking up of a lava-field into chaotic masses evidently proceeds
from a temporary cessation, either complete or partial, and a subsequent
flow of a stream of lava. The surface cools and hardens as soon as the
stream slackens; afterwards there is another heaving of the lava, and an
onward move, owing to a succeeding ejection or the removing of an
obstacle, and the motion breaks up the hardened crust, piling the masses
together, either in slabs or huge angular fragments, according to the
thickness to which the crust had cooled. If the motion of a lava-stream
be quite slow, the cooling of the front of it may cause its cessation,
thus damming it up and holding it back, till the pressure from gradual
accumulation behind sweeps away the barrier. It then flows on again,
carrying on its surface masses of the hardened crust—some, it may be, to
sink and melt again, but the larger portion to remain as a field of
clinkers. The breaking-up of the ice of some streams in spring gives
some idea of the manner in which the hardened masses of a lava-field are
piled up as it moves along; but to form a just idea of the greatness of
the effect, the mind must bring before it a stream, not of the scanty
limits of most rivers, but one, not unfrequently, of several miles in
breadth: besides, in place of slabs of pure and clear ice, there should
be substituted shaggy heaps of black scoriæ, and a depth or thickness of
many yards in place of a few inches.
Where volcanic mud-streams have flooded the land, or a rain of ashes and
light scoriæ has descended upon the soil, its fertility may soon be
restored under the influence of a sunny sky; but as far as the lava
reaches, a stony wilderness often remains for ages, particularly in the
colder regions of the earth. Thus, though many of the lava-fields of
Iceland have existed long before the first Scandinavian colonists
settled in the land, their surface is generally as naked as when they
first issued from the volcano; and where signs of vegetation may be seen
among their fragments, the eye finds nothing to relieve the horrid
monotony of the scene but spare patches of lichen and mosses, or here
and there some dwarf herb or shrub that hardly ventures to peep forth
from the crevice in which it has found a shelter. But in a milder
climate, such as that of Italy, and still more rapidly in the torrid
zone, the horrid nakedness of a lava-field undergoes a more rapid
transformation, provided a sufficient moisture favours the growth of
plants. The rains promote the decomposition of the lava, and a rank
vegetation succeeds, which in its turn assists the work of
decomposition, and thus hastens the accumulation of soil. Ferns and
grasses spring up in the nooks and crevices, and finally the vine or the
taro flourish luxuriantly, for nothing can exceed the fertility of a
disintegrated lava-field.
Volcanoes have frequently been considered as safety-valves, which, by
affording a vent to subterranean vapours, preserve the neighbouring
regions from the far more disastrous and wide-spreading effects of
earthquakes; and facts are not wanting which seem to justify this
opinion. After the soil had trembled for a long time throughout the
whole of Syria, in the Cyclades, and in Eubœa, the shocks suddenly
ceased when, in the plains near Chalcis, a stream of ‘_glowing mud_’
(lava from a crevice) issued from the bowels of the earth. Strabo, who
relates this incident, adds that ‘since the craters of Etna have been
opened, through which fire ascends, the land on the sea-coast is less
subject to earthquakes than at the time when all vents on the surface
were stopped up.’
Before the earthquake which destroyed the town of Riobamba, the smoke of
the volcano of Pasto, which is 200 miles distant, disappeared. The
Neapolitans and Sicilians consider the eruptions of Vesuvius and Etna,
or even a more lively activity of these volcanoes, as a certain
preservative against devastating earthquakes, and we meet with the same
belief among the inhabitants of Quito and Peru. But in many cases this
fancied security has proved to be delusive, as very violent earthquakes
have not seldom been found to accompany volcanic eruptions. The great
Chilian earthquake of 1835 coincided with an eruption of Antuco; and the
shocks which agitated all Kamtschatka and the long chain of the Kurilian
Islands, in 1737, occurred simultaneously with an eruption of
Klîutschewskaja Skopa.
Professor Dana doubts whether action so deep-seated as that of the
earthquake must be can often find relief in the narrow channels of a
volcano miles in length. He points out the example of Mauna Loa, where
lavas are frequently poured out from the summit crater, at an elevation
of more than 10,000 feet above Kilauea, so that the latter,
notwithstanding its extent, the size of its great lakes of lava, and the
freedom of the incessant ebullition, is not a safety-valve that can
protect even its own immediate neighbourhood.
In his opinion volcanoes might more fitly be called indexes of danger.
They point out those portions of the globe which are most subject to
earthquakes, and are results of the same causes that render a country
liable to such convulsions.
The phenomena attending an eruption can leave no doubt that below every
active volcano a large subterranean cavity must exist in which melted
lava accumulates. The partisans of the theory which supposes the earth
to consist of a central fluid mass with a solid shell resting upon it,
attribute the formation of volcanoes to rents or fissures in this crust
through which the lava is cast forth; but the local development of heat
by chemical action, or some other unknown cause, is quite sufficient to
account for the existence of fiery lakes imbedded in a solid mass, and
which, though insignificant when compared with the surface of the globe,
may still be large enough to produce volcanic phenomena on the grandest
scale.
The cause of the reaction of such a reservoir against the surface of the
earth must in all probability be sought for in the expansive force of
steam; for when water, penetrating through crevices or porous strata,
comes in contact with the heated subterranean mass, it is evident that
the steam thus generated must press upon the lava, and, when formed in
sufficient quantity, ultimately forces it up the duct of the volcano. In
other cases, we may suppose a continuous column of lava mixed with
liquid water raised to a red-hot, or white-hot, temperature under the
influence of pressure. A disturbance of equilibrium may first bring on
an eruption near the surface, by the expansion and conversion into gas
of the entangled water, so as to lessen pressure. More and more steam
would then be liberated, bringing up with it jets of liquid rock, and
ultimately ejecting a continuous stream of lava. Its force being spent,
a period of rest succeeds, until the conditions for a new outburst
(accumulation of steam and melted rock) are obtained, and another cycle
of similar changes is renewed. The important part which water plays in
volcanic action is moreover sufficiently proved by the enormous quantity
of steam which is poured forth during every eruption, or is constantly
escaping in the fumaroles of a crater. The various gases (carbonic,
muriatic, sulphurous) which are likewise exhaled by volcanoes may also
have been rendered liquid by pressure at great depths, and may assist
the action of water in causing eruptive outbursts. The great number of
active volcanoes on sea-coasts and in islands likewise points to the
agency of water in volcanic operations; and in the few cases where
eruptive cones are situated far inland, their situation on the borders
of a lake, or their cavernous and porous structure, accounts for the
absorption of a quantity of atmospheric water, sufficient for the
production of volcanic phenomena.
[Illustration: ERUPTION OF VESUVIUS, BAY OF NAPLES.]
CHAPTER VII.
DESTRUCTION OF HERCULANEUM AND POMPEII.
State of Vesuvius before the eruption in the year 79 A.C.—Spartacus—
Premonitory Earthquakes—Letter of Pliny the Younger to Tacitus,
relating the death of his Uncle, Pliny the Elder—Benevolence of the
Emperor Titus—Herculaneum and Pompeii buried under a muddy alluvium—
Herculaneum first discovered in 1713.
Of all the volcanic eruptions recorded in history there is none more
celebrated than that which, on the 23rd of August, A.D. 79, buried the
towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii under a deluge of mud and ashes. Many
other eruptions have no doubt been on a grander scale, or may have
spread ruin and desolation over a wider area, but never has a volcano,
awakening from the slumber of a thousand years, devastated a more
smiling paradise than the fields of happy Campania, or buried more
beautiful cities.
Before that terrible catastrophe, Mount Vesuvius, now constantly
smoking, even in times of rest, had, ever since the first colonisation
of South Italy by the Greeks, exhibited no signs of volcanic activity.
Even tradition knew of no previous disturbance. No subterranean thunder,
or sulphurous steams, or cast-up ashes, gave token of the fires
slumbering beneath its basis; and the real nature of the apparently so
peaceful mountain could only be conjectured from the similarity of its
structure to other volcanoes, or from the ancient lava-streams that
furrowed its abrupt declivities. At that time also its shape was very
different from its present form, for instead of two apices, it
exhibited, from a distance, the regular outlines of a sharply truncated
cone. Plutarch relates that rough rock walls, piled round its summit,
and overgrown with wild vines, inclosed the waste of the crater.
When, in 73 B.C., Spartacus, with seventy of his comrades, broke the
fetters of an insupportable slavery, he found a secure retreat in this
natural stronghold, which could only be scaled by a single narrow and
difficult path. By degrees 10,000 fugitive slaves gathered round his
standard, and Rome began to tremble for her safety. The prætor Clodius
led an army against the rebels, and surrounded the mountain; but
Spartacus caused ropes to be made of the branches of wild vines, by
means of which he, with the boldest of his followers, was let down from
the rocks, where they were supposed to be totally inaccessible, and,
falling unawares upon the prætor, put his troops to flight and took his
camp. The declivities of the mountain, thus become historically
renowned, were covered with the richest fields and vineyards, and at its
foot, along the beautiful Bay of Naples, lay the flourishing towns of
Herculaneum and Pompeii, the seats of luxury and refinement. Who could,
then, have imagined that this charming scene was so soon to be disturbed
in so terrible a manner, and that the time was nigh when the ancient
volcanic channels, from which, in unknown ages, lava-streams and ashes
had so frequently broken forth, were once more to be re-opened? The
first sign which announced the awakening energies of the volcano was an
earthquake, which, in 63 A.D. devastated the fertile regions of
Campania. From that time to the crowning disaster of 79, slight tremors
of the earth frequently occurred, until, finally, the dreadful eruption
took place which Pliny the Younger so vividly describes in his
celebrated letter to Tacitus.
‘My uncle,’ says the Roman, ‘was at Misenum, where he commanded the
fleet. On the 23rd of August, about one o’clock in the afternoon, my
mother informed him that a cloud of an uncommon size and form was seen
to arise. He had sunned himself (according to the custom of the ancient
Romans), and taken his usual cold bath, then dined, and studied. He
asked for his sandals, and ascended an eminence, from which the
wonderful phenomenon could be plainly seen. The spot from whence the
cloud ascended, in a shape like that of an Italian pine-tree, could not
be ascertained on account of the distance; its arising from Vesuvius
only subsequently became known.
‘In some parts it was white, in others black and spotted, from the ashes
and stones which it carried along. To my uncle, being a learned man, the
phenomenon seemed important, and worthy of a closer investigation. He
ordered a light ship to be got ready, and left it to my option to
accompany him. I answered that I preferred studying, and by chance he
himself had given me something to write. He was on the point of leaving
the house when he received a letter from Resina, the inhabitants of
which, alarmed at the impending danger—the place lay at the foot of the
mountain, and escape was only possible by sea—begged him to help them in
their great distress. He now changed his plan, and executed as a hero
the undertaking to which he had been prompted as a natural philosopher.
‘He ordered the galleys of war to set sail, and embarked to bring help,
not only to Resina, but to many other places along the coast, which, on
account of its loveliness, was very densely peopled.
‘He hastens to the spot from which others are taking flight, and steers
in a direct line towards the seat of danger, so unconcerned as to
dictate his observations upon all the events and changes of the
catastrophe, as they passed before his eyes.
‘Already ashes fell upon the ship, hotter and thicker on approaching, as
also pumice and other stones blackened and burnt by fire. Suddenly a
shallow bottom, and the masses ejected by the eruption, rendered the
coast inaccessible. He hesitated for a moment whether he should sail
back again, but, soon resolved, said to the steersman who advised him to
do so, “Fortune favours the bold; steer towards the villa of
Pomponianus.” This friend resided at Stabiæ, on the opposite side of the
bay, where the danger, although as yet at some distance, was still
within sight, and menacing enough. Pomponianus had therefore caused his
effects to be conveyed on board a ship, intent on flight so soon as the
contrary wind should have abated. As soon as my uncle, to whom it was
very favourable, has landed, he embraces, consoles, encourages his
terrified friend, takes a bath to relieve his fears by his own
confidence, and dines after the bath with perfect composure, or, what is
no less great, with a serene countenance.
‘Meanwhile high columns of flame burst forth from Vesuvius in various
places, their brilliancy being increased by the darkness of the night.
My uncle, with the intention of relieving apprehension, said that they
proceeded from the villas which, abandoned by their terrified
proprietors and left a prey to the flames, were now burning in solitude.
He then retired and slept soundly, for his attendants before the door
heard him fetch his breath, which, on account of his corpulence, was
deep and loud. But now the court, into which the room opened, became
filled to such a height with ashes and pumice that by a longer delay he
would not have been able to leave it. They awaken him, he rises, and
greets Pomponianus and the others who had watched. They consult
together, whether to remain in the house or to flee into the open air,
for the ground trembled from the repeated and violent shocks of the
earth, and seemed to reel backwards and forwards. On the other hand,
they feared in the open air the falling of the pumice-stones and
cinders. On comparing these two dangers, flight was chosen; and, as a
protection against the shower of stones, they covered their heads with
cushions. Everywhere else the day was already far advanced, but the
blackest night still reigned at Stabiæ. Provided with torches, they
resolved to seek the shore, in order to ascertain whether they could
venture to embark, but the sea was found to be too wild and boisterous.
‘My uncle now lay down upon a carpet, and asked for some cold water, of
which he repeatedly drank. The flames and their sulphurous odour drove
away his companions, and forced him to rise. Leaning on two slaves, he
tried to move, but immediately sank down again, suffocated as I believe
by the dense smoke, and by the closing of his larynx, which was by
nature weak, narrow, and subject to frequent spasms. On the third
morning after his death, the body was found without any marks of
violence, covered with the clothes he had worn, and more like a person
sleeping than a corpse.’
Thus perished, in his fifty-sixth year, one of the greatest naturalists
and noblest characters of ancient Rome, the philosopher to whom we are
indebted for the first general description of the world—a work which, in
spite of its numerous imperfections and errors, is one of the most
interesting monuments of classical literature.
When the rage of the volcanic powers had subsided, the sun, now no
longer obscured by clouds of ashes, shone upon a scene of utter
desolation, where nature, embellished by art, had, but a few days
before, appeared in all her loveliness. The mountain itself had changed
its form, and rose with new peaks to the skies; a thick layer of stones
and dust had settled with the curse of sterility on the fields;
thousands of homeless wretches wandered about disconsolate, and three
towns—Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiæ—had disappeared to be brought to
light again in a wonderful manner after the lapse of many centuries.
This great catastrophe gave the Emperor Titus a fine opportunity for
displaying the benevolence which entitled him to be called ‘the delight
of mankind.’ He immediately hastened to the scene of destruction,
appointed guardians of consular rank to distribute among the needy
survivors the property of those who had perished without heirs; and
encouraged the weak-hearted, assisting them by liberal donations, until
a no less terrible misfortune recalled him to Rome, where a fire, which
laid almost half the town in ashes, was followed by a plague, which, for
some time, daily swept away thousands.
It has often been asked how so many of the relics buried in Herculaneum
and Pompeii could have been so perfectly preserved as to form a Museum
of the Past for the admiration and instruction of future ages. A stream
of lava would undoubtedly have consumed everything on its fiery track,
but, fortunately for posterity, it was not a flood of molten stone, but
a current of mud which overwhelmed the devoted cities. We learn from
history that a heavy shower of sand, pumice, and lapilli was ejected by
Vesuvius for eight successive days and nights, in the year 79,
accompanied by violent rains, and thus all these volcanic matters were
converted into mud-streams, which, rushing down the sides of the
mountain, descended upon Herculaneum and Pompeii. This circumstance
satisfactorily explains how the _interior_ of the buildings, with all
the underground vaults and cellars, was filled up, and how all the
objects they contained could be as perfectly moulded as in a plaster
cast by the muddy alluvium, which subsequently hardened into pumice
tuff. Hence this wonderful preservation of paintings, which, shielded
from the destructive influence of the atmosphere, still retained their
original freshness of colour when again brought to light by a late
generation; these rolls of papyrus which it has been found possible to
decipher; this perfect cast of a woman’s form, with a child in her arms!
No lava has flowed over Pompeii since that city was buried, but with
Herculaneum the case is different. Although the substance which fills
the interior of the buildings in that doomed city must have been
introduced in a state of mud like that found in similar situations in
Pompeii, yet the superincumbent mass differs wholly in composition and
thickness.
Herculaneum was situated several miles nearer to the volcano, and has,
therefore, been always more liable to be covered, not only by showers of
ashes, but by alluvium and streams of lava. Accordingly, masses of both
have accumulated on each other above the ancient site of the city, to a
depth of nowhere less than 70, and in many places of 112 feet; while the
depth of the bed of ashes under which Pompeii lies buried seldom exceeds
12 or 14 feet above the houses, and it is even said that the higher part
of the amphitheatre always projected above the surface.
Yet, strange to say, Herculaneum, though far more profoundly hidden, was
discovered before Pompeii, by the accidental circumstance that a well
sunk in 1713 came right down upon the theatre where the statues of
Hercules and Cleopatra were found. Many others were afterwards dug out
and sent to France by the Prince of Elbeuf, who, having married a
Neapolitan princess, became proprietor of the field under which the
theatre lies buried. Further excavations were, however, forbidden by
Government, and only resumed in 1736. But the difficulty of removing the
large masses of lava accumulated above the city, and the circumstance of
its partly lying under the modern towns of Portici and Resina have
confined the exploration of Herculaneum within narrow limits. The large
theatre alone is open for inspection, and can be seen only by
torchlight, so that its dark galleries, cut through the tuff, are but
seldom visited by strangers; while no traveller leaves Naples without
having wandered through the ruins of Pompeii, for Italy hardly affords a
more interesting sight than that of these streets and forums, these
theatres and temples, these houses and villas, which require but the
presence of their ancient inhabitants to complete the picture of a Roman
town, such as it was eighteen hundred years ago.
CHAPTER VIII.
GAS SPRINGS AND MUD VOLCANOES.
Carbonic-acid Springs—Grotto del Cane—The Valley of Death in Java—
Exaggerated Descriptions—Carburetted Hydrogen Springs—The Holy Fires
of Baku—Description of the Temple—Mud Volcanoes—The Macaluba in
Sicily—Crimean Mud Volcanoes—Volcanic Origin of Mud Volcanoes.
The numerous gas springs which in many countries are evolved from an
unknown depth, afford us a convincing proof that the remarkable chemical
transformations of which we find so many traces in the past history of
our planet are still perpetually taking place in many of the mysterious
crevices and hollows of the earth-rind. In Auvergne, the Vivarrais, the
Eifel, and along the whole basaltic range from the Rhine to the
Riesengebirge in Silesia, carbonic acid gas is exhaled in incredible
quantities from the vast laboratories of the subterranean world.
Professor Bischoff found that a single gas spring near Burgbrohl daily
produced 5,650 cubic feet of carbonic acid, a quantity amounting in the
course of a year to no less than 262,000 pounds in weight; and,
according to Bromeis, the great Artesian spring at Nauheim evolves every
minute 71 cubic feet of carbonic acid, equal to a weight of 5,000,000
pounds annually. If from these two instances we judge of the produce of
the many carbonic acid gas springs of Germany, and if we farther extend
our view to the rest of the world, in many parts of which carbonic acid
probably escapes in still greater quantities, we can form some idea of
the geological importance of these springs, which also exercise no small
influence upon the organic world. For the incalculable masses of
carbonic acid which are thus constantly pouring from subterranean vents
into the atmospheric ocean are again absorbed by millions of plants.
They feed the forests and the fields; and thus these chemical changes,
which are incessantly but imperceptibly modifying the earth-rind,
ultimately tend to the advantage of man.
As a light dipped in carbonic acid gas is immediately extinguished, and
every animal inhaling it is liable to instant suffocation, these
properties are sometimes made use of for cruel experiments, for which,
among others, the insignificant Grotto del Cane, in the kingdom of
Naples—a cave or hole in the side of a mountain near the Lake Agnano—has
become notorious. Some miserable dogs are thrust into the stratum of
fixed air which covers the bottom of the hole, and are alternately
almost choked and resuscitated to satisfy the idle curiosity of
tourists. Their violent efforts to escape, when about to be plunged into
the poisonous vapour, prove the horrible cruelty of the practice.
The carbonic-acid springs in the glen of the Brohl, a small rivulet
flowing into the Rhine, near Andernach, are turned to a better purpose,
for the manufacture of white lead.
The famous ‘Valley of Death,’ or Poison Valley, in the Island of Java,
is nothing more than a funnel-shaped hollow, measuring about 100 feet in
diameter at the top, and with a bare space in its centre fifteen feet
broad and long, which is frequently covered with a stratum of carbonic
acid gas. The sides of the hollow, and even the bottom, with the
exception of the above-mentioned naked spot, are everywhere clothed with
shrubbery, or even with forest trees.
The dead bodies of stags, tigers, wild boars, and birds are said to have
been frequently found in the hollow; but Dr. Junghuhn, the author of a
classical work on Java, saw in 1838 but one human corpse lying on its
back in the centre of the bare spot. It was still there in 1840, and but
slightly decomposed. In 1845 it had been removed, most likely by some
compassionate wanderers desirous of giving it a decent burial, for not
the slightest trace of the skeleton remained. During the years 1838,
1840, and 1845 Junghuhn visited the Valley of Death no less than
thirteen times. When he last saw it, the bodies of six wild hogs were
lying at the bottom, all more or less in a state of putrefaction. The
crows that were feasting upon their remains proved that a descent might
be effected without danger, for, on seeing them hopping about on the
naked soil, even the Javanese entered the circle without hesitation. Not
a single trace of carbonic acid was to be perceived, not even when the
bold naturalist stretched himself out upon the ground and drew his
breath in the crevices and rents with which it is furrowed. Probably the
gas never rises more than three feet above the level of the soil, as at
this height a luxuriant vegetation begins.
This simple description of an accurate observer forms a strange contrast
to the gross exaggeration of other travellers, whose accounts, copied in
many hand-books, have puffed up a phenomenon hardly superior to that of
the Grotto del Cane into something like an eighth wonder of the world.
Loudon, who in July 1830 visited the Pakamaran (as the natives call the
pit), swells its dimensions to a vast crater about half a mile in
circumference, thickly strewn with skeletons of men, tigers, game, and
birds of all kinds; and another recent traveller goes so far as to give
it an extent of twenty miles.
Next to carbonic acid, but of far less general occurrence, carburetted
hydrogen, which gives rise to the wonderful phenomenon of fiery springs,
is the gas most frequently evolved by volcanic spiracles.
Near Pietra Mala, between Bologna and Florence, on a spot about twelve
feet in diameter, several flames rise from the earth, the largest of
which ascends to a height of five feet, and is seen burning at night
with a pale yellow flame, while its minor satellites around are blue
tipped with white. No doubt many a terrible legend is attached to this
infernal spectacle. Near Barigazzo, between Modena and Pistoja, near the
ruins of Velleji, and in many other parts of the volcanic region of the
Apennines, similar flames gush out of the ground. The neat little town
of Fredonia, in the State of New York, on the eastern shore of Lake
Erie, is lighted by natural springs of carburetted hydrogen, which,
being led into a gasometer, feed the seventy or eighty lamps of the
town. The thrifty and practical Chinese, who have preceded us in so many
useful discoveries, have for centuries made a like use of the many
gaseous emanations in the provinces of Yunnan, Szutschuan, Kuangsi, and
Schansi, by leading the inflammable air in pipes, wherever they want it
for lighting or cooking.
But there is no place in the world more remarkable for its burning
springs than Baku, on the western coast of the Caspian Sea, where the
holy and eternal fires are worshipped by the pious Parsees as the
special symbol of the Almighty.
Like most of the cloisters and convents of the Orient, which are exposed
to the incursions of plundering hordes, Aleschga, the temple dedicated
to the worship of fire, is a fortified square inclosing a large
courtyard, and capable of being defended from the terraced roof. The
outer wall forms at the same time the back of the cells, which front the
yard. Over the entrance gate, which is situated to the north, rises a
high bastion or tower, serving as an additional defence, from the
summit, of which the visitor enjoys after sunset the fantastic view of
the flames which, untarnished by smoke, rise on all sides from rents and
crevices in the neighbouring steppe, and wave their bright summits to
and fro like tongues of fire. In the centre of the court stands a square
tower supported by four columns, and inclosing a basin-like excavation,
three or four feet in diameter, into which the gas is conducted by a
pipe from sources beyond the walls of the temple. Four chimneys at the
four corners of the tower are fed in a similar manner. From the centre
of the tower rises a trident, called _Thirsul_. The Parsees relate that
the Devil once got possession of the earth, and reigned with despotic
fury. But man in his distress prayed to the Almighty, and an angel came
down and planted this identical trident in the earth as a token that the
dominion of his Satanic Majesty had ceased. Round the court are twenty-
two cells, like those of a Catholic convent. They are very small, and,
with the exception of a ragged rug, wholly without furniture; but each
of them is provided with a gas pipe, which can be opened or closed at
pleasure, and furnishes light and warmth to the inmate. Near the temple
a well has been dug fifty feet deep, in which the gas accumulates in
larger quantities. Koch (‘Wanderungen im Oriente,’ 1843–4) tells us that
he here enjoyed a sight more wonderful and surprising than any he had
ever witnessed before. A carpet was spread over the mouth of the well to
prevent the gas from escaping. After a few minutes, a priest seized a
bundle of brushwood, in which a piece of burning paper had been stuck,
and flung it into the well, after quickly removing the carpet. The
strangers had previously been warned to keep at some distance, and the
priest and his assistants likewise ran off as fast as they could. About
half a minute after the fire-brand had been cast into the pit, a
terrific explosion took place, and a vast column of fire, in the shape
of an inverted cone (from the gas spreading out as soon as it emerges
from the pit), ascended to the skies.
How long the fires of Baku may have been burning is unknown, but it is
very probable that they did not exist before the Christian era. No Greek
or Roman author mentions them, and it is not before the tenth century
that Arab writers take notice of Baku and its wonders. When the
Sassanides restored the religion of Zoroaster, the attention of these
fire-worshipping princes was naturally directed to a place where fire
gushes pure and unbidden from the earth. They raised a temple on the
spot, and thousands of pilgrims wandered to the holy fires of Baku. But
when the fanatical Arabs overthrew the Persian Empire, times of
persecution and distress began for the Parsees; and still later they
were almost entirely extirpated by the hordes of Tamerlane. During the
last centuries fire-worshipping was again introduced by the Indians,
who, after the Sefides had ascended the Persian throne, gradually
settled in the Caspian provinces, and whose number must have been
considerable, as travellers inform us that in the latter half of the
seventeenth century 200 rich Indian merchants were residing in the town
of Schemachi. But the anarchical times which followed the usurpation of
Nadir Schah forced most of these Indians to leave their adopted country,
and since then only solitary pilgrims have found their way to Baku. But
the number even of these is constantly diminishing, although the
Russians, to whom the sanctuary now belongs, allow them full freedom of
access. When Koch was at Baku, he found there only five Indians from
Mooltan, whither the majority would gladly have returned, had they but
possessed the necessary means. Their squalid appearance and tattered
raiment formed the strongest imaginable contrast to the splendour of the
element they worshipped. Among them was a Fakir, who had made a vow
constantly to remain in the same position absorbed in religious
contemplation, and who for sixteen years had never moved from the spot.
The burning springs gush out not only from the ground near the temple
and in other parts of the peninsula of Abscheron, but even from the
bottom of the neighbouring Caspian Sea; and as Sir Charles Lyell saw
carburetted hydrogen rise in countless bubbles through the crystal
waters above the falls of the Niagara, and shoot up in bright flames at
the approach of a light, so Dr. Abich mentions a spot in the Gulf of
Baku where the inflammable gas issues with such force, and in so great a
quantity, from the bottom, which is there three fathoms deep, that a
small boat is in danger of being overturned when coming too near it.
As gas springs most frequently occur in districts which have been the
former seats of volcanic action, and as similar exhalations often arise
from still active craters, they are supposed by many geologists to be
the last remaining traces of an expiring volcanic energy. Bischoff
considers the carbonic acid of the German gas springs to be developed by
the decomposition of carbonate of lime by volcanic heat or heated water.
A phenomenon which is sometimes found connected with gas springs is that
of the mud volcanoes, which may be described as cones of a ductile,
unctuous clay, formed by the continued evolution of a sulphurous and
inflammable gas, spurting up waves and lumps of liquid mud. These
remarkable cauldrons are found in many parts of the world, in the Island
of Milo, in Italy, in Iceland, in India, about 120 miles from the mouths
of the Indus, on the coast of Arracan, in Birmah, in Java, Columbia,
Nicaragua, and Trinidad, but probably nowhere on a grander scale than at
either extremity of the chain of the Caucasus, towards the Caspian on
the east and the Sea of Azof on the west, where in the peninsula of
Taman, and on the opposite coast of the Crimea, near Kertsch, vast
numbers of mud volcanoes are scattered, some of them 250 feet high.
Their operations have apparently been going on for countless ages, and
have covered a great extent of land with their products.
[Illustration: MUD VOLCANOES OF TRINIDAD.]
The Macaluba, in Sicily, which owes its name to the Arabs, is the mud
volcano most anciently known. It is mentioned by Plato in his ‘Phædon,’
and has been described by Strabo. It is situated five miles to the north
of Girgenti, on a hill of a conical shape, truncated at the top, and 150
feet high. The summit is a plain half a mile round, and the whole
surface is covered with thick mud. The depth of the mud, which is
supposed to be immense, is unknown. There is not the slightest
appearance of vegetation upon it. In the rainy season the mud is much
softened; the surface is even, and there is a general ebullition over
it, which is accompanied with a very sensible rumbling noise. In the dry
season the mud acquires greater consistency, but its motion still goes
on. The plain assumes a form somewhat convex; a number of little cones
are thrown up, which rarely rise to the height of two feet. Each of them
has a crater, where black mud is seen in constant agitation, and
incessantly emitting bubbles of air. With these the mud insensibly
rises, and as soon as the crater is full of it, it disgorges. The
residue sinks, and the cone has a free crater, until a new emission
takes place.
Such is the ordinary state of the Macaluba; but from time to time the
hill becomes subject to alarming convulsions. Slight earthquake shocks
are felt at the distance of two or three miles, accompanied with
internal noises resembling thunder. These increase for several days, and
are followed at last by a prodigious spout of mud, earth, and stones,
which rises two or three hundred feet in the air.
Similar paroxysmal explosions have been observed in the Caucasian mud
volcanoes. In February 1794, the Obu, in the peninsula of Taman, had an
eruption accompanied with a dreadful noise, and an earthquake which
radiated from the cone, and was felt as far as Ekaterinodor, at a
distance of fifty-five leagues. At the beginning of the eruption flames
were seen, which rose to a prodigious height, and lasted about half an
hour. At the same time dense clouds of smoke escaped from the crater,
and mud and stones were cast up to the height of 3,000 feet. Six streams
of mud, the largest of which was half a mile long, flowed from the
volcano, and their volume is said to have been equal to twenty-two
millions of cubic feet.
Violent eruptive symptoms accompanied the formation of a new mud volcano
in the vicinity of Baku on the Caspian. On November 27, 1827, flames
blazed up to an extraordinary height for three hours, and continued for
twenty hours more to rise about three feet above a crater from which mud
was ejected. At another point in the same district, where flames issued,
fragments of rock, of large size, were hurled up into the air and
scattered around.
The phenomena exhibited by the Macaluba and other mud cauldrons are
certainly very distinct from those of true volcanoes, since no scoriæ or
lava or heated matters of any kind are sent forth, the mud being
described as cold when emitted, although the gas, whose violent escape
throws it up, is sometimes ignited. Hence geologists commonly regard
these phenomena as entirely distinct from the volcanic, and ascribe
their origin to chemical action going on at no great depth beneath the
surface, among the constituents of certain stratified matters; while
other scientific authorities declare them to be as much connected with
internal igneous agency as any other eruptive phenomena. Their
occurrence in districts not remote from the sites of vast volcanic
disturbance, and their occasional violent paroxysms, certainly afford
much support to this view, and show that it is probably the same power,
in different degrees of energy, which casts up the mud of the Macaluba
and pours forth the lava-streams of Cotopaxi.
CHAPTER IX.
EARTHQUAKES.
Extent of Misery inflicted by great Earthquakes—Earthquake Regions—
Earthquakes in England—Great Number of Earthquakes—Vertical and
undulatory Shocks—Warnings of Earthquakes—Sounds attending
Earthquakes—Remarkable Displacements of Objects—Extent and Force of
Seismic Wave Motion—Effects of Earthquakes on the Sea—Enormous Waves
on Coasts—Oscillations of the Ocean—Fissures, Landslips, and
shattering Falls of Rock caused by Earthquakes—Causes of Earthquakes—
Probable Depth of Focus—Opinions of Sir Charles Lyell and Mr. Poulett
Scrope—Impressions produced on Man and Animals by Earthquakes.
Of all the destructive agencies of nature there is none to equal the
earthquake. The hurricane is comparatively weak in its fury; the
volcanic eruption generally confines its rage to the neighbourhood of
the labouring mountain, but a great earthquake may cover a whole land
with ruins.
The terrible subterranean revolution which convulsed all Asia Minor and
Syria in the reign of Tiberius, destroyed twelve celebrated cities in a
single night. The sun, which on setting had gilded their temples and
palaces with his parting rays, beheld them prostrate on the following
morning.
In A.D. 115 Antioch was the centre of a great commotion. The city was
full of soldiers under Trajan; heavy thunder, excessive winds, and
subterranean noises were heard; the earth shook, the houses fell; the
cries of people buried in the ruins passed unheeded. The Emperor leaped
from a window, while mountains were broken and thrown down, and rivers
disappeared, and were replaced by others in a new situation. Four
centuries later (May 20, 526) the same doomed city was totally subverted
by an earthquake, when it is reported that 250,000 persons perished.
Similar catastrophes, in which thousands and thousands of victims were
suddenly destroyed, have frequently occurred in Peru and Chili, in the
West Indies and Central America, in the Moluccas and Java, in the
countries bordering on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea; but a bare
mention of the loss of life conveys but a faint idea of the extent of
misery inflicted by one of those great earthquakes which mark with an
ominous shade many large tracts of the earth’s surface.
We must picture to ourselves the slow lingering death which is the fate
of many—some buried alive, others burnt in the fire which almost
invariably bursts out in a city where hundreds of dwellings have
suddenly been laid prostrate—the numbers who escaped with loss of limbs
or serious bodily injuries, and the surviving multitude, suddenly
reduced to penury and want.
In the Calabrian earthquake of 1783, it is supposed that about a fourth
part of the inhabitants of Polistena and of some other towns were buried
alive, and might have been saved had there been no want of hands; but in
so general a calamity, where each was occupied with his own misfortunes
or those of his family, help could seldom be procured. ‘It frequently
happened,’ says Sir Charles Lyell, ‘that persons in search of those most
dear to them could hear their moans, could recognise their voices, were
certain of the exact spot where they lay buried beneath their feet, yet
could afford them no succour. The piled mass resisted all their
strength, and rendered their efforts of no avail. At Terranuova four
Augustin monks, who had taken refuge in a vaulted sacristy, the arch of
which continued to support a vast pile of ruins, made their cries heard
for the space of four days. One only of the brethren of the whole
convent was saved, and of what avail was his strength to remove the
enormous weight of rubbish which had overwhelmed his companions? He
heard their voices die away gradually, and when afterwards their four
corpses were disinterred, they were found clasped in each other’s arms.’
Affecting narratives are preserved of mothers saved after the fifth,
sixth, and even seventh day of their interment, when their infants or
children had perished with hunger. In his work on the great Neapolitan
earthquake of 1857, Mr. Mallet, from innumerable narratives of personal
peril and sad adventure, selects the distressing case of a noble family
of Monte Murro, as affording a vivid picture of the terrors of an
earthquake night. Don Andrea del Fino, the owner of one of the few
houses in the city which escaped total destruction, was with his wife in
bed, his daughter sleeping in an adjacent chamber on the principal
floor. At the first shock his wife, who was awake, leaped from bed, and
immediately after, a mass of the vaulting above came down, and buried
her sleeping husband. At the same moment, the vault above their
daughter’s room fell in upon her. From the light and hollow construction
of the vaults neither was at once killed. The signora escaped by leaping
from the front window, she scarcely knew how. For more than two hours
she wandered, unnoticed, amongst the mass of terrified survivors in the
streets, before she could obtain aid from her own tenants and
dependants, to extricate her husband. They got him out after more than
eighteen hours’ entombment—alive, indeed, but maimed and lame for life.
His daughter was dead. As he lay longing despairingly for release from
the rubbish, which a second shock, an hour after the first, had so
shaken and closed in around him that he could scarcely breathe, he
heard, but a few feet off, her agonising cries and groans grow fainter
and fainter, until at last they died away. His wife, to whose devotion
his own life was owing, had escaped unhurt.
Unfortunately man too often vies with the brute forces of nature to
increase the horrors of a great earthquake. As the arm of the law is
paralysed by the general panic, thieves and ruffians are not slow to
avail themselves of their opportunity. Thus in the Calabrian catastrophe
of 1783, nothing could be more atrocious than the conduct of the
peasants, who abandoned the farms and flocked in great numbers into the
towns—not to rescue their countrymen from a lingering death, but to
plunder. They dashed through the streets amid tottering walls and clouds
of dust, trampling beneath their feet the bodies of the wounded and half
buried, and often stripping them, while yet living, of their clothes.
From the vast ruin and misery they entail, it is evident that where
earthquakes are frequent, there can never be perfect security of
property even under the best government; and as the fruits collected by
the labour of many years may be lost in an instant, the progress of
civilisation and national wealth must necessarily be retarded.
‘Earthquakes alone,’ says Mr. Darwin, ‘are sufficient to destroy the
prosperity of any country. If beneath England the now inert subterranean
forces should exert those powers which most assuredly in former
geological ages they have exerted, how completely would the entire
condition of the land be changed! What would become of the lofty houses,
thickly packed cities, great manufactories, the beautiful public and
private edifices? If the new period of disturbance were first to
commence by some great earthquake in the dead of the night, how terrific
would be the carnage! England would at once be bankrupt; all papers,
records, and accounts would from that moment be lost. Government, being
unable to collect the taxes, and failing to maintain its authority, the
hand of violence and rapine would remain uncontrolled. In every large
town famine would go forth, pestilence and death following in its
train.’
Fortunately the experience of many ages shows that the regions subject
to these terrible catastrophes are confined to a comparatively small
part of the surface of the globe. Thus Southern Italy and Sicily; the
tract embracing the Canaries, the Azores, Portugal, and Morocco; Asia
Minor, Syria, and the Caucasus; the Arabian shore of the Red Sea; the
East Indian Archipelago; the West Indies, Nicaragua, Quito, Peru, and
Chili, are particularly liable to destructive shocks.
But beyond these limits slighter earthquakes are of far more common
occurrence than is generally supposed, and probably they leave no part
of the world entirely undisturbed. From the year 1821 to 1830 no less
than 115 earthquakes have been felt to the north of the Alps, and since
the year 1089, 225 are cited in the annals of England. Some of these
earthquakes seem to have but just stopped at the point when a slight
increase of their force would have covered the land with ruins. In 1574,
on the 26th of February, between five and six in the evening, an
earthquake was felt at York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, and
Bristol. Norton Chapel was filled with worshippers; they were nearly all
overthrown, and fled in terror, thinking that the dead were unearthed or
that the chapel was falling. Six years later, on the 6th of April, at 6
P.M., all England was thrown into consternation. The great bell at
Westminster began to toll; the students at the Temple started up from
table and rushed into the street, knives in hand; a part of the Temple
Church fell, and stones dropped from St. Paul’s. Two stones fell in
Christ’s Church, and crushed two persons. In rushing out of the church
many were lamed, and there was a shower of chimneys in the streets. At
Sandwich, the occurrence was marked by the violence of the sea, which
made ships run foul of each other; and at Dover a part of the
fortifications fell with the rock which supported it.
On the 6th October 1863, a movement, though gentle when compared to the
preceding instances, was felt from the English Channel to the Mersey,
and from Hereford to Leamington and Oxford. The Malvern range was about
the centre of the area, as it has often been before. Even in alluvial
Holland, six or eight slight earthquakes have been felt during the last
century. The industrious researches of Kluge show that, during the eight
years from 1850 to 1857, no less than 4,620 earthquakes—a great
proportion of which (509) fell to the share of Southern Europe—have been
noticed in both hemispheres; and when we remember that a very
considerable part of the globe is still either totally unknown or
removed by the barbarous condition of its inhabitants from all
intercourse with the scientific world, and that, consequently, the above
list must necessarily be incomplete, it is very probable that not a day
passes without some agitation of the surface of the earth in some place
or other.
A violent earthquake almost always consists of several shocks following
each other in rapid succession. Sometimes they are preceded by slighter
vibrations; at other times they suddenly convulse the land without any
previous notice. In most instances, each shock lasts but a few seconds;
but this is enough to ruin the work of ages. Three violent commotions
within five minutes destroyed the town of Caraccas on March 26, 1812;
and the earthquake which, in 1692, desolated Jamaica lasted but three
minutes. On January 11, 1839, two shocks within thirty seconds covered
Martinique, and the whole range of the Lesser Antilles, with ruins. But
a violent earthquake, though itself but of short duration, is generally
followed by a series of secondary shocks, which are repeated at
gradually widening intervals and with decreasing energy, so that if
these subsequent tremors be taken into account, it may often be said to
last for weeks, or even months. Thus, to cite but one instance, the
earthquake of October 21, 1766, destroyed the whole town of Cumana in a
few minutes, but during the following fourteen months the earth was in a
constant vibratory motion, and scarce an hour passed without a shock
being felt.
In countries where earthquakes are comparatively rare (for instance in
the south of Europe) the belief is very general that oppressive heat,
stillness of the air, and a misty horizon are always forerunners of the
phenomenon. But this popular opinion is not confirmed by the experience
of trustworthy observers, who have lived for years in countries such as
Cumana, Quito, Peru, and Chili, where the ground trembles frequently and
violently. Humboldt experienced earthquakes during every state of the
weather, serene and dry, rainy and stormy.
Brute animals, being more sensitive than men of the slightest movement
of the earth, are said to evince extraordinary alarm, and it has been
often observed that even the dull hog shows symptoms of uneasiness
previous to the shock. During the great Neapolitan earthquake of 1857 an
unusual halo-like light was seen in the sky before, and not long before,
the shock. Mr. Mallet was at first inclined to look upon this notion as
a superstitious tale; but, finding it widely diffused in a country where
communication is bad and news travels slowly, no longer doubted that it
was founded on fact.[10] Conjectures would be useless as to its nature,
but future observation directed to the point may determine whether some
sort of auroral light may emanate from the vast depths of rock formation
under the enormous tensions and compressions that must precede the final
crash and rupture; or whether volcanic action, going on in the unseen
depths below, may give rise to powerful disturbances of electric
equilibrium, and hence to the development of light; just as from
volcanic mountains in eruption lightnings continually flash from the
huge volumes of steam and floating ashes above the crater. Humboldt is
also of opinion that, though in general the revolutions which take place
below the surface of the earth are not announced beforehand by any
meteorological process, or a peculiar appearance of the sky, it is not
improbable that during violent shocks some change may occur in the
condition of the atmosphere. Thus, during the earthquake in the
Piedmontese valleys of Pelis and Clusson, great alterations were
observed in the electrical tension of the atmosphere without any
appearance of a thunder-storm.
Footnote 10:
Mallet, ‘The Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857,’ vol. i. p. 323.
Earthquakes are generally attended with sounds, sometimes like the
howling of a storm, or the rumbling of subterranean thunder, at others
like the clashing of iron chains, or as if a number of heavily laden
waggons were rolling rapidly over the pavement, or as if enormous masses
of glass were suddenly shivered to pieces. As solid bodies are excellent
conductors of sound (burnt clay, for instance, propagating it ten or
twelve times more rapidly than the air), the subterranean noise may be
heard at a vast distance from the primary seat of the earthquake. In
Caraccas, in the grass-plains of Calabozo, and on the banks of the Rio
Apure, which falls into the Orinoco, a dreadful thunder-like sound was
everywhere heard on April 30, 1812, without any simultaneous trembling
of the earth, at the time when, at the distance of 158 geographical
miles, the volcano of St. Vincent, in the Lesser Antilles, was pouring
out of its crater a mighty lava-stream. This was, according to distance,
as if an eruption of Vesuvius were heard in the north of France. In the
year 1744, during the great eruption of the volcano Cotopaxi, a
subterranean noise like the firing of cannon was heard at Honda on the
Magdalena river. But the crater of Cotopaxi is 17,000 feet higher than
Honda, and both points, situated at a distance of 109 geographical
miles, are moreover separated by the colossal mountain masses of Quito,
Pasto, and Popayan, and by numberless ravines and deep valleys. The
sound was certainly transmitted, not through the air, but through the
earth, and must have proceeded from a very considerable depth.
But noise is not the necessary attendant of an earthquake, for many
instances are known in which the most violent shocks have been
completely noiseless. No subterranean sounds were heard during the
terrific earthquake which destroyed Riobamba on February 4, 1797, and
the same circumstance is mentioned in the narratives of many of the
Chilian earthquakes.
The phenomenon of sound, when unaccompanied by any perceptible
vibration, makes a peculiarly deep impression on the mind, even of those
who have long inhabited a country subject to frequent earthquakes. They
tremble at the idea of the catastrophe which may follow. A remarkable
instance of a long protracted noise without any trembling of the earth
occurred in 1784, at the wealthy mining town of Guanaxuato in Mexico,
where the rolling of subterranean thunder, with now and then a louder
crash, was heard for more than a month, without the slightest shock,
either on the surface of the earth, or in the neighbouring silver mines,
which are 1,500 feet deep. The noise was confined to a small space, so
that a few miles from the town it was no longer audible. Never before
had this phenomenon been known to occur in the Mexican highlands, nor
has it been repeated since.
Earthquake shocks are either vertical or undulatory. A vertical shock,
which is felt immediately above the seat or focus of the subterranean
disturbance, causes a movement up and down. Like an exploding mine, it
frequently jerks movable bodies high up into the air. Thus, during the
great earthquake of Riobamba, the bodies of many of the inhabitants were
thrown upon the hill of La Culla, which rises to the height of several
hundred feet at the other side of the Lican torrent; and during the
earthquake of Chili in 1837, a large mast, planted thirty feet deep in
the ground at Fort San Carlos, and propped with iron bars, was thrown
upwards, so that a round hole remained behind.
Although to the inhabitants of a shaken district the undulatory wave or
vibration of an earthquake appears to radiate horizontally outwards from
the spot on the surface where it is first felt, the force does not
really operate in a horizontal direction, like a wave caused by a pebble
on the surface of a pond; for at every point, except that immediately
above the focus of the shock, it comes up obliquely from below, causing
the ground to move forwards and then backwards in a, more or less
horizontal direction. As a ship, yielding to the oscillatory movements
of the waves, alternately inclines to one side or the other, so, during
the more violent undulations of the soil, the objects on its surface are
momentarily moved from their vertical position, and often considerably
inclined towards the horizon. Thus during the great earthquake which
convulsed the valley of the Mississippi in 1811–12, Mr. Bringier, an
engineer of New Orleans, who was on horseback near New Madrid, where
some of the severest shocks were experienced, saw the trees bend as the
wave-motion of the earthquake passed under them, and immediately
afterwards recover their position. The transit of the wave through the
woods was marked by the crash of countless branches, first heard on one
side and then on the other. It must have been awful to see the giants of
the forest thus move to and fro like a corn-field agitated by the wind!
Very remarkable displacements of objects are not seldom caused by
earthquakes, such as the rotation of the blocks of columns or the
turning of statues on their pedestals.
At Lima, which, owing to its repeated destructions by earthquakes, is
properly a city of ruins, Professor Dana saw two obelisks with the upper
stone on each displaced and turned round on its axis about fifteen
degrees in a direction from north to east. These rotations by
earthquakes have been attributed by some authors to an actual rotatory
movement in the earthquake vibration; but it has lately been shown by
Mr. Mallet that this hypothesis is untenable and unnecessary, as a
simple vibration back and forth is all that is required to produce a
rotatory motion in the stone of a column, provided that stone be
attached below more strongly on one side of the centre than on the
opposite.
The wave-motion of an earthquake sometimes spreads over enormous spaces.
The shocks of the earthquake of New Granada which took place in the
night from the 16th to the 17th of June 1826, were noticed over a
surface of 750,000 square miles. The earthquake of Valdivia (February
20, 1835) was felt southwards on the distant island of Chiloe to the
north as far as Copiapo, in Mendoza to the east of the Andes, and on the
Island of Juan Fernandez, 300 miles from the coast. Supposing these
effects to have taken place at corresponding distances in Europe, all
the land would have trembled from the North Sea to the Mediterranean,
and from Ireland to the centre of France.
It is evident that the extent and force of the wave-motion of an
earthquake must in a great measure depend upon the nature of the rocks
through which it is transmitted. It will vibrate more easily through
solid homogeneous masses, while in alluvial deposits, or in a soil
composed of sand and loose conglomerate, its undulations will be
propagated irregularly and its effects be far more destructive. This is
particularly the case where the alluvial deposits repose on a substratum
of hard rock. Thus the devastations of the Calabrian earthquake of 1783
were most apparent in the plain of Oppido, in those parts where the
newer tertiary strata rest upon granite. The earthquake wave generally
follows the direction of mountain-chains, and but rarely crosses them.
The great Chilian earthquakes, which often propagate their vibrations to
distances of many hundred miles along the western foot of the Andes,
remain unfelt on their eastern border; while the earthquakes along the
shores of Venezuela, Caraccas, and New Granada rarely transmit their
vibrations beyond the high mountain-chains which run parallel with the
coast. This is probably due to the numerous dislocations, rents, and
caverns which are produced by the elevation of the mountain-chains, and
necessarily serve as barriers to the propagation of the earthquake wave.
Severe earthquakes are not seldom accompanied by a violent agitation of
the sea. First, at the instant of the shock, the water swells high up on
the beach with a gentle motion, and then as quietly recedes; secondly,
some time afterwards, the whole body of the sea retires from the coast,
and then returns in waves of overwhelming force. The first movement
seems to be an immediate consequence of the earthquake affecting
differently a fluid and a solid, so that their respective levels are
slightly deranged; but the second is a far more important phenomenon.
‘Some authors,’ says Mr. Darwin, ‘have attempted to explain it by
supposing that the sea retains its level, while the land oscillates
upwards; but surely the water close to the land, even on a rather steep
coast, would partake of the motion of the bottom; moreover, similar
movements of the sea have occurred at islands far distant from the chief
line of disturbance. I suspect (but the subject is a very obscure one)
that a wave, however produced, _first draws the water from the shore_ on
which it is advancing to break. I have observed that this happens with
the little waves from the paddles of a steamboat. From the great wave
not immediately following the earthquake, but sometimes after the
interval of even half-an-hour, and from distant islands being affected
similarly with the coasts near the focus of the disturbance, it appears
that the wave first rises in the offing, and, as this is of general
occurrence, the cause must be general. I suspect we must look to the
line where the less disturbed waters of the deep ocean join the water
nearer the coast which has partaken of the movements of the land, as the
place where the great wave is first generated; it would also appear that
the wave is larger or smaller according to the extent of shoal water
which has been agitated together with the bottom on which it rested.’
The following examples sufficiently prove that no storm, however
violent, is capable of raising such prodigious waves as an earthquake.
In the year 1692 the town of Kingston in Jamaica was almost totally
destroyed by a huge earthquake wave. A frigate which lay in port was
carried forwards over the houses and stranded in the middle of the town.
In his ‘Principles of Geology,’ Sir Charles Lyell relates that, during
the Calabrian earthquake of 1783 the Prince of Scilla had persuaded a
great part of his vassals to betake themselves to their fishing boats
for safety, and he himself had gone on board. On the night of February
5, when some of the people were sleeping in the boats, and others on a
level plain slightly elevated above the sea, the earth rocked and large
masses of rock were thrown down with a dreadful crash upon the plain.
Immediately afterwards the sea, rising more than twenty feet above the
level of this low tract, rolled foaming over it and swept away the
multitude. It then retreated, but soon rushed back again with greater
violence, bringing back with it some of the bodies it had carried away.
At the same time every boat was sunk or dashed against the beach, and
some of them were swept far inland. The aged prince was killed, with
1,430 of his people.
After the earthquake which devastated the town of Lima on the 28th of
October 1746, the sea rose on the evening of the same day eighty feet
above its usual level in the neighbouring Bay of Callao, overwhelmed the
town, and destroyed nearly all the inhabitants. Of the twenty-three
ships which were lying in the harbour at the time, nineteen immediately
sank, while the four others were thrown upon the land at the distance of
nearly a league.
Shortly after the shock which desolated Chili on the 20th of February
1835, a great wave was seen from the distance of three or four miles,
approaching in the middle of the Bay of Talcahuano with a smooth
outline, but tearing up cottages and trees along the shore, as it swept
onwards with irresistible force. At the head of the bay it broke in a
fearful line of white breakers, which rushed up to a height of twenty-
three vertical feet above the highest spring tides. Their force must
have been prodigious, for at the Fort a cannon with its carriage,
estimated at four tons in weight, was moved fifteen feet inwards. The
whole coast was strewed over with timber and furniture, as if a thousand
ships had been wrecked. As Mr. Darwin walked along the shore, he
observed that numerous fragments of rock, which, from the marine
productions adhering to them, must recently have been lying in deep
water, had been cast up high on the beach. One of these was six feet
long, three broad, and two thick.
During the dreadful earthquake which in 1868 raised the strip of land at
the western foot of the Andes from Iburra in Ecuador, to Iquique in
Peru, 1,200 miles in length, the receding sea uncovered the bay at
Iquique to the depth of four fathoms, and then, returning in an immense
wave, a mass of dark blue water, forty feet high, rushed over the
already ruined city, and swept away every trace of what had been a town.
One spectator, seeing the whole surface of the sea rise like a mountain,
ran for his life to the Pampa. The waves overtook him. Fighting with the
dark water, amidst wreck and ruin of every kind, carried back into the
bay, and again thrown back to the Pampa, wounded and half-naked, he
crept for safety into a hole of the sand, and waited sadly for the dawn.
At Arica, the British Vice-Consul, alarmed at the first shock, rushed
out of the house with his family, and made for the high ground, in just
terror of the expected sea-wave. Through the ruined town, amidst dead
and dying, half stifled with dust, they reached rising ground, and,
looking back, saw a dreadful sequel—the sea rushed in and left not a
vestige remaining of the lower part of Arica. Six vessels were lost in
the bay or tossed over rocks and houses; an American gunboat was whirled
away from her moorings, and laid, without a broken spar or tarnished
flag, high and dry on the sand-hills, a quarter of a mile from the sea.
As might be expected from the movable nature of water, the wave-motion
of earthquakes is frequently propagated to surprising distances over the
sea. The Chilian earthquake of 1835 produced oscillations of the ocean
that made themselves felt on the Sandwich Islands at a distance of 5,000
nautical miles. On Mauai, the sea retreated 120 feet, and then suddenly
returned with a tremendous wave that swept away the trees and houses on
the beach. In Hawaii, a large congregation had assembled for divine
service near Byron’s Bay. Suddenly the water began to sink, so that soon
a great part of the harbour was laid dry. The spectators hurried to the
shore to admire the astonishing spectacle, when a wave, rising twenty
feet above the usual tide-mark, inundated the land, destroyed sixty-six
huts, and drowned eleven of the islanders, though the best swimmers in
the world. So far from its starting-point did the South American
earthquake seek its victims. Fifteen hours and a half after the great
earthquake of Arica (1868) the water-wave undulating over the vast
Pacific was felt at Chatham Islands, a distance of 6,300 miles, and an
hour later at New Zealand.
The enormous powers which come into action during a great earthquake
show themselves not only in the destruction of edifices and the wide-
spread ruin so produced, but in the changes which they effect in the
configuration of the soil. Wherever masses of earth rest loosely upon a
sloped surface of subjacent rock, or where steep mountain crests overlie
wet and unctuous beds of shale, or where the rock itself is composed of
coherent material, or where river-banks are formed of precipitous masses
of clays, or where the corroding waters have undermined the ground, the
violent commotion caused by an earthquake cannot fail to produce
landslips, fissures, and falls of rock. In 1571, on the 17th of
February, the ground opened all at once at the ‘Wonder,’ near Putley,
not far from Marcle in Herefordshire; and a large part of the sloping
surface of the hill—twenty-six acres, it is said—descended with the
trees and sheep-folds, and continued in motion from Saturday to Monday,
masses of ground being turned round through half a circle in their
descent. This was a great landslip, said to have been occasioned by an
earthquake.
Earth-fissures were formerly supposed to be occasioned by a _stretching_
of the ground, occasioned by the wavy nature of the shocks; but Mr.
Mallet has shown that no earthquake wave can possibly produce any such
stretching, and considers them as cases of small and incipient landslips
caused by the shaking downwards of a loose mass. His own observations
left no doubt in his mind that the descriptions, given by the Neapolitan
Academy in their Historical Account of the Earthquake of 1783, of the
earth-fissures therein produced, and designated constantly by the
pompous term ‘voragines,’ are gross exaggerations, and that the well-
known Jamaica earth-fissures, that were said to have opened and closed
with the wave, and to have _bitten people in two_, must be regarded as
audacious fables.
‘The vulgar mind, filled from infancy with superstitious terrors as to
“the things under the earth,” is seized at once by the notion of these
fissures of profound and fabulous depth with fire and vapour of smoke
issuing from within their murky abysses; but they should cease to belong
to science.’
Enormous landslips are sometimes occasioned by earthquakes, but their
extent depends less upon the power and energy of the shock than upon the
conditions of unstable equilibrium presented by great masses of loose
material, through the configuration of the country. In consequence of
landslips or dislodgements of large masses of rock, alterations in the
flow or distribution of the waters frequently take place. Thus, brooks
or rivers are not seldom dammed, and temporary ponds or lakes created.
Permanent elevations of the land have been observed after some
earthquakes. Thus, after the violent shocks of November 19, 1822, a
great part of the coast of Chili was found to be raised several feet
above its previous level, and after the great earthquake which occurred
in New Zealand in the night of January 23, 1855, a large tract of land
was found to be permanently upraised from one to nine feet. Before the
shock there had been no room to pass between the sea and the base of a
perpendicular cliff called Muka-Muka, except for a short time at low
water, and the herdsmen were obliged to wait for low tide in order to
drive their cattle past the cliff. But immediately after the upheaval, a
gently sloping raised beach, more than 100 feet wide, was laid dry,
affording ample space at all states of the tide for the passage of man
and beast.
These permanent elevations have often been attributed to the immediate
agency of earthquakes; but Mr. Mallet proves this assumption to be a
fallacy, as the impulse of the earthquake wave even right above the
focus is utterly incapable of raising the level of the land by a height
much more than instrumentally appreciable, and there is not the least
evidence that any part of even this elevation is permanent. That
earthquakes occur along with, and as part of, a train of other
circumstances which do produce permanent elevation occasionally, and
that earthquakes are probably always the signals that the forces
producing elevation are operative, is another matter, with which that
erroneous or loosely expressed view should not be confounded.
The causes of earthquakes are still hidden in obscurity, and probably
will ever remain so, as these violent convulsions originate at depths
far below the reach of human observation. Mr. Mallet came to the
conclusion that the depth of the original Calabrian shock in 1857 did
not exceed seven or eight miles, and deduces from all the facts known as
to the movements of earthquakes, that the subterranean points where the
shocks originate perhaps never exceed thirty geographical miles, so
that, even supposing the central nucleus of the earth to be fluid, they
cannot possibly be due to the reaction of the internal ocean of molten
stone upon the solid shell with which it is enveloped, but must have
their seat within the latter. The existence of reservoirs of fused
matter at various depths in the solid earth-rind is quite sufficient to
account for all seismic and volcanic phenomena; for it is evident that
whenever rain-water, or the waters of the sea percolating through rocks,
gain access to these subterranean lakes of molten stone, steam must be
generated, the pressure of which will in many cases rend and dislocate
the incumbent masses.
‘During such movements,’ says Sir Charles Lyell, ‘fissures may be formed
and injected with gaseous or fluid matter, which may sometimes fail to
reach the surface, while at other times it may be expelled through
volcanic vents, stufas, and hot springs. When the strain on the rocks
has caused them to split, or the roofs of pre-existing fissures or
caverns have been made to fall in, vibratory jars will be produced and
propagated in all directions, like waves of sound through the crust of
the earth, with varying velocity, according to the violence of the
original shock, and the density or elasticity of the substance through
which they pass. They will travel, for example, faster through granite
than through limestone, and more rapidly through the latter than through
wet clay, but the rate will be uniform through the same homogeneous
medium.’
According to Mr. Poulett Scrope, the originating cause of the earthquake
must be sought in the expansion of some deeply seated mass of mineral
matter, owing to augmentation of temperature or diminution of pressure.
By this expansive force, the solid rocks above are suddenly rent
asunder, and whether below the sea or not, their violent disruption
produces a jarring vibration, which is propagated on either side through
their continuous masses in undulatory pulsations.
Some geologists are of opinion that earthquakes are frequently the
result of the subsiding, sinking in, or cracking of subterranean cavern
roofs, in consequence of the pressure of the superincumbent rocks. Small
local earthquakes may be explained by this theory; but terrible
convulsions which shake a whole continent evidently proceed from a far
more formidable cause, and are more satisfactorily explained by the
agency of subterranean heat and elastic vapours.
If, even during an ordinary storm, the black clouds, the howling of the
wind, the flashes of lightning, and the loud claps of thunder strike men
and brutes with fear, we may naturally expect to see terror carried to
its highest pitch by so dreadful a phenomenon as an earthquake. All
creatures living or burrowing under the earth—rats, mice, moles, snakes—
hastily creep forth from their subterranean abodes, though many no doubt
are gripped and suffocated by the suddenly moved soil before they can
effect their escape; the crocodile, generally silent, like our little
lizards, rushes out of the river and runs bellowing into the woods; the
hogs show symptoms of uneasiness; the horses tremble; the oxen huddle
together; and the fowls run about with discordant cries. On man, the
phenomenon makes a peculiarly deep impression.
‘A bad earthquake,’ says Mr. Darwin, ‘at once destroys our oldest
associations. The earth, the very emblem of solidity, has moved beneath
our feet like a thin crust over a fluid. One second of time has created
in the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection
would not have produced.’ We can no longer trust the soil on which we
stand, and feel ourselves completely at the mercy of some unknown
destructive power, which at any moment, without forewarning, can destroy
our property or our lives. But as first impressions are always the
deepest, so habit renders man callous even to the terrors of an ordinary
earthquake. In countries where slight shocks are of frequent occurrence,
almost every vestige of fear vanishes from the minds of the natives, or
of the strangers whom a long residence has familiarised with the
phenomenon.
On the rainless coast of Peru, thunderstorms and hail are unknown. The
thunder of the storm is there replaced by the thunder which accompanies
the earthquake. But the frequent repetition of this subterranean tumult,
and the general belief that dangerous shocks occur only twice or thrice
in the course of a century, produce in Lima so great an indifference
towards slighter oscillations of the soil that they hardly attract more
attention than a hail-storm in Northern Europe.
CHAPTER X.
THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE OF LISBON.
A dreadful All Saints’ Day—The Victims of a Minute—Report of an Eye-
witness—Conflagration—Banditti—Pombal brings Order into Chaos—
Intrigues of the Jesuits—Damages caused by the Earthquake in other
Places—at Cadiz—in Barbary—Widespread Alarm—Remarks of Goethe on the
Earthquake.
History exhibits few catastrophes more terrible than that which was
caused by the great earthquake which, on November 1, 1755, levelled the
town of Lisbon to the dust. On other occasions, such as that of a siege,
a famine, or a plague, calamity approaches by degrees, giving its
victims time to measure its growth, and preparing them, as it were, to
sustain an increasing weight of misery; but here destruction fell upon
the devoted city with the rapidity of a flash of lightning.
[Illustration: THE EARTHQUAKE AT LISBON IN 1755.]
A bright sun shone over Lisbon on that fatal morning. The weather was as
mild and beautiful as on a fine summer’s day in England, when, about
forty minutes past nine, in the morning, an earthquake shock, followed
almost immediately by another and another, brought down convents,
churches, palaces, and houses in one common ruin, and, at a very
moderate computation, occasioned the loss of thirty thousand lives. ‘The
shocking sight of the dead bodies,’ says an eye-witness of the scene,
‘together with the shrieks and cries of those who were half buried in
the ruins, exceeds all description; for the fear and consternation were
so great that the most resolute person durst not stay a moment to remove
a few stones off the friend he loved most, though many might have been
saved by so doing; but nothing was thought of but self-preservation.
Getting into open places, and into the middle of streets, was the most
probable security. Such as were in the upper storeys of houses were, in
general, more fortunate than those who attempted to escape by the doors;
for they were buried under the ruins with the greatest part of the foot-
passengers; such as were in equipages escaped best, though their cattle
and drivers suffered severely; but those lost in houses and the streets
are very unequal in number to those that were buried in the ruins of
churches; for as it was a day of great devotion, and the time of
celebrating mass, all the churches in the city were vastly crowded; and
the number of churches here exceeds that of both London and Westminster;
and as the steeples are built high, they mostly fell with the roof of
the church, and the stones are so large that few escaped.’[11]
Footnote 11:
Philosophical Transactions, vol. xlix. part i. p. 404.
Many of those who were not crushed or disabled by the falling buildings
fled to the Tagus, vainly hoping that they might find there the safety
which they had lost on land. For, soon after the shock, the sea also
came rushing in like a torrent, though against wind and tide, and rising
in an enormous wave, overflowed its banks, devouring all it met on its
destructive path. Many large vessels sank at once; others, torn from
their anchors, disappeared in the vortex, or, striking against each
other, were shattered to pieces. A fine new stone quay, where about
three thousand persons had assembled for safety, slipped into the river,
and every one was lost; nor did so much as a single body appear
afterwards.
Had the misery ended here, it might in some degree have admitted of
redress; for, though lives could not be restored, yet a great part of
the immense riches that were in the ruins might have been recovered; but
a new calamity soon put an end to such hopes, for, in about two hours
after the shock, fires broke out in three different parts of the city,
caused by the goods and the kitchen fires being all jumbled together.
About this time also, a fresh gale suddenly springing up, made the fire
rage with such violence that, at the end of three days, the greatest
part of the city was reduced to ashes. What the earthquake had spared
fell a prey to the fire, and the flames consumed thousands of mutilated
victims, who, incapable of flight, lay half-buried in the ruins.
According to a popular report, which, true or not, shows the hatred in
which the Holy Office was held, the Inquisition was the first building
that fell down, and probably more than one inquisitor, who, in his life-
time, had sent scores of Jews or heretics to the stake, was now, in his
turn, burnt alive.
As if the unshackled elements were not sufficient agents of destruction,
the prisons also cast forth their lawless denizens, and a host of
malefactors, rejoicing in the public calamity which paralysed the arm of
justice, added rapine and murder to the miseries of the city.
More than 60,000 persons are supposed to have perished in Lisbon from
all these various causes. The total loss of property was estimated at
fifty millions of dollars, an enormous sum for a small country, and in
times when money was far more valuable than at present. A few shocks
sufficed to destroy the treasures accumulated by the savings of many
generations.
The royal family was at this time residing in the small palace of Belem,
about a league out of town, and thus escaped being buried among the
ruins of the capital—a fortunate occurrence in the midst of so many
misfortunes; for the anarchy that must have ensued from the destruction
of all authority would have filled the cup of misery to the brim. As it
was, Government seemed utterly incapable of contending with a disaster
of such colossal proportions. ‘What is to be done?’ said the helpless
king to his minister Carvalho, Marquis of Pombal, who, on entering the
council-chamber, found his sovereign vainly seeking for advice among his
weeping and irresolute courtiers: ‘how can we alleviate the chastisement
which Divine justice has imposed upon us?’ ‘Sire! by burying the dead
and taking care of the living,’ was the ready answer of the great
statesman, whose noble bearing and confident mien at once restored the
king’s courage. From that moment José bestowed a boundless confidence
upon Pombal. Without losing a single moment, the minister, invested with
full powers, threw himself into a carriage, and hastened with all speed
to the scene of destruction. Wherever his presence was most needed,
there was he sure to be found. For several days and nights he never left
his carriage, whence, incessantly active in his efforts to reduce chaos
to order, he issued no less than two hundred decrees, all bearing the
stamp of a master-mind. Troops from the provinces were summoned in all
haste, and concentrated round the capital, which no one was allowed to
leave without permission, so that the robbers, who had enriched
themselves with the plunder of palaces and churches, were unable to
escape with their spoils.
In all his numerous ordinances Carvalho neglected none of the details
necessary for insuring their practical utility, writing many of them on
his knees with a pencil, and sending them, without loss of time, to the
various officers charged with their execution. His wise regulations for
ensuring a speedy supply and a regular distribution of provisions
averted famine. Great fears were entertained of pestilential disorders,
in consequence of the putrid exhalations of so many corpses, which it
was impossible to bury. To prevent this additional misfortune, Carvalho
induced the Patriarch to give orders that the bodies of the dead should
be cast into the sea, with only such religious ceremonies as
circumstances permitted.
But the Jesuits, the mortal enemies of the enlightened minister, did not
lose this opportunity of intriguing against him, and openly ascribed the
catastrophe to the wrath of God against an impious Government. Thus
Pombal had not only to cope with the disastrous effects of the
earthquake, but also with the venomous attacks of hypocritical bigots,
in spite of whose clamours he interdicted all public processions and
devotional exercises that were calculated still further to inflame the
excited minds of the populace.
Though Lisbon was the chief sufferer from the great earthquake of 1755,
the shocks which destroyed the capital of Portugal proved disastrous in
many other places, and vibrated far and wide over a considerable portion
of the globe. St. Ubes was nearly swallowed up by the sudden rising of
the sea. At Cadiz the shocks were so violent that the water in the
cisterns washed backwards and forwards so as to make a great froth upon
it. No damage was done, on account of the excessive strength of the
buildings; but, about an hour after, an immense wave, at least 60 feet
higher than common, was seen approaching from the sea. It broke against
the west part of the town, which is very rocky, and where, fortunately,
the cliffs abated a great deal of its force. At last it burst upon the
walls, destroyed part of the fortifications, and swept away huge pieces
of cannon. The strong causeway which connects the town with the Island
of Leon, was utterly destroyed, and more than fifty people drowned that
were on it at the time.
In Seville a number of houses were thrown down, and the bells were set
a-ringing in Malaga. In Italy, Germany, and France, in Holland and in
Sweden, in Great Britain and in Ireland, the lakes and rivers were
violently agitated. The water in Loch Lomond rose suddenly and violently
against its banks, so that a large stone lying at some distance from the
shore, in shallow water, was moved from its place, and carried to dry
land, leaving a deep furrow in the ground along which it had moved. At
Kinsale, in Ireland, a great body of water suddenly burst into the
harbour, and with such violence that it broke the cables of two vessels,
each moored with two anchors, and of several boats which lay near the
town. The vessels were whirled round several times by an eddy formed in
the water, and then hurried back again with the same rapidity as before.
London was shaken, the midland counties disturbed, and one high cliff in
Yorkshire threw down its half-separated rocks. At Töplitz, in Bohemia,
between eleven and twelve o’clock, the mineral waters increased so much
in quantity that all the baths ran over. About half an hour before, the
spring grew turbid and flowed muddy, and, having stopped entirely for
nearly a minute, broke forth again with prodigious violence, driving
before it a considerable quantity of reddish ochre. After this, it
became clear, and flowed as pure as before, but supplying more water
than usual, and that hotter and more impregnated with its medicinal
substances.
In Barbary, the earthquake was felt nearly as severely as in Portugal.
Great part of the city of Algiers was destroyed; at Fez, Mequinez, and
Morocco many houses were thrown down, and numbers of persons were buried
in the ruins. At Tangiers and Sallee the waters rushed into the streets
with great violence, and when they retired they left behind them a great
quantity of fish.
Ships sailing on the distant Atlantic received such violent concussions
that it seemed as if they had struck upon a rock, and even America was
disturbed.
At the Island of Antigua the sea rose to such a height as had never been
known before, and at Barbadoes a tremendous wave overflowed the wharfs
and rushed into the streets. The remote Canadian lakes were seen to ebb
and flow in an extraordinary manner, and the Red Indian hunter felt the
last expiring pulsations of the great terrestrial shock which a few
hours before had overthrown the distant capital of Portugal.
Such were the extraordinary effects of this terrible earthquake, which
extended over a space of not less than four millions of square miles! Of
the enormous sensation it produced over all Europe, as well as of the
deep impression it made upon his own youthful mind, Goethe, then about
six years old, has given us a masterly account in his autobiography
(‘Dichtung und Wahrheit’).
‘For the first time,’ says the illustrious poet, ‘the boy’s peace of
mind was disturbed by an extraordinary event. On November 1, 1755, the
earthquake of Lisbon took place, and spread consternation over a world
which had long been accustomed to tranquillity and peace. A large and
splendid capital, the seat of wealth and commerce, suddenly falls a prey
to the most terrible disaster. The earth shakes, the sea rises, ships
are dashed against each other, houses, churches, and towers fall in; the
king’s palace is partly engulfed by the waves; the bursting earth seems
to vomit flames, for smoke and fire appear everywhere among the ruins.
Sixty thousand persons, but a moment before in the enjoyment of a
comfortable existence, are swept away, and they are the most fortunate
who no longer feel or remember their misery. The flames continue to
rage, along with a host of criminals whom the catastrophe has set at
liberty. The unfortunate survivors are exposed to robbery, to murder, to
every act of violence; and thus on all sides Nature replaces law by the
reign of unfettered anarchy. Swifter than the news could travel, the
effects of the earthquake had already spread over a wide extent of land;
in many places slighter commotions had been felt; mineral springs had
suddenly ceased to flow; and all these circumstances increased the
general alarm when the terrible details of the catastrophe became known.
The pious were now not sparing of moral reflexions, the philosophers of
consolations, the clergy of admonitions. Thus the attention of the world
was for some time concentrated upon this single topic, and the public,
excited by the misfortunes of strangers, began to feel an increasing
anxiety for its personal safety, as from all sides intelligence came
pouring in of the widely-extended effects of the earthquake. The demon
of fear has indeed, perhaps, never spread terror so rapidly and so
powerfully over the earth. The boy who heard the subject frequently
discussed was not a little perplexed. God, the Creator and Preserver of
Heaven and Earth, whom the first article of faith represented as
supremely wise and merciful, appeared by no means paternal while thus
enveloping the just and the unjust in indiscriminate ruin. It was in
vain that his youthful mind endeavoured to shake off these impressions,
nor can this be wondered at, as even the wise and the learned did not
agree in their opinions on the subject.’
CHAPTER XI.
LANDSLIPS.
Igneous and Aqueous Causes of Landslips—Fall of the Diablerets in 1714
and 1749—Escape of a Peasant from his living Tomb—Vitaliano Donati on
the Fall of a Mountain near Sallenches—The Destruction of Goldau in
1806—Wonderful Preservation of a Child—Burial of Velleja and
Tauretunum, of Plürs and Scilano—Landslip near Axmouth in Dorsetshire—
Falling in of Cavern-roofs—Dollinas and Jamas in Carniola and
Dalmatia—Bursting of Bogs—Crateriform Hollows in the Eifel.
Landslips, or sudden subsidences and displacements of portions of land,
result both from igneous and aqueous causes.
Wherever cavities have been formed beneath the surface of the earth,
whether in consequence of volcanic eruptions or by the erosive and
dissolving action of subterranean waters, the shock of an earthquake or
the mere weight of the superincumbent mass may cause the roof to fall
in, or the superficial ground, no longer sustained by its undermined
foundations, to slide away and sink to a lower level.
In mountainous regions it frequently occurs that the foundations of a
rock, undermined by filtering waters, give way, and that huge masses of
stone and earth, now no longer reposing on a solid basis, are
precipitated into the valley below. More than once, the slipping or
falling in of a mountain has brought death and destruction upon the
humble dwellings of the Alpine peasants, and added many a mournful page
to their simple annals. Thus, in the years 1714 and 1749, large beds of
stone were detached from the Diablerets, a mountain stock between the
cantons of Vaux and Valais, and burying the meadows of Cheville and
Leytron under a mound of rubbish 300 feet deep, killed many herds and
shepherds.
In the first of these catastrophes, the life of a peasant was preserved
in a wonderful manner. An immense block came toppling down close to his
châlet and covered it like a shield, so as to preserve it from being
crushed by the following débris, though piled up two hundred feet above
it. Thus, immured as it were in a living tomb, the unfortunate man spent
miserable weeks and months, subsisting on the stores of cheese hoarded
in his hut, without light and air, and in constant fear that the rocks
above his head might give way and bury him under their ruins. With all
the energy of despair, he endeavoured to find his way out of the mighty
mound of rubbish, and at length, after incredible toil, emerged into the
open daylight. More like a spectre than a human being, pale and
emaciated, with torn clothes, and covered with bruises, he knocked at
the door of his house[12] in the lower valley, where his wife and
children, who had already long reckoned him among the dead, were at
first terrified at his ghost-like appearance, and called in the village
pastor to convince them of his identity, before they ventured to rejoice
at his return.
Footnote 12:
It is almost superfluous to mention that in the Alps many of the
peasants lead a migratory existence. During the summer they ascend,
with their herds, into the higher valleys, where they remain,
separated from their families, until the first night-frosts force them
to return to their homes on a lower level.
On the road from Sallenches to Servoz, in the Valley of the Arve, well
known to all the visitors of Mont Blanc, may be seen the ruins of a high
mountain which collapsed in the year 1751, causing so dreadful a crash
and raising such clouds of dust that the whole neighbourhood thought the
world was at an end. The black dust was taken for smoke; flames had been
seen darting about in the murky clouds, and the report spread to Turin
that a new Vesuvius had suddenly opened its subterranean furnaces among
the highest of the Alpine mountains. The king, alarmed or interested at
the news, immediately sent the famous geologist Vitaliano Donati to
gather accurate information on the spot. Donati, travelling night and
day, with all the eagerness of a zealous naturalist, arrived while the
appalling phenomenon was still in full activity.
‘The peasants,’ writes Donati to a friend, ‘had all fled from the
neighbourhood, and did not venture to approach the crashing mountain
within a distance of two Italian miles. The country around was covered
with dust, which closely resembled ashes, and had been carried by the
wind to a distance of five miles. I examined the dust, and found it to
consist of pulverised marble. I also attentively observed the smoke, but
could see no flames, nor could I perceive a sulphurous smell; the water
also of the rivulets and sources showed no trace of sulphurous matter.
This convinced me at once that no volcanic eruption was taking place,
and penetrating into the cloud of dust which enveloped the mountain, I
advanced close to the scene of the commotion. I there saw enormous rocks
tumbling piecemeal into an abyss with a dreadful noise, louder than the
rolling of thunder or the roar of heavy artillery, and distinctly saw
that the smoke was nothing but the dust rising from their fall.
‘Further investigations also showed me the cause of the phenomenon, for
I found the mountain to consist of horizontal strata, the lowest being
composed of a loose stone of a slaty texture, while the upper ones,
though of a more compact nature, were rent with numerous crevices. On
the back of the mountain were three small lakes, the water of which,
penetrating through the fissures of the strata, had gradually loosened
their foundations. The snow, which had fallen during the previous winter
more abundantly than had ever been known within the memory of man,
hastened the progress of destruction, and caused the fall of six hundred
million cubic feet of stone, which alone would have sufficed to form a
great mountain. Six shepherds, as many houses, and a great number of
cows and goats have been buried under the ruins.
‘In my report to the king I have accurately described the causes and
effects of the catastrophe, and foretold its speedy termination—a
prediction which has been fully verified by the event—and thus the new
volcano has become extinct almost as soon as its formation was
announced.’
Fortunately, this grand convulsion of nature, which spread consternation
far and wide, caused the death of but a few victims. The landslip of the
Rufi or Rossberg, which, on September 2, 1806, devastated the lovely
Vale of Goldau, and overwhelmed four villages, with their rich pasture-
grounds and gardens, was far more disastrous. The preceding years had
been unusually wet, the filtering waters had loosened the Nagelfluh, or
coarse conglomerate of which the mountain is composed, and the rains
having latterly been almost continuous, a great part of the mountain,
undermined by the subterranean action of the waters, at length gave way
and was hurled into the valley below.
Early in the morning the shepherds who were tending their herds on the
mountains perceived fresh crevices in the ground and on the rock walls.
In many parts the turf appeared as if turned up by a ploughshare, and a
cracking noise as if roots were violently snapped asunder was heard in
the neighbouring forest. From hour to hour, the rents, the cracking, the
rolling down of single stones increased, until finally, at about five in
the afternoon, a large chasm opened in the flanks of the mountain,
growing every instant deeper, longer, and broader. Then from the
opposite Righi the forest might be seen to wave to and fro like a storm-
tossed sea, and the whole flank of the mountain to slide down with a
constantly increasing velocity, until finally hundreds of millions of
cubic feet of rock came sweeping down into the valley with a noise as if
the foundations of the earth were giving way. The friction or clash of
the huge stones, hurled against each other in their fall, produced so
intense a heat that flames were seen to flash forth from the avalanche,
and the moisture with which they were saturated, being suddenly changed
into steam, caused explosions like those from the crater of a volcano.
Dense clouds of dust veiled the scene of destruction, and it was not
before they slowly rolled away that the whole extent of the disaster
became visible. Where, but a few hours since, four prosperous villages—
Goldau, Busingen, Upper and Lower Röthen, and Lowerz—had been gilded by
the sun, and numerous herds had been grazing on the rich pastures along
the borders of the lake of Lowerz, nothing was now to be seen but a
desolate chaos of rocks, beneath which 457 persons lay buried. From this
terrible disaster some wonderful escapes are recorded. High on the slope
of the Rossberg, lived Bläsi Mettler, with his young wife Agatha. When,
in the morning, the first premonitory signs of the disaster appeared,
and the labouring mountain began to raise its warning voice, the
superstitious peasant, fancying he heard the jubilee of demons, hastened
down to Arth, on the bank of the lake of Zug, and begged the parish
priest, with tears and lamentations, to accompany him, and exorcise the
evil spirits with a copious sprinkling of holy water. While he was still
speaking, the catastrophe took place, and he now rushed back again to
his hut, where beyond all doubt his beloved wife and his only child,
which was but four weeks old, had found a premature grave.
Meanwhile Agatha had spent several anxious hours. She was preparing her
humble evening meal when the thundering uproar and the shaking of the
hut filled her with the terrors of death. Seizing the infant, which lay
awake in its cradle, she crossed the threshold, while the soil under her
feet slid down into the valley. Escaping into the open air, she looked
back and saw her hut and a sea of huge stone blocks roll down into the
vale below, while the spot on which she stood remained unmoved. In this
situation she was found by Bläsi, who, though a poor and ruined man,
still thanked God for the wonderful preservation of his family.
About a thousand feet lower down the mountain lived Bläsi’s brother
Bastian, who, when the mountain slipped, was tending his herd on the
opposite Righi. But his wife and her two little children were in his hut
when it was buried beneath the stony avalanche. After the terrible
commotion had subsided, the relations of Frau Mettler, anxious to
ascertain her fate, hastened to the scene of desolation. The hut had
disappeared, the green Alpine meadow was covered with a heap of ruins,
but, not far from the former site of the humble cottage, the youngest
child lay quietly sleeping. At the peril of his life, one of the
infant’s relations clambered over the ruins and rescued the little
sleeper, who, unhurt amidst the falling rafters of the hut and the ruins
of the crumbling mountain, had been carried away with the bed on which
he was reposing. On my last visit to Switzerland, I was informed that
Sebastian Meinhardt Mettler, the child thus wonderfully saved, died in
the year 1867, at the age of sixty-one.
Some of the victims who had been buried in the ruins of the villages
were dug out and restored to daylight; others, less fortunate, may have
slowly perished, immured in a living grave; but by far the greater
number were no doubt suddenly killed. The total number of those who were
saved, either by the assistance of their friends, or by a timely flight,
or by absence from their homes at the time of the disaster, amounted to
220; but more than double that number perished, and probably there was
not one among the survivors who had not to lament the loss of friends
and kinsfolk.
This dreadful catastrophe also levied its tribute among the strangers
whom the beauties of Alpine scenery annually attract to Switzerland. A
party of tourists had left Arth in the afternoon with the intention of
spending the night in Schwyz. Part of the company had already entered
the ill-fated village of Goldau, and the others were about to follow,
when suddenly the thundering roar of the sliding mountain caused them to
stop. Looking up and seeing rocks, forests, huts, all rushing down in
horrible confusion, they instinctively ran back for their lives. The
warning came not one instant too soon, for close behind the spot where
they stopped panting for breath, the stones still fell like hail. But
their unfortunate companions, the wife and daughter of Baron Diesbach,
Colonel Victor von Steiger, and some boys, whose tutor had been slowly
following them with the Baron, were buried beneath the ruins.
From the Righi the traveller still looks down upon the avalanche of
stones, and the flank of the Rossberg still plainly shows the spot
where, more than half a century ago, the masses of rock now reposing in
the valley detached themselves from the mountain. But the beautifying
hand of vegetation has already done much to adorn the scene of ruin.
Green mosses have woven their soft carpet over the naked stones, while
grasses and flowers, and in some places even shrubs and trees, have
sprung up between them. The tears also which once were shed over the
victims of the great catastrophe have long since been dried, and its
last witnesses have passed away to make room for a new generation, who
remember the mountain-slip which buried their fathers only as a legend
of the past.
This terrible disaster, however appalling through the far-spread
desolation it entailed, has yet been equalled or surpassed by others of
a like nature. In the fifth century, the old Roman town of Velleja was
buried under the ruins of the Ravinazzo Mountain, and the bones and
coins dug out of its ancient site prove that no time was left to the
inhabitants for flight. Tauretunum was once a flourishing Roman town,
situated on the south bank of the lake of Geneva, at the foot of the
Dent d’Oche. In 563 it was utterly destroyed by a disruption of the
overhanging mountain. The avalanche of stones which at that time was
hurled down upon the devoted city is still visible as a promontory
projecting far into the lake, which is here at least 500 feet deep. The
immense wave caused by the rocky mass as it plunged into the water
inundated the opposite shore from Morges to Vevay, and swept away every
homestead that lay on its path.
In the night of September 4, 1618, the falling of the Monte Conto, in
the Vale of Chiavenna, so completely buried the small town of Plürs and
the village of Scilano, that of their 2,430 inhabitants but three
remained alive, and but one single house escaped the universal
destruction. At present, magnificent chestnut-trees grow upon the mound
of ruins and cast their shade over the graves of the long-forgotten
victims. Three villages, with their whole population, were covered in
the district of Treviso when the Piz mountain fell in 1772; and the
enormous masses of rock which in 1248 detached themselves from Mount
Grenier, south of Chambery in Savoy, buried five parishes, including the
town and church of Saint André, the ruin occupying an extent of about
nine square miles.
Sometimes the same village has been repeatedly destroyed by mountain-
slips. Thus excavations have shown that Brienz, a hamlet built on the
borders of the lake of the same name, on a mound of accumulated ruins,
has been twice overwhelmed by a deluge of stones and mud, and twice
reconstructed.
It would be useless to multiply examples of the undermining power of
water. I will merely add that it is impossible to wander through the
valleys of Switzerland without being struck by the sight of the sloping
hillocks of rubbish piled up against the foot of every gigantic rock
wall, which in many cases can only be attributed to that cause. Some are
entirely overgrown with large firs, thus showing that the last stony
avalanche took place at a remote period; others are desolate heaps of
rubbish, which evidently prove that the work of destruction is
constantly going on, and that the highest peaks will ultimately be
levelled with the plain. Over many a hamlet the sword of Damocles is
continually suspended in the shape of a precipitous rock-wall, or of a
forest-crowned mountain-brow. For years the undermining waters are
slowly and secretly at work, and then suddenly the crisis takes place.
[Illustration: AXMOUTH LANDSLIP.]
Were the history of the Andes or of the Himalayas as familiar to us as
that of the Alps, we should be able to relate many like instances of
disastrous mountain-slips. But the high places of the earth do not alone
bear witness to the power of aqueous erosion, for wherever the soil is
undermined, it may be precipitated to a lower level. Thus, the
phenomenon is by no means uncommon in England, though rarely occurring
on so large a scale as in the landslip which took place at Axmouth in
Dorsetshire, on December 24, 1839.
‘The tract of downs ranging there along the coast,’ says Sir Charles
Lyell (‘Principles of Geology’), ‘is capped by chalk, which rests on
sandstone, beneath which is more than 100 feet of loose sand, the whole
of these masses reposing on retentive beds of clay shelving towards the
sea. Numerous springs, issuing from the loose sand, have gradually
removed portions of it, and thus undermined the superstratum. In 1839,
an excessively wet season had saturated all the rocks with moisture, so
as to increase the weight of the incumbent mass, from which the support
had already been withdrawn by the action of springs. Thus, the
superstrata were precipitated into hollows prepared for them, and the
adjacent masses of partially undermined rock to which the motion was
communicated, were made to slide down, on a slippery basis of watery
sand, towards the sea. These causes gave rise to a convulsion, which
began on the morning of December 24, with a crashing noise; and, on the
evening of the same day, fissures were seen opening in the ground, and
the walls of tenements rending and sinking, until a deep chasm or ravine
was formed, extending nearly three-quarters of a mile in length, with a
depth of from 100 to 150 feet, and a breadth exceeding 240 feet. At the
bottom of this deep gulf lie fragments of the original surface, thrown
together in the wildest confusion. In consequence of lateral movements,
the tract intervening between the new fissure and the sea, including the
ancient undercliff, was fractured, and the whole line of sea-cliff
carried bodily forwards for many yards. This motion of the sea-cliff
produced a further effect, which may rank among the most striking
phenomena of this catastrophe. The lateral pressure of the descending
rocks urged the neighbouring strata, extending beneath the shingle of
the shore, by their state of unnatural condensation, to burst upwards in
a line parallel to the coast, so that an elevated ridge, more than a
mile in length and rising more than forty feet, covered by a confused
assemblage of broken strata and immense blocks of rock, invested with
seaweed and corallines, and scattered over with shells and starfish, and
other productions of the deep, forms an extended reef in front of the
present range of cliffs.’
Landslips caused by the falling in of cavern roofs are nowhere more
common than in the cretaceous strata, which are more liable than others
to be undermined by the action of running waters. In the vast chalk-
range extending from Carinthia to the Morea, they occur of all sizes,
from a diameter of a few fathoms to one of many thousand feet, and are
not seldom of considerable depth. They are generally funnel-shaped,
sometimes elongated; and the bottom of the larger ones is generally
covered with villages, orchards, vineyards, or considerable tracts of
arable land. In Dalmatia, Carinthia, Carniola, and Istria, where the
country consists chiefly of arid plateaux or mountain-chains, exposed to
the dry north-easterly winds, the cultivation of the soil is almost
exclusively confined to these depressions or _dollinas_, which, as a
further protection against the cutting blasts, are inclosed with walls
of loose stones.
Besides the funnel-shaped landslips or _dollinas_, there are others with
perpendicular sides like walls or shafts, which are called _jamas_ or
mouths. One of these (near Breschiak) descends to a depth of 384 feet.
The hares seek a winter refuge in the _dollinas_, and the _jamas_, as
the favourite resort of pigeons, are also called pigeon-holes or
_golubinas_. Many a pedestrian has lost his life by falling into a
_jama_, particularly in former times, when fewer precautions were taken
to protect the stranger against these treacherous precipices.
In the Jura Mountains there are also whole rows of cauldron-shaped
depressions; and in North Jutland, where the chalk formation is likewise
very extensive, a recent landslip suddenly emptied the Norr Lake, which
lost itself in subterranean channels.
Effects very similar to those of an ordinary landslip are sometimes
produced by the bursting of a bog. On the western confines of England
and Scotland, the Solway Moss occupies a flat area about seven miles in
circumference. Its surface is covered with grass and rushes, presenting
a dry crust and a fair appearance; but it shakes under the least
pressure, the bottom being unsound and semi-fluid. The adventurous
passenger therefore, who sometimes, in dry seasons, traverses this
treacherous waste, must pick his way over the rushy tussocks as they
appear before him, for here the soil is firmest. If his foot slip, or if
he venture to move in any other part, it is possible he may sink never
to rise again.
On December 16, 1772, this quagmire, having been filled, like a great
sponge, with water, during heavy rains, swelled to an unusual height
above the surrounding country, and then burst. The turfy covering seemed
for a time to act like the skin of a bladder retaining the fluid within,
till it forced a passage for itself, when a stream of black half-
consolidated mud began at first to creep over the plain, resembling in
the slow rate of its progress an ordinary lava-current. No lives were
lost, but the deluge totally overwhelmed some cottages, and covered 400
acres with a mass of mud and vegetable matter, which in the lowest parts
of the submerged area was at least fifteen feet deep.
It may easily be imagined that in Ireland, the classic land of bogs,
such phenomena are not uncommon. In the peat of Donegal an ancient log-
cabin was found, in 1833, at the depth of fourteen feet. The cabin was
filled with peat, and was surrounded by other huts, which were not
examined. Trunks and roots of trees, preserved in their natural
position, lay around these huts. There can be little doubt that we have
here one instance out of many in which villages have been overwhelmed by
the bursting of a moss.
In many volcanic regions we find circular cauldron-shaped depressions in
the earth’s surface, which might easily be mistaken for land-slips, but
which have in reality been formed by explosive discharges of confined
vapours. When vents or fissures are produced by a paroxysm of volcanic
energy, we can easily understand how in some cases the pent-up gases,
finding a sudden outlet through some weaker part of the surface, must
act like a powder mine, and scattering the rocks that surrounded the
orifice, leave a deep hollow behind as a memento of their fury. The
depressions thus caused bear a great resemblance to real craters, from
which they are, however, distinguished by the absence of a cone of
scoriæ and from their never having ejected lava.
These curious crateriform hollows are very common in the Eifel, a
volcanic region in Rhenish Prussia, where, probably owing to the clayey
nature of the soil, they have become reservoirs of water, or Maare, as
they are called by the natives. Most of them still have small lakes at
their bottom, while others have been drained for the sake of
cultivation, or by the spontaneous rupture or erosion of their banks.
Some of them are of considerable dimensions, such as that of Meerfeld,
the diameter of which falls very little short of a mile; or the
Pulvermaar of Gillenfeld, remarkable for the extreme regularity of its
magnificent oval basin.
Similar lakes or Maare occur in Auvergne, in Java, in the Canary
Islands, in New Zealand, and in the volcanic districts of Italy. The
beautiful lakes of Albano and Nemi, which have been so often sung by
ancient and modern poets, belong to this class; but Fr. Hoffmann, a
celebrated German geologist, ascribes the origin of the former to a
landslip caused by the falling in of the roof of a vast subterranean
cavern.
[Illustration: STALACTITE CAVERN AT AGGTELEK, HUNGARY: THE CAVE OF
BORODLA.]
CHAPTER XII.
ON CAVES IN GENERAL.
Their various Forms—Natural Tunnels—The Ventanillas of Gualgayoc—Eimeo—
Torgatten—Hole in the Mürtschenstock—The Trebich Cave—Grotto of
Antiparos—Vast Dimensions of the Cave of Adelsberg and of the Mammoth
Cave—Discovery of Baumann’s Cave—Limestone Caves—Causes of their
Excavation—Stalactites and Stalagmites—Their Origin—Variety of Forms—
Marine Caves—Shetland—Fingal’s Cave—The Azure Cave—Cave under
Bonifacio—Grotta di Nettuno, near Syracuse—The Bufador of Papa Luna—
Volcanic Caves—The Fossa della Palomba—Caves of San Miguel—The
Surtshellir.
The natural excavations which abound in many mountain chains, or on
rocky shores washed by the stormy sea, are extremely various in their
forms. Many are mere rents or crevices in the disruptured rocks; others
wide vaults, not seldom of hall or dome-like dimensions, or long and
narrow passages branching out in numerous ramifications. Not seldom the
same cave alternately expands into spacious chambers, and then again
contracts into narrow tunnels or galleries. The walls of many are smooth
and nearly parallel; the sides of others are irregular and rugged. Many
have narrow entrances and swell at greater depths into majestic
proportions; while others open with wide portals, and gradually diminish
in size as they penetrate into the rock. Sometimes an excavation pierces
a mountain from side to side like a natural tunnel, so as to allow a
passage to the light of day. Such, among others, are the numerous
perforations or _windows_ (ventanillas) in the serrated bastions of the
rich silver mountain Gualgayoc in the Peruvian Andes, or the opening
through one of the high peaks of the romantic island of Eimeo which
rises within sight of Tahiti out of the dark blue ocean. According to a
popular tradition, this hole owes its origin to Oro, the powerful god of
war, who, having one day quarrelled with the minor god of Eimeo, hurled
his mighty spear at him over the sea. As even gods, when losing their
temper, are apt to miss their aim, the puny delinquent escaped unhurt,
while the dreadful lance flew like a thunderbolt through the mountain,
leaving the perforation as a lasting memorial of its passage. In Europe
we likewise meet with several remarkable instances of such natural
tunnels. One of the most celebrated is the grotto of Torgatten in
Norway, which perforates a huge rock, 400 feet above the level of the
sea. Its proportions are truly colossal, as it is no less than 900 feet
long by from 80 to 100 feet broad; and the arches of its vast portals
measure respectively 200 and 120 feet. Its floor is nearly horizontal,
and covered with fine sand; its sides are smooth, as if they had been
chiselled by the hand of man. The sea, with its numberless cliffs and
white-crested breakers, appears through the immense gallery as through
the tube of a gigantic telescope, and in fine sunny weather affords a
spectacle of incomparable beauty.
Whoever has visited the romantic lake of Wallenstädt, in Switzerland,
will have had his attention directed to a tunnel near the summit of the
almost inaccessible Mürtschenstock, a favourite resort of the chamois.
It is visible from the lake near the hamlet of Mühlehorn, and, though of
considerable dimensions, appears to the eye like a mere speck of snow on
the huge grey rockwall, which towers to a height of 7,517 feet. From the
1st to the 3rd of February, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, the
inhabitants of Mühlehorn see through this aperture the disk of the sun
for the first time after a long winter.
In the structure of some caves a vertical direction predominates; as,
for instance, in the Trebich Cave, three leagues from Trieste, which
consists of several perpendicular shafts, connected by narrow
transversal passages, and descending one after another, until finally,
at a depth of more than a thousand feet, the cavern terminates in a wide
vaulted space spanning a subterranean river. Such, also, is the renowned
Grotto of Antiparos, into which the visitor is let down by a rope to a
depth of about twenty fathoms. After reaching a tolerably even platform,
he is obliged to descend another precipice, and then to proceed over
slippery rocks until he finally reaches the terminal vault.
In most caverns, however, the chief direction is horizontal, either on
several planes, separated from each other by more or less steep
passages, or on a single level. The dimensions of caves are as various
as their forms. Many are small and of inconsiderable depth—mere holes
worn in the rock; while others are of a truly astonishing size, and
fatigue the wondering spectator as he wanders through their lofty halls
or endless galleries. The famous Cave of Adelsberg in Carniola has been
explored to a distance of 1,243 fathoms from the chief entrance; and in
the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky no less than 226 avenues branch out to the
right and left from the main gallery, so as to form a network of
subterranean passages and halls of various dimensions, whose total
length has been computed at about 160 miles!
As many caves are without any visible communication with the external
world, and the entrance of others is frequently narrow, and concealed
behind rocks in solitary ravines on wild hill slopes or steep sea
shores, far from the busy haunts of man, we cannot wonder that chance
has frequently been instrumental in their discovery. Sometimes a hunter
pursuing a wild animal has been led to the hidden cave in which it
sought a refuge, or the workmen in a quarry have been suddenly surprised
at meeting with a hollow in the rock, which opened an unexpected passage
into the bowels of the mountain. The digging of wells, of cellars, of
foundations, the boring for mines or Artesian wells, has often revealed
the existence of unknown subterranean chambers; and so recently as 1868,
one of the finest known caverns, which already attracts a number of
delighted visitors, was discovered in the neighbourhood of the thriving
manufacturing town of Iserlohn in Westphalia, on blasting a rock for the
making of a railway. We may thus infer that a vast number of caves must
still be totally unknown; many so situated that chance may one day lead
to their discovery; while others are hollowed out at such vast depths in
the earth-rind as to be for ever inaccessible to man.
Even of those caves which have been objects of curiosity for centuries,
many have still been by no means thoroughly explored. In the year 1848
an American gentleman persuaded the guides of Baumann’s Cave in the Harz
Mountains to accompany him on a voyage of discovery through parts of the
cavern hitherto untrodden by man. It was no easy task to clamber over
slippery rocks and deep chasms yawning into black abysses; but curiosity
and the spirit of adventure kept leading them on from passage to passage
and vault to vault, when suddenly the lights began to burn more dimly;
and the glass of the guiding compass having been accidentally broken
warned them to retrace their steps. They had been wandering for twenty-
four hours in the subterranean labyrinth, and after so long an absence
from the light of day, joyfully hailed the green hill slope which decks
that mysterious palace of the gnomes. Franz Baumann, the first
discoverer of the cavern, was less fortunate. Its tortuous windings
confused the expert and intrepid miner, who lost his way in the recesses
of the cave. While seeking in vain for an outlet, his sparing light went
out. Three days he groped about in darkness, until at length, worn out
and exhausted, he was led by a wonderful chance to the mouth of the
cave. Before he died he had yet sufficient strength briefly to mention
the wonders he had seen during his fatal expedition. His descendants
still enjoy the privilege of serving as guides to the visitors of the
cave, and never fail to relate the melancholy end of their ill-fated
forefather.
Grottoes and caves occur in every kind of rock, in lavas, basalt, slate,
and granite, as well as in limestone, dolomite, and gypsum; for the
volcanic powers are capable of rending the hardest stone, and the
foaming breakers of a turbulent ocean meet with no cliff that is able
ultimately to resist their never-tiring assaults.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE CAVE OF ADELSBERG.]
But, owing to their great fragility and to the solubility of limestone
(carbonate of lime) in water containing carbonic acid, calcareous rocks
are more liable than any others to be shattered and undermined, both by
volcanic and aqueous causes. Its water readily absorbs carbonic acid
gas. Every drop of rain that falls upon the ground necessarily contains
some small portion of this gas, which, as we all know, is constantly
mixed with the atmosphere, and thus becomes a solvent for chalk; more
particularly if the latter, as, for instance, in the Karst Mountains of
Carniola, contains some proto-carbonate of iron, which, changing into an
oxide when in contact with water, yields its carbonic acid to the
percolating fluid, and consequently increases its solvent powers. Hence
every shower of rain that filters through the crevices of a limestone
rock wears away some part of its mass; and if we consider the vast
number of years over which these operations have extended, and add to
their effects the transporting powers of the waters on their progress
through the subterranean channels which they have excavated or enlarged,
we can easily comprehend how in the course of ages whole mountains may
be hollowed out.
As the streams that flow on the surface of the earth are constantly
altering their courses, thus also the subterranean waters are ever
active in excavating new channels in the bosom of the rock. Finding at
length new outlets on a lower level, they abandon their ancient beds,
and the explorer now wanders dry-footed where once a foaming river
gushed along. The Cave of Adelsberg is a remarkable example of the
changes which the subterranean waters, aided by time or by the
disrupting power of earthquakes, may thus bring about; for the Poik now
flows beneath its galleries in the same north-easterly direction, in a
channel which is for the greatest part unknown and inexplorable, so that
the dry cave of the present day must evidently have been the old river-
bed. But nowhere can be found such perfect, unequivocal, and abundant
proofs of the action of running water in corroding and excavating new
passages in a soluble rock as in the huge Mammoth Cave. The rough-hewn
block in the quarry does not bear more distinct proof of the hammer and
the chisel of the workman than these interminable galleries afford of
its denuding and dissolving power. At Niagara we see a vast chasm
evidently cut by water for seven miles, and still in progress; but we
cannot see beneath the cataract the water-worn surface, nor the rounded
angles of the precipice; while the frosts and rains of countless winters
have reduced the walls of the chasm itself to a talus of crumbling and
moss-grown rocks. But in the Mammoth Cave we see a freshness and
perfection of surface such as can be found only where the destructive
agencies of meteoric causes are wholly absent. Here we have the dry beds
of subterranean rivers exactly as they were left thousands of years ago
by the streams which flowed through them when Niagara was young. No
angle is less sharp, no groove or excavation less perfect, than it was
originally left when the waters were suddenly drained off by cutting
their way to some lower level. The very sand and rounded pebbles, which
now pave the galleries and which anciently formed the bed of the stream,
have remained in many of the more distant galleries untrodden even by
the foot of man. ‘The rush of ideas was strange and overpowering,’ says
Professor Silliman, ‘as I stood in one of these before unvisited
avenues, in which the glow of a lamp had never before shone, and
considered the complex chain of phenomena which were before me. There
were the delicate silicious forms of cyathophylli and encrinites
protruding from the softer limestone, which had yielded to the
dissolving power of the water; these carried me back to that vast and
desolate ocean in which they flourished, and were entombed as the
crystalline matrix was slowly cast around them, mute chroniclers of a
distant epoch. Then succeeded the long periods of the upper secondary,
and, these past, the slow but resistless force of the contracting sphere
elevated and drained the rocky beds of the ancient ocean. The action of
the meteorological causes commenced, and the dissolving power of fresh
water, following the almost invisible lines of structure in the rocks,
began to hollow out these winding paths slowly and yet surely.’ What a
lesson for the thoughtful spectator, and how vast a prospect into the
dark abysses of the past here unrolls itself before him!
After abandoning the vaults where they once collected and formed a
running stream, the waters, filtering through the porous limestone,
begin to ornament them with lustrous petrifactions; for whether below or
above the surface of the earth, Nature ever loves to decorate her works.
The moisture, charged with carbonate of lime, evaporates or parts with
its free carbonic acid in coming into contact with the air of the cave;
the carbonate, now no longer held in solution, precipitates and forms
calcareous incrustations or excrescences, which in course of time assume
every variety of fantastic shape, either hanging like icicles from the
vault (stalactites), or rising in columns (stalagmites) from the floor
of the cave where the dripping water deposited its spar. Sometimes
stalactites and stalagmites join as they continue to grow in opposite
directions, and ultimately form pillars which appear to sustain the
roof.
On considering the simple physical and chemical agencies which are at
work in the formation of these beautiful productions—solution,
mechanical dripping, evaporation, and precipitation—a great similarity
might naturally be expected in their forms; but here also Nature shows
herself as a consummate artist, and with the simplest means brings forth
an astonishing variety of effects. As among the leaves of a forest there
are not two perfectly alike, thus also every stalactite differs from
another; and the celebrated traveller Kohl affirms that every
stalactital cave has its peculiar style or character of decoration. The
causes to which stalactites owe their existence are indeed everywhere
the same, but the circumstances under which the drops fall and evaporate
are so various that in each case some new shape is produced. Thus all
the infinite diversity of forms which we admire in the corals and
sponges of the seas, is wonderfully repeated in the dark vaults of the
subterranean world.
The variety and beauty of their colouring likewise contribute to adorn
these formations. They are generally white, sometimes rivalling the
purity of snow, and translucent, even when of considerable thickness,
but often also green, brown, yellow, red, orange—a variety of tints
which produces the most pleasing effects, and is chiefly owing to the
metallic salts with which the water has been impregnated while filtering
through the calcareous rock.
All these wonderful plays of Nature, in which form and colour contribute
to delight the eye or to charm the fancy of the spectator, are, however,
still less interesting than the reflections suggested by the slow growth
of stalactites in general, and the enormous size which some of them
attain.
[Illustration: STALACTITAL CAVERN IN AUSTRALIA.]
Inscriptions seventy or eighty years old appear covered only with a thin
translucent coat of sinter, and in the Cave of Adelsberg names scratched
in the walls more than six centuries ago are still perfectly legible.
How many ages must, then, have passed before such colossal stalagmites
could have been formed as, for instance, in the Australian cavern
explored by Mr. Woods,[13] or in the Cave of Corneale, near Trieste,
where we find one of these formations measuring fifty feet in
circumference, and another rising thirty-five feet above the ground,
with a trunk as massive as that of an old oak. The ruins of Thebes, or
the rock-temples of Ipsamboul, appear almost as works of the present day
when compared with those amazing monuments of time. But, while
meditating on their colossal dimensions, the mind is necessarily carried
still further back, and wanders through the countless ages which the
filtering waters, collecting into subterranean streams, required for
hollowing out the vast cavities on whose floor those gigantic
stalagmites were subsequently deposited. An epoch of still older date
presents itself when the limestone rocks, now pierced with vast
stalactital caverns, were first slowly forming at the bottom of the
primeval sea by the accumulation of countless exuviæ of zoophytes, star-
fishes, and foraminifera, and after growing into strata many hundred
feet thick, were then forced upwards by plutonic powers, and became
portions of the dry land. Nor is this the end of the vast perspective,
for changes still more remote loom in the fathomless distance. The mind
grows giddy while thus plunging into the abyss of time, and, in spite of
the ideas of sublimity awakened by such meditations, feels a painful
sense of its incapacity to conceive a plan of such infinite extent.
Footnote 13:
‘The Geology of South Australia.’
While on land the running or filtering waters restlessly pursue their
work of excavation, the tumultuous waves of the ocean impress on every
rocky shore the seal of their tremendous power. As, day after day, and
year after year, the billows strike against the cliffs that oppose their
progress, they undermine their foundations, scoop out wide portals in
their projecting headlands, and hollow out deep caverns. Here also water
appears as the beautifying element, decorating inanimate nature with
picturesque forms; and the sea nowhere exhibits more romantic scenes
than on the bold coasts against which her waves have been beating for
many a millennium. During the calm ebb tide seals are often seen sunning
themselves at the entrance of the oceanic grottoes, while cormorants
stand before them as guardians of the dark galleries beyond; the waves
murmur in softer strains, and the screeching sea-mew glides with his
silvery pinions through the tranquil air; but when the stormy flood
batters against the coast, the billows rush into the caverns, scaring
all animal life away, and no voice is heard but that of the ocean.
Our coasts abound in beauties such as these, particularly on the wild
shores of Shetland or the stormy Hebrides—
‘Where rise no groves and where no gardens blow,
Where even the hardy heath scarce dares to grow;
But rocks on rocks, in mist and storm arrayed,
Stretch far to sea their giant colonnade.’—SCOTT.
Along the coast of the mainland of Shetland and the neighbouring islets
of Bressay and Noss, cape follows upon cape, consisting of bold cliffs
hollowed into caverns, or divided into pillars and arches of fantastic
appearance, by the constant action of the waves. As the voyager passes
the most northerly of these headlands, and turns into the open sea, the
scenes become yet more sublime. Rocks, upwards of three or four hundred
feet in height, present themselves in colossal succession, sinking
perpendicularly into the sea, which is very deep, even within a few
fathoms of their base. All these huge precipices abound with caves, many
of which run much farther into the rock than the boldest islander has
ever ventured to penetrate. One of these marine excavations, called ‘The
Orkneyman’s Harbour,’ is remarkable for the circumstance of an Orkney
vessel having once run in there to escape a French privateer. Sir Walter
Scott, who visited this interesting spot, found the entrance lofty
enough to admit his six-oared boat without striking the mast, but a
sudden turn in the direction of the cave would have consigned him to
utter darkness if he had gone in further. The dropping of the sea fowl
and cormorants into the water from the sides of the cavern, when
disturbed by his approach, had something in it wild and terrible.
The shores of Caithness and of Sutherland, and of many of the islets in
the Highland seas, likewise exhibit many wonderful specimens of the
fantastic architecture of the ocean; but pre-eminent above all in
grandeur and renown is Fingal’s Cave.
Sir Walter Scott, who twice visited this celebrated grotto (in 1810 and
1814), pronounced it above all description sublime. ‘The stupendous
columns and side-walls, the depth and strength of the ocean with which
the cavern is filled, the variety of tints formed by stalactites
dropping and petrifying between the pillars, and resembling a sort of
chasing of yellow or cream-coloured marble, filling the interstices of
the roof—the corresponding variety below, where the ocean rolls over a
red, and in some places a violet-coloured rock, the basis of the
basaltic pillars—the dreadful noise of those august billows, so well
corresponding with the grandeur of the scene—are all circumstances
elsewhere unparalleled.’
In the Azure Cave of Capri, the Mediterranean possesses a marine grotto
rivalling Fingal’s Cave in celebrity, and no less wonderful in its
peculiar style of beauty. As the roof of its narrow entrance rises only
a few feet above the level of the sea, it is probable that no human eye
had ever been delighted with its charms before 1826, when it was
accidentally discovered by two Prussian artists who were swimming in the
neighbourhood. After passing the low portal the cave widens to grand
proportions, 125 feet long and 145 feet broad, and except a small
landing-place on a projecting rock at the further end, its precipitous
walls are on all sides bathed by the influx of the waters, which, in
that sea, are so clear that the smallest objects may be distinctly seen
on the bottom of the deep basin, the most beautiful bathing-place a
mermaid might wish for. All the light that enters the grotto must first
penetrate the whole depth of the waters before it can be reflected into
the cave, and it thus acquires so blue a tinge, from the large body of
clear water through which it has passed, that the walls of the cavern
are illumined by a radiance of the purest azure. Had Byron known of the
existence of this magic cave, Childe Harold would surely have devoted
some of his most brilliant stanzas to its praise.
In many other parts of the Mediterranean the limestone rocks that fringe
its shores have been worn into magnificent caverns, less singular,
indeed, than the fairy grot of Capri, but still of rare and wonderful
beauty. Such, among others, is the Antro di Nettuno, in the island of
Sardinia, about twelve miles from the small seaport of Alghero.[14]
Footnote 14:
‘The Sea and its Living Wonders,’ 3rd edit. p. 49.
Exceedingly picturesque caverns have also been worn by the chafing
waters in the chalk cliffs under Bonifacio, in the island of Corsica.
Their entrances festooned with hanging boughs, they penetrate far into
the interior of the rocks, and the water percolating through their
vaulted roofs has formed stalactites of fantastic shapes. The boat
glides through the arched entrance, and the glaring sunshine without is
replaced by cool and grateful shade. Fishes are flitting in the clear
water; limpid streams oozing through the rocks form crystal basins with
pebbly bottoms; and the channels from the blue sea, flowing over the
chalk, become cerulean. Poetic fancy has never pictured anything more
enchanting than these lovely caves.
[Illustration: CAVE UNDER BONIFACIO.]
The rocky coast of Sicily is likewise hollowed out with numerous marine
grottoes, which, though rarely noticed by travellers, may well be ranked
amongst the greatest natural beauties of the island. One of the most
remarkable is the Grotta di Nettuno, near Syracuse, which, in calm
weather, admits a boat to a considerable distance. Its rugged vaults
rise to a height of about twenty or thirty feet, and are covered with
stalactites wherever the water does not reach. There is no landing-
place, and throughout the whole cave the water is as deep as in the open
sea beyond. Nothing can be more charming than to look back from the dark
recesses of the grotto upon the bright sunshine without, and to listen
to the soothing murmurs of the clear waves as they ripple against the
rocky walls. The atmosphere is so pure in this delicious climate that
not a trace of fog or mist obscures even the remotest parts of the cave,
and the serene daylight falling through the entrance renders even its
deepest shadows translucent. Here a lover of nature might linger for
hours enjoying the most delicious coolness, and watching the charming
effects of light and shade in their ever-varying play.
On many rocky shores the ocean has worn out subterranean channels in the
cliffs, against which it has been beating for ages, and then frequently
emerges in water-spouts, or fountains, from the opposite end. Thus in
the Skerries, one of the Shetland Islands, a deep chasm or inlet, which
is open overhead, is continued underground, and then again opens to the
sky in the middle of the island. When the tide is high, the waves rise
up through this inland aperture, with a noise like the blowing of a
whale.
Similar phenomena occur on the south side of the Mauritius,[15] on the
north coast of Newfoundland, near Huatulco on the Mexican coast of the
Pacific, and near Peniscola, in Spain, where a cave, through whose roof
at storm tides the sea bursts with a terrific noise, has received the
name of the ‘Bufador, or the water-spout of Pope Luna,’ the family name
of Benedict XIII., who, having been deposed by the Councils of Pisa and
Constance, retired to the small Spanish town where he was born. As the
chief occupation of the holy father in exile was to vent a continuous
torrent of curses and excommunications upon his numerous enemies, it is
probable that this circumstance caused his name to be given to the noisy
but harmless Bufador.
Footnote 15:
‘The Sea and its Living Wonders,’ 3rd edit. p. 52.
Though water, aided by time, is probably the chief excavating power,
there can be no doubt that the action of subterranean fire has likewise
produced, and still produces, many hollows in the hard crust of the
earth. Wherever a volcano has been piled up to the skies, the matter
ejected from its vents must necessarily have left a void behind, and
given rise to corresponding cavities in the space beneath. The shock of
an earthquake must frequently rend asunder deep-seated rocks, and the
slow upheaval of considerable tracts of land can hardly be supposed to
take place without the formation of hollows and crevices.
When the lavas poured forth during an eruption are in a liquid state,
they do not form on cooling a compact homogeneous mass, but generally
exhibit a porous, spongy texture, due to the bubbles of the vapour
generated through, or entangled in, their mass. These bubbles frequently
unite in larger volumes, which, influenced by their elasticity and
inferior specific gravity, rise towards the surface of the lava as it
flows on, and, when sufficiently powerful, raise its crust in dome-like
or conical protuberances, which not seldom burst open at the summit, or
crack at the sides. The hollows thus formed are often so large as to
entitle them to the name of caves.
According to Sir Charles Lyell, the sudden conversion into steam of
lakes or streams of water, overwhelmed by a fiery current, may perhaps
explain the formation of many of the extensive underground passages or
caverns which form a common feature in the structure of a volcano. Great
volumes of vapour, thus produced, may force their way through liquid
lava, already coated over externally with a solid crust, and may cause
the sides of such passages, as they harden, to assume a very irregular
outline. The famous cave on Etna, called the Fossa della Palomba, which
opens near Nicolosi, not far from Monte Rossi, has not improbably been
thus formed. After reaching the bottom of a hollow 625 feet in
circumference at its mouth, and 78 feet deep, the explorer enters
another dark cavity, and then others in succession, sometimes descending
precipices by means of ladders. At length the vaults terminate in a
great gallery ninety feet long, and from fifteen to fifty feet broad,
beyond which there is still a passage never yet visited, so that the
whole extent of the Fossa remains unknown.
The volcanic caves of Punta Delgada in the Island of San Miguel, one of
the Azores, are still more grand. Their entrance is through a narrow
crevice, which soon, however, expands into an enormous hall, whose vault
even the strongest torch-light is unable to illumine. In one spot, an
opening in the floor shows that the lava, which is here but a foot
thick, forms the roof of a second cave, situated below the first, into
which even the boldest explorer has never ventured, but the noise of
stones cast into the abyss proves it to be of considerable size. The
first-mentioned cave leads into another, the width of which is estimated
by Webster[16] at 120 feet; but the height he was unable to measure.
Gradually this cave becomes narrower and lower, until, about 450 feet
from the entrance, it terminates in a low vault. Black lava stalactites
everywhere hang down from the roof, and the floor is so covered with
sharp-sided blocks of the same volcanic material that walking among them
becomes a task of the greatest difficulty.
Footnote 16:
‘Description of the Island of Saint Michael.’
While a lava-stream is flowing along, a slag-crust forms on its surface,
inclosing the internal fluid matter as in a canal. But when the supply
of fresh lava from the vent diminishes or entirely ceases, the still
liquid interior at the central part of the current continuing for some
time to flow on, often leaves behind hollow gutters, arched over by a
thin and brittle roof—so thin sometimes as to yield to the weight of a
person stepping on them. Such vaulted roofs have pseudo-stalactitic
projections left by the subsidence of the liquid, and are coated with a
glossy varnish. Sometimes, very large caverns are thus formed beneath
the surface of a lava-stream, and even rival in their extent and
windings the caves worn by water in limestone rocks. The famous
Surtshellir,[17] situated near Kalmanstunga in Iceland, is a remarkable
instance of a vast lava excavation owing its origin to this cause. It
has very appropriately been named after Surt, the prince of darkness and
fire, of the ancient Scandinavian mythology; for this gloomy deity could
not possibly have chosen a fitter residence than its vast and dismal
halls, once glowing with subterranean fires, and now the seat of
perpetual darkness.
Footnote 17:
‘The Polar World,’ p. 58.
CHAPTER XIII.
CAVE RIVERS.
The Fountain of Vaucluse—The Fontaine-sans-fond—The Katabothra in Morea—
Subterranean Rivers in Carniola—Subterranean Navigation of the Poik in
the Cave of Planina—‘The Stalactital Paradise’—The Piuka Jama.
Wherever large bodies of water gush forth in a rapid stream from the
bowels of the earth, they must either have flowed through wide
underground channels, or they must come from extensive lake-like
reservoirs, for the mere drainage of a porous stratum is evidently
incapable of accounting for their production.
Thus the celebrated fountain of Vaucluse, near Avignon, which has the
volume and power of a river at its very source, is undoubtedly fed by a
subterranean sheet of water of considerable extent. Even when least
abundant, it pours forth upwards of 13,000 cubic feet of water in a
minute; and after the country has been flooded with abundant rains, this
volume is increased fourfold. The environs of the fountain are extremely
picturesque, and justify the praises which have been lavished upon it in
the immortal strains of Petrarch. It fills a large oval basin, vaulted
by a spacious cave, and its waters, which, when low, escape through
subterranean channels into the deep bed of the Sorgue, rise, when high,
over the rock-wall at the mouth of the grotto, and form a broad
cataract, rushing down with a dreadful noise.
Near Sable in Anjou, a source, or rather a pit from eighteen to twenty-
four feet in diameter, well known in the country under the name of the
Bottomless Fountain (_Fontaine-sans-fond_) sometimes overflows its
brink, and then casts forth a large quantity of fish, so that it is
evidently a mere aperture in the vault of a large subterranean pool.
In the department of the Haute Saône, another pit, called the Frais
Puits, presents a similar phenomenon. After abundant rains, the water
gushing forth from its mouth inundates the neighbourhood, and on its
retiring, pikes are not seldom found scattered over the surface of the
flooded fields or meadows, a sure proof that the Puits must communicate
with a large subterranean cavity.
Nothing is more common in limestone districts than the engulfment of
rivers, which, after holding a subterranean course of many miles, escape
again by some new outlet. The Guadiana loses itself in a flat country in
the midst of an immense savannah, and hence the Spaniards, when the
magnificent bridges of London or Paris are mentioned to them, boastfully
reply that they have one in Estramadura on which more than a hundred
thousand oxen graze at a time.
In the vast limestone formation which, under various names, extends
through Carinthia, Carniola, Istria, Dalmatia, Albania, and Greece, the
whole country is perforated like a sponge by an intricate system of
subterranean water-courses. In the more elevated districts of the Morea
there are many deep land-locked valleys or basins inclosed on all sides
by mountains of cavernous limestone. When the torrents are swollen by
the rains, they rush from the surrounding heights into these basins;
but, instead of forming temporary lakes, as would be the case in most
other countries, they are swallowed by chasms, which are sometimes
situated in the middle of the plain, constituting the bottom of the
closed basin, but more commonly at the foot of the surrounding
escarpment of limestone. During the dry season, which in Greece
alternates almost as distinctly as between the tropics with a period of
rain, these chasms are the favourite retreats of wild animals.
Sometimes, in the limestone formation, the same stream repeatedly gushes
forth from some cavernous recess, and then again disappears. The caves
of Adelsberg, Planina, and Upper Laibach in Carniola are traversed by
the same river, which, losing its name every time it plunges into a new
subterranean channel, is called, first, the Poik, then the Unz, and
finally the Laibach. In the same manner the Temenitz, an affluent of the
Save, thrice disappears under the earth, and thrice emerges as a new-
born river with another name.
As far as these subterranean streams have been explored, their course
exhibits a wonderful variety of interesting underground scenery.
Sometimes they form high cataracts, leaping over rocks so picturesquely
grouped that, were they illumined by the sun, and of more easy access,
they would be admired by numberless tourists; and not seldom they expand
into dark and melancholy lakes. Sometimes they with difficulty force a
passage through a chaos of rocks, and then again they flow gently in a
deep and even channel, so as to be navigable to a considerable distance.
Generally, not the least breath of air sweeps over their placid waters,
but sometimes their surface is rippled by the wind pouring in through
some unseen chasm.
Among the bold explorers who have launched forth their barques on
unknown subterranean rivers, the late Adolph Schmidl, of Vienna, holds a
conspicuous rank. In a canoe specially constructed for the purpose he
trusted himself to the dark streams of Carniola, which rewarded his
adventurous zeal with many a scene of incomparable beauty, where the
water-spirits and the gnomes seemed to have rivalled each other in the
work of decoration. To give an idea of the difficulties and of the
enjoyments of these subterranean explorations, we will follow the
intrepid naturalist on his voyages of discovery through the famous Cave
of Planina, through which flows the Poik, a river which is at all times
deep enough to carry a boat. The course of the navigation is stream-
upwards, and consequently much safer than would otherwise have been the
case; but in many places the rapidity of the current calls for great
caution, and considerable strength is needed to overcome its violence;
while at the same time great care must be taken to avoid striking
against the rocks that lie hidden under the water. As far as the end of
a magnificent dome, situated about 600 feet from its entrance, the cave
can be traversed on foot; but here the sullen stream, completely filling
its whole width, compels the explorer to trust to his canoe. When he has
passed a portal about eight fathoms high and half as broad, with
proportions as symmetrical as if it had been sculptured by the hand of
man, the thundering roar of a distant cataract announces still grander
scenes. The portal widens, and the astonished explorer suddenly emerges
on a lake 250 feet long and 150 feet broad, beyond which the cave is
seen to divide into two arms, giving passage to two streams, whose
confluent waters form the lake. This broad sheet of water affords an
imposing but melancholy sight. The walls of the cave rise everywhere
abruptly out of the water, with the exception of one small landing-place
opposite to the portal at the foot of a projecting rock or promontory.
Here and there large masses of stalactite hang like petrified cascades
from the rocks, which are generally naked and black. The vault is so
high that the light of a few torches fails to pierce its gloom, which is
rendered still more impressive by the roar of the waterfall in the left
branch of the cavern.
As far as the lake, the cave is of comparatively easy access, and has
been repeatedly visited, but the subterranean course of the two brooks
beyond was first explored by Dr. Schmidl. In the left or western branch
of the cave, into which he penetrated to a distance of more than a mile,
his boat had to be unloaded no less than eleven times on account of the
reefs that obstructed its passage, while the explorers, wading through
the water, dragged it over the shallows. Once even, where the navigation
was interrupted by large masses of rock, under which the tumultuous
waters disappear with a dreadful roar, they were obliged to take the
little shallop to pieces, and to reconstruct it on the opposite side of
the mound. The navigable part of this western branch ends in a circular
dome, the floor of which is entirely filled with a lake 180 feet long,
and from 40 to 45 feet deep. On the western bank of this lake, a chasm
opens at the top of a mound of rubbish, the only place where it is
possible to land. A violent gust of wind descends from this chasm,
which, sloping upwards, soon narrows to a small crevice, through which
the current of air sets in.
To a lateral gallery, opening beyond the mouth of the chasm, Dr. Schmidl
gave the name of ‘The Stalactital Paradise,’ on account of the uncommon
beauty of the spar-crystals with which its walls were incrusted. It was
the first time that the foot of man had ever penetrated into this
charming laboratory of nature; no torch had ever soiled its brilliant
decorations; no profane hand had ever damaged its gem-like tapestry.
Here whole groups of stalagmitic cones, of all shapes and sizes, some
like tiny icicles, others six feet high and as thick as a man’s waist,
rose from the ground, while further on the brown wall formed a dark
background, from which projected in bold relief the colossal statue of a
sceptered king. Near the entrance stood a magnificent white figure,
which fancy might have supposed to be a cherub with a flaming sword,
menacing all those who should dare to injure the wonders which he
guarded.
‘“The Stalactical Paradise” remained intact,’ says Dr. Schmidl.[18] ‘I
begged my companions not to strike off the smallest piece of spar as a
memorial of our visit, and they all joyfully consented. Our feet
carefully avoided trampling down any of its delicate ornaments; we left
it with no other memorial than our admiration of its beauty. The nymphs
of the grot will no doubt have pardoned us for having intruded upon the
sanctuary, where for countless centuries they had reigned in undisturbed
solitude and silence.’
Footnote 18:
‘Die Höhlenkunde des Karstes.’ Wien, 1854.
The eastern branch of the cave, through which the main stream flows, is
much larger than the branch above described; it is also easily
navigated, as it contains but two reefs and a small number of cliffs. On
first ascending the stream, the continually increasing roar of waters
announces a considerable waterfall. Enormous masses of stone, piled up
by the falling in of the roof, have blocked up and narrowed the bed of
the river to fifteen feet, and cause the stream to shoot down in a broad
sheet ten feet high. The cataract, madly rushing over the jet-black
rocks and casting up flakes of milk-white foam, is very beautiful, and,
when brightly illuminated, must produce a truly magical effect.
Beyond the cataract the river flows for a short space in an invisible
channel, as its waters are completely hidden under rocks. It was no easy
task to carry the planks of the dismembered boat over these rugged
blocks of stone, but after reconstructing it on the opposite side of the
mound, and overcoming the minor obstacles of a couple of reefs, the
river was found to flow in a deep channel between steep walls, and a
free navigation opened to a distance of at least a league and a half.
‘No description,’ said Dr. Schmidl, ‘can do justice to the fascination
of this subterranean voyage. In some parts the roof is adorned with
coral-shaped draperies of snow-white stalactites, but generally the
walls are mere black, naked stone. Here and there sources gurgle down
their sides, and, along with the melancholy trickling of single drops of
water from the vault, alone break the silence of the dark interminable
cave. The breathless attention we bestowed on the guidance of our boat
and on the wonders that surrounded us sealed our lips, and we glided
silently along through the dark waters, that now, for the first time
since they began to flow, reflected the glare of a torch.’
Throughout the whole distance of 1,140 fathoms beyond the second reef,
there is but one landing-place; everywhere else the walls rise
precipitously from the water. In some parts the roof descends so low
that the explorers were obliged to lie down in the boat and to shove it
along by holding to the projections of the vault, which finally left but
a few inches’ space above the water, and thus opposed an invincible
obstacle to all further progress.
In another grotto—called the Piuka Jama—the Poik again flows in the
midst of the grandest subterranean scenery. About a league to the north
of Adelsberg, the wanderer, after traversing a thicket of underwood,
suddenly finds himself on the brink of a yawning precipice, from the
bottom of which is heard distinctly the noise of a rushing stream. The
walls of the chasm are almost perpendicular, except where a small
ravine, overgrown with shrubs, leads to an enormous rock, on which it is
possible to stand, and, if perfectly free from giddiness, to look down
into the gulf below, where the huge portal of a cave is seen to open.
From this rock, which projects over the abyss, the only descent is by
means of a rope or a rope-ladder. The bottom of the pit is covered with
large blocks of stone irregularly piled up, and here one first sees the
river rushing through the cave from right to left. The Piuka Jama may
thus be compared to a window pierced through a vault overspanning a
subterranean stream. Clambering down a heap of rubbish, the explorer at
length stands upon the floor of the cave, and reaches the bank of the
Poik. Stream-upwards, about 300 fathoms from the aperture, he meets with
a rock gate, through which the river rushes so violently that a boat can
master the current only when the water is unusually low.
After crossing this broad portal, the last faint traces of daylight
glimmering from the distant aperture in the Piuka entirely disappear,
and the scene suddenly changes. The expanding cavern assumes the
proportions of an imposing dome. On its left side a mound has been
formed by the falling in of the roof; but every block of stone is
completely covered with calcareous incrustations of the purest white.
From the floor to the centre of the vault millions upon millions of
brilliant spars reflect the light: every hollow in the walls is a
cabinet of gems. The background of the dome completes the beauty of the
scene, and exhibits one of the most imposing cavern decorations it is
possible to imagine. A monstrous pillar rises from its centre, forming
two colossal ogival portals. The larger one is on the left, and at its
entrance a mighty stalagmite, above twelve feet high, seems to forbid
intrusion. The pillar itself and the vaults of both the portals are
ornamented with the richest stalactital drapery.
When the river is swollen it rushes tumultuously through both the gates,
where now Dr. Schmidl found but a scanty rill whispering and babbling
among the stones.
CHAPTER XIV.
SUBTERRANEAN LIFE.
Subterranean Vegetation—Fungi—Enormous Fungus in a Tunnel near
Doncaster—Artificial Mushroom-beds near Paris—Subterranean Animals—The
Guacharo—Wholesale Slaughter—Insects in the Cave of Adelsberg—The
Leptodirus and the Blothrus—The Stalita tænaria—The Olm or Proteus—The
Lake of Cirknitz—The Archduke Ferdinand and Charon—The Blind Rat and
the Blind Fish of the Mammoth Cave.
Of all the phenomena which attract the naturalist’s attention, as he
wanders over the surface of the earth, there is none which makes a
deeper impression on his mind than the omnipresence of life. On the
snow-clad cone of Chimborazo, 18,000 feet above the level of the sea,
Humboldt found butterflies and other winged insects, while, high over
his head, the condor was soaring in solitary majesty. At the still
greater elevation of 18,460 feet, at the Doonkiah Pass in the Himalaya
Mountains, Dr. Hooker plucked flowering plants, and saw large flocks of
wild geese winging their flight above Kunchinjinga (22,750 feet) towards
the unknown regions of Central Asia. Thus man meets with life as far as
he is able to ascend, or as far as his sight plunges into the
atmospheric ocean. Besides the objects visible to his eye, innumerable
microscopical organisms pervade the realms of air. According to
Ehrenberg’s brilliant discovery, the impalpably fine dust which, wafted
by the Harmattan, often falls on ships when hundreds of miles from the
coast of Africa, consists of agglomerations of silica-coated diatoms,
individually so small as to be invisible to the naked eye; and
everywhere numberless minute germs of future life—eggs of insects and
sporules of cryptogamic plants—well fitted by cilia and feathery crowns
for an aërial journey, float up and down in the atmosphere; while the
waters of ocean are found, in like manner, filled with myriads of
animated atoms. But organic life not only occupies those parts of our
globe which are accessible to solar light; it also dives profoundly into
the subterranean world, wherever rain, or the melted snow, filtering
through the porous earth, or through vents and crevices, is able to
penetrate into natural caverns or artificial mines. For the combination
of moisture, warmth, and air is able to develop organic life even
thousands of feet below the surface of the earth; while light, though
indispensable to most creatures, would blight and destroy the
inhabitants of the subterranean vaults.
On surveying the flora of these dismal recesses, we find it consisting
exclusively of mushrooms or fungi, the lowest forms of vegetation,
which, shunning the light, love darkness and damp. Their appearance in
the caves is, as everywhere else, dependent upon the existence of an
organic basis, and thus they are most commonly found germinating on
pieces of wood, particularly in a state of decomposition, which have
been conveyed into the caverns either through the agency of man or by
the influx of water. Species of a peculiarly luxuriant growth are
sometimes seen to spread over the neighbouring stones, or apparently to
spring from the rocky ground, where, however, on closer inspection,
vestiges of decayed organic substances will generally be detected.
Thus vegetation in caves most commonly keeps pace with the quantity of
mouldering wood which they contain, and flourishes not only near their
entrance but in their deepest recesses, as, for instance, in the Cave of
Adelsberg, where, at a distance of more than a thousand fathoms from its
entrance, the pegs which have been driven into the stalactital walls for
the purpose of measuring its length are covered with a rich coat of
fungi. Nothing can be more curious than to see these plants, thriving
and luxuriating in deep stillness and gloom, under circumstances so
alien to the ordinary conditions of life. Among the fungi found in
caves, many also vegetate upon the surface of the earth exposed to the
influence of light, and not seldom degenerate into monstrous forms in
their less congenial subterranean abodes; but many are the exclusive
children of darkness. The Austrian naturalist Scopoli published in 1772
the first exact description of more than seventy subterranean fungi,
collected chiefly in the mines of Schemnitz and Idria; and about twenty
years later Humboldt wrote his celebrated treatise on the same
subject.[19] Since then G. F. Hoffmann has described the subterranean
flora of the Harz Mountains;[20] and latterly the botanists Welwitsch
and Pokorny have examined the caves of Carinthia, where they discovered
no less than eighteen species of fungi, among others the mouse-tail
mushroom (_Agaricus myurus_, Hoffm.), which is also found in the Harz,
and bears on a slender hairy stalk, more than a foot long, a small hat,
scarcely a quarter of an inch in diameter. Some of these fungi are
remarkable for their size (_Thelephora rubiginosa sanguinolenta_),
others for their elegance (_Diderma nigripes_).
Footnote 19:
‘Flora Fribergensis Plantas Cryptogamicas præsertim subterraneas
exhibens.’
Footnote 20:
‘Vegetabilia in Hercyniæ Subterraneis collecta Norinbergæ.’ 1811.
Some years ago a gigantic fungus, found growing from the woodwork of a
tunnel near Doncaster, afforded a striking proof of the luxuriancy of
subterranean vegetation. It measured no less than fifteen feet in
diameter, and was, in its way, as great a curiosity as one of the
colossal trees of California.
Even the plants that flourish in the darkness of caves have been
rendered subservient to our use. The cultivation of the edible mushroom
in spacious caverns or ancient quarries is practised to a great extent
in the environs of Paris, at Arcueil, Moulin de la Roche, and St.
Germain, but particularly at Montrouge, on the southern side of the
city. The mushroom-beds are entirely underground, seventy or eighty feet
below the surface, at a depth where the temperature is nearly uniform
all the year round. These extensive catacombs, formed by long burrowing
galleries, have no opening but by a circular shaft, to be descended by
clambering down a perpendicular pole or mast, into the sides of which
large wooden pegs are fixed, at intervals of ten or twelve inches, to
rest the feet upon.
The baskets containing the ripe mushrooms are hoisted from below by a
pulley and rope. The compost in which they grow consists of a white
gritty earth, mixed with good stable manure, and is moulded into narrow
beds about twenty inches high, ranged along the sides of the passages or
galleries, and kept exquisitely neat and smooth. The mushroom sporules
are introduced to the beds either by flakes of earth taken from an old
bed, or else from a heap of decomposing stable manure in which mushrooms
have naturally been engendered. The beds are covered with a layer of
earth an inch thick, the earth being merely the white rubbish left by
the stone-cutters above. They must be well watered, and removed after
two or three months, when their bearing qualities are exhausted. In one
of the caves at Montrouge alone there are six or seven miles of
mushroom-bedding, a proof that this branch of industry is by no means
unimportant.
While subterranean vegetation is exclusively confined to mushrooms,
animal life of almost every class has far more abundant representatives,
for plants are in general much more dependent on the vivifying influence
of light.
The various animals which are found dwelling in caves may be subdivided
into two groups; one, which, though preferring darkness, and spending a
great part of its existence under the earth, yet often voluntarily seeks
the light of day, or at least wanders forth at night; while the other is
_exclusively_ subterranean, and is never seen above the surface of the
earth, unless by chance or when driven up by violence.
To the first group belong most of the insectivorous and rodent
quadrupeds that dwell in self-made burrows, or pursue a subterranean
prey, such as the armadilloes and the moles. The large family of the
bats likewise love to sleep by day, or to hibernate in warm and solitary
caves, where they are sometimes found in numbers as countless as the
sea-birds which flock round some rocky island of the north. When
Professor Silliman visited the Mammoth Cave (October 16, 1822), he
everywhere saw them suspended in dense clusters from the roofs, though a
large number had not yet retired into winter-quarters. In a small space,
scarcely four or five inches square, he counted no less than forty bats,
and convinced himself that at least one hundred and twenty find room on
a square foot, as they held not only by the surface of the walls of
their retreat, but by each other, one closely crowding over another.
Such clusters are found in the interior of the cavern, which branches
out in many directions as far as two miles from the entrance, so that a
very superficial survey allows them to be counted by millions. Who, in
these dismal regions, where no change of temperature or of light
announces the various seasons, tells them that the reign of winter is
past? who awakes them at the proper time out of the deep sleep in which
they remain plunged for months? The same mysterious voice of instinct
which regulates the migrations of the birds and the wanderings of the
fishes, and which in this case, as in every other, is equally wonderful
and incomprehensible.
In the class of birds we find many cave-haunting species. The pigeons
like to nestle in grottoes, which also serve as welcome retreats to the
moping owl; and various swallows and swifts breed chiefly in the
darkness of caverns. One of the most remarkable of these troglodytic
birds is the Guacharo, which inhabits a large cave in the Valley of
Caripe, near the town of Cumana, and of which an interesting account has
been given by Humboldt, who first introduced it to the notice of Europe.
The _Gueva del Guacharo_ is pierced in the vertical profile of a rock,
and the entrance is towards the south, forming a noble vault eighty feet
broad and seventy-two feet high. The rock surmounting the cavern is
covered with trees of gigantic growth, and all the luxuriant profusion
of an inter-tropical vegetation. Plantain-leaved heliconias, and
wondrous orchids, the Praga palm, and tree arums, grow along the banks
of a river that flows out of the cave, while lianas, and a variety of
creeping plants, rocked to and fro by the wind, form elegant festoons
before its entrance. What a contrast between this magnificently
decorated portal and the gloomy mouth of the Surtshellir, imbedded in
the lava wildernesses of Iceland? As the cave at first penetrates into
the mountain in a straight direction, the light of day does not
disappear for a considerable distance from the entrance, so that
visitors are able to go forward for about four hundred and thirty feet
without being obliged to light their torches; and here, where light
begins to fail, the hoarse cries of the nocturnal birds are heard from
afar.
The guacharo is of the size of the common fowl. Its hooked bill is wide,
like that of the goat-sucker, and furnished at the base with stiff hairs
directed forwards. The plumage, like that of most nocturnal birds, is
sombre brownish grey, mixed with black stripes and large white spots.
The eyes are incapable of bearing the light of day, and the wings are
disproportionately large, measuring not less than four feet and a half
from tip to tip. It quits the cavern only at nightfall, especially when
there is moonlight; and Humboldt remarks that it is almost the only
frugivorous nocturnal bird yet known, for it does not prey upon insects
like the goatsucker, but feeds on very hard fruits, which its strong
hooked beak is well fitted to crack. The horrible noise made by
thousands of these birds in the dark recesses of the cavern can be
compared only to the wild shrieks of the sea-mews round a solitary bird
mountain, or to the deafening uproar of the crows when assembled in vast
flocks in the dark fir-forests of the North. The clamour increases on
advancing deeper into the cave, the birds being disturbed by the torch-
light; and as those nestling in the side avenues of the cave begin to
utter their mournful cries when the first sink into silence, it seems as
if their troops were alternately complaining to each other of the
intruders. By fixing torches to the end of long poles, the Indians, who
serve as guides into the cavern, show the nests of these birds, fifty or
sixty feet above the heads of the explorers, in funnel-shaped holes with
which the cavern roof is pierced like a sieve.
Once a year, about midsummer, the Guacharo Cavern is entered by the
Indians. Armed with poles they ransack the greater part of the nests,
while the old birds, uttering lamentable cries, hover over the heads of
the robbers. The young which fall down are opened on the spot. The
peritonæum is found loaded with fat, and a layer of the same substance
reaches from the abdomen to the vent, forming a kind of cushion between
the birds’ legs. The European nocturnal birds are meagre, as, instead of
feasting on fruits and oily kernels, they live upon the scanty produce
of the chase; while in the guacharo, as in our fattened geese, the
accumulation of fat is promoted by darkness and abundant food. At the
period above mentioned, which is known at Caripe as the ‘oil harvest,’
huts are erected by the Indians with palm leaves near the entrance, and
even in the very porch of the cavern. There the fat of the young birds
just killed is melted in clay pots over a brushwood fire, and is said to
be very pure and of a good taste. Its small quantity, however, is quite
out of proportion to the numbers killed, as not more than 150 or 160
jars of perfectly clear oil are collected from the massacre of
thousands.
The way into the interior of the cavern leads along the banks of the
small river which flows through its dark recesses; but sometimes large
masses of stalactites obstruct the passage, and force the visitor to
wade through the water, which is, however, not more than two feet deep.
As far as 1,458 feet from the entrance the cave maintains the same
direction, width, and height of sixty or seventy feet, so that it would
be difficult to find another mountain cavern of so regular a formation.
Humboldt had great difficulty in persuading the natives to pass beyond
the part of the cave which they usually visit to collect the oil, as
they believed its deeper penetralia to be the abode of their ancestors’
spirits; but since the great naturalist’s visit, they seem to have
abandoned their ancient superstitions, or to have acquired a greater
courage in facing the mysteries of the grotto, for, while they would
only accompany Humboldt as far as 236 fathoms into the interior of the
cave, later travellers, such as Codazzi and Beaupertuis, have advanced
with their guides to double the distance, though without reaching its
end. They found that beyond the furthest point explored by Humboldt the
cave loses its regularity, and has its walls covered with stalactites.
In the embranchments of the grotto Codazzi found innumerable birds. It
was formerly supposed that the guacharo was exclusively confined to this
cave; latterly, however, it has also been found in the province of
Bogota.
The discovery of animals adapted for perpetual darkness is but of modern
date, and as the vast majority of caves have not yet been thoroughly
explored by zoologists, the number of genera and species already known
gives us reason to believe that future investigations will add
considerably to their number. In the Adelsberg, Lueg, and Magdalena
grottoes, which form but an inconsiderable part of the extensive
cavernous regions of Carniola, seven exclusively subterranean insects,
one spider, two scorpionides, one millepede, two crustaceans, one snail,
and one reptile—in all fifteen different species of animals, belonging
to no less than six different classes—have been found.
[Illustration: LEPTODIRUS HOCHENWARTII.]
Among these dwellers of the dark, warfare is as rife as in the regions
of light. Thus, in the recesses of the Grotto of Adelsberg, the cavern
beetle (_Leptodirus Hochenwartii_) is persecuted and devoured by the
scorpioniform _Blothrus spelæus_, and by the eyeless spider (_Stalita
tænaria_). The black and brown Leptodirus discovered in the Grotto of
Adelsberg in 1831, by Count Hochenwart, is distinguished by long and
delicate antennæ and legs, and comparatively small translucent and
smooth elytra. The unique specimen found at the time was unfortunately
lost, and although twenty-five florins were offered to the cavern guides
for one of these beetles, fourteen years passed before it was re-
discovered in the same cave. Since then other collectors have been more
fortunate, particularly Prince Robert Khevenhüller, who, during his
repeated visits to the Cave of Adelsberg, captured no less than twenty
specimens of the Leptodirus.
Cautiously feeling its way with its long antennæ, the beetle slowly
ascends the damp stalactital columns, and accelerates its movements at
the approach of a light. The greater number were found in the evening,
thus giving reason for supposing that the Leptodirus is a noctural
beetle, although it is hardly possible to conceive how the alternating
influence of night and day can still be felt in these regions of
darkness. The manner in which it is pursued by the eyeless Blothrus
(discovered in 1833, by Mr. F. Schmidt), has been several times observed
by Prince Khevenhüller. He once saw one of these cavern scorpions slowly
crawling along, stretching out its palpi in all directions, and
evidently on the search. He immediately guessed that the animal was
engaged in a hunting expedition, and soon found that he was not
mistaken, for a fine Leptodirus was crawling about four feet higher on
the opposite wall. For a long time the Prince left the two insects
undisturbed, until he had thoroughly convinced himself that the
movements of the Blothrus were evidently regulated by those of the
Leptodirus, and that the former was, beyond all doubt, in pursuit of the
beetle. A Leptodirus having been thrown along with a Blothrus into a
phial, was immediately cut to pieces and devoured.
The eyeless cavern spider (_Stalita tænaria_), with brownish palpæ and a
snow-white abdomen, is not seldom found in the hollows of the
stalactites, lying in wait for the unfortunate Leptodirus. On the
surface of the earth spiders are frequently obliged to fast for a very
long time; but in caverns where life is so sparingly distributed, the
patience of the Stalita must be exemplary, even among spiders. Her
appearance on the snow-white stalactital columns, where she only becomes
visible when illumined by the full light of a taper,[21] is very
striking. Like a vision, she sweeps away in her ivory robe, accompanied
by her increasing shadow, until she finally disappears in the darkness.
Footnote 21:
Torches are not allowed to be carried in the Grotto of Adelsberg, that
the whiteness of the stalactites may not be tarnished by the smoke.
[Illustration: THE PROTEUS AGUINUS.]
But the largest and most interesting of all the European cave animals is
undoubtedly the Olm (_Proteus anguinus; Hypochthon_). This enigmatic
reptile was first found in the famous Lake of Cirknitz, which,
communicating with numerous subterranean caves, alternately receives and
loses its waters through openings in the rock. After long and heavy
rains the floods, which the hidden vaults are no longer able to contain,
gush forth in foaming cataracts, and the lake, which generally forms but
a long and narrow channel, then swells to at least three times its
ordinary width. Sometimes, after a long drought, the contrary takes
place, and the whole lake disappears under ground. Thus, from December
1833 to October 1834, not a trace of it was visible, so thoroughly had
it concealed itself in its subterranean reservoirs, where its fishes,
secure from the persecutions of man, multiplied in a remarkable manner.
The Olm, which only casually comes to the light of day, along with the
overflowing waters of the Cirknitz Lake, was first discovered in 1814,
in one of its permanent subterranean abodes. The Magdalena or ‘Black
Grotto’ situated about a league to the north of Adelsberg, slants
abruptly into the bowels of the mountain. After a long and difficult
passage over blocks of stone or through soft mud, a tranquil pool is at
length reached, which rises or falls simultaneously with the waters of
the Poik, and proves, by this reciprocal action, that, in all
probability, all the numerous grottoes and subterranean river channels
of this so strangely undermined country form but one vast and intricate
network. It was in this pool, which no light illumines and no wind ever
stirs, that numerous Protei were first discovered; but as hundreds of
specimens have since found their way to the cabinets of naturalists, to
be observed, dissected, or bottled up in spirits, their number has very
much decreased, and the time is perhaps not far distant when they will
be entirely extirpated in the grotto, where from time immemorial they
had enjoyed an undisturbed security. The Proteus is one of those
remarkable reptiles which breathe at the same time through lungs and
gills, having on each side of the neck three rose-red branchiæ, which it
retains through life, as its lungs are but imperfectly developed. It has
a long, eel-like body with an elongated head, a compressed tail, and
four very short and thin legs. The skin is flesh-coloured, and so
translucent that the liver and the heart, which beats about fifty times
in a minute, can be distinctly seen underneath. In spite of its apparent
weakness, it is able to glide rapidly through the water. Its four little
legs remain immovable while swimming; they are only used for creeping,
and then in a very imperfect manner. During rapid movements the gills
swell and assume a lively scarlet colour; when quiet, they collapse and
become white like the rest of the body. Sometimes the animal raises its
head above the water to breathe, but pulmonary respiration evidently
plays but a secondary part in its economy, as it can only live a very
short time out of the water. The skeleton consists almost entirely of
cartilage. The eyes, two little black spots, lie buried under the skin,
and, as may well be imagined, are very imperfectly developed. Although
more than a thousand specimens have been observed, yet but little is
known about its mode of life, nor has it been ascertained whether it is
oviparous or brings forth live young. In a captive state the Proteus is
able to live for several years without any apparent food; but on
fastening a small worm to the extremity of a thin stick, and holding it
under the water close to the head of the reptile, it shoots rapidly
towards it, swallows it with the same velocity, then ejects it again,
and repeats this manœuvre several times, until it finally retains the
morsel. The untiring zeal of the German naturalists has discovered the
Proteus in thirty-one different caverns, and ascertained seven distinct
species, varying by their size, the form of the head, the position of
the eyes, and the colour of the skin. Six of these species belong to the
caverns of Carniola, and the seventh to those of Dalmatia. Two different
species never inhabit the same cavern.
During the visit which the Archduke Ferdinand paid, in 1819, to the
Magdalena Grotto, the most remarkable parts of the cave were brilliantly
illuminated, so as to produce a magical effect. Charon’s boat, issuing
from a dark recess, came gliding along over the black surface of the
pool. The grim ferryman drew up his net before the august visitors, and
presented them with six Protei that had been entangled in its meshes.
Dr. Schmidl mentions part of the subterranean river in the Planina Cave,
1,715 fathoms from the entrance, as the spot where the Protei are most
abundant. Near to a small cascade which the rivulet here forms over a
reef, the waters absolutely swarm with them, and the light-coloured
animals, darting about in all directions in the dark stream, afford a
strange and picturesque spectacle. As the cavern is of most difficult
access, they here enjoy a tranquillity rarely disturbed, and no doubt
they have many other still more hidden retreats, to which man is
incapable of penetrating. The best method for transporting the Proteus
is now perfectly understood, and living specimens have been conveyed as
far as Russia, Hungary, and Scotland. All that they need is a frequent
supply of fresh water, and a careful removal of all light. Their food
need cause no trouble, as the water contains all they require. It is
recommended to lay a piece of stalactite from their native grotto in the
vase in which they are transported. When resting or sleeping, they then
coil themselves round the stone, as if tenderly embracing it. In this
manner they have already been kept above five years out of their
caverns. The guides to the Grotto of Adelsberg have always got a supply
on hand, and sell them for about two florins a-piece.
On turning our attention from the grottoes of Carniola to those of the
New World, we find, in the vast Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, a no less
interesting animal creation, which, though different from that of the
Austrian caverns, still shows a certain family resemblance, and affords
another proof that a similarity of external circumstances always
produces analogous forms of organic life. Thus, the two blind beetles
which are found in the Mammoth Cave belong to the same genera
(_Anophthalmus_ and _Adelops_) that have also their representatives in
the Grotto of Adelsberg. The largest insect is here a species of
cricket, with enormously long antennæ; there are also two small white
eyeless spiders and a few crustaceans. The Mammoth Cave has no
proteiform reptile to boast of, but a peculiar blind rat and a peculiar
blind fish.
The cavern rat, which is tolerably numerous, but which, on account of
its remarkable timidity, seldom shows itself, differs from the common or
Norway rat, by its bluish colour, its white abdomen, neck, and feet, and
its soft hair. It has large black eyes, like those of a rabbit, but
entirely destitute of an iris, and uncommonly long whiskers, as if
Nature had wished to indemnify it for the loss of sight by a more
perfect development of the sense of touch. Although the eyes of this rat
are large and brilliant, yet Professor Silliman convinced himself of
their perfect insensibility to light. All proof is wanting that it ever
visits the upper world.
[Illustration: BLIND FISH (AMBLYOPSIS SPELÆUS).]
The blind fish (_Amblyopsis spelæus_) is now become tolerably rare from
its having been so frequently fished out of the Lethe stream, as the
subterranean river of the Mammoth Cave is called. Many physiologists
have already made it the subject of their observations, and are
generally of opinion that the Amblyopsis was not originally blind, but
that, having found its way into the cave, it gradually lost its powers
of vision. The celebrated naturalist Agassiz, however, being perfectly
convinced that all animals existing in a wild state have been created
within their actual bounds with all the peculiarities of structure which
distinguish them at the present day, is of opinion that the blind fish
and all the other blind animals of the Mammoth Cave are the aboriginal
children of darkness, and have at no time been connected with the world
of light.
CHAPTER XV.
CAVES AS PLACES OF REFUGE.
The Cave of Adullam—Mahomet in the Cave of Thaur—The Cave of Longara—The
Cave of Egg—The Caves of Rathlin—The Cave of Yeermalik—The Caves of
Granada—Aben Aboo, the Morisco king—The Caves of Gortyna and Melidoni—
Atrocities of French Warfare in Algeria—The Caves of the Dahra—The
Cave of Shelas—St. Arnaud.
In times of war or persecution, caverns have often served as places of
concealment. It was in the cave of Adullam that David hid himself to
escape from the fury of Saul; and on the flight from Mecca to Medina,
Mahomet and his disciple Abu Bekr took refuge in a cave in Mount Thaur.
They left Mecca while it was yet dark, making their way on foot by the
light of the stars, and the day dawned as they found themselves at the
foot of the hill, about an hour’s distance from the holy city. Scarcely
were they within the cave when they heard the sound of pursuit. Abu
Bekr, though a brave man, quaked with fear. ‘Our pursuers,’ said he,
‘are many, and we are but two.’ ‘Nay,’ replied Mahomet, ‘there is a
third: God is with us!’
And here the Moslem writers relate a miracle dear to the minds of true
believers. By the time, say they, that his pursuers, the Koreishites,
reached the mouth of the cave, an acacia-tree had sprung up before it,
in the spreading branches of which a pigeon had made its nest and laid
its eggs, and over the whole a spider had woven its web. When the
Koreishites beheld these signs of undisturbed quiet, they concluded that
no one could recently have entered the cavern, so they turned away and
pursued their search in another direction.
But caverns have not always proved safe places of refuge, and a
barbarous enemy has often used them for the destruction of those who
there vainly sought safety. Thus, in Palestine, the Jews, who hid
themselves with their wives and children in deep caverns hollowed in the
flanks of a precipitous mountain, could not escape the satellites of
Herod, who, let down from above in large baskets or tubs, put these
defenceless fugitives to the sword. During the Gallic war Cæsar ordered
his lieutenant Crassus to wall up the mouths of the caves in which the
inhabitants of Aquitaine had sought a refuge, and many of them were thus
immured alive.
In the year 1510, when the French army, on its retreat from Italy, was
traversing the defiles of Piedmont, the rearguard, commanded by the
famous Chevalier Bayard, the good knight ‘without fear or reproach,’
having halted at Longara, the mercenaries, who formed a considerable
part of his troops, spread over the country, pillaging and destroying
wherever they went.
To escape from these savage bands, the nobles of the district persuaded
about two thousand of the peasantry to accompany them, with their
families and an abundant supply of provisions, into the Cave of Longara,
which forms a vast though low vaulted hall, about 1,200 feet long and
300 feet broad, but with an entrance so narrow that only a single person
can pass at a time. The mercenaries, having discovered the secret of the
cave, rushed to the spot, eager for pillage. The unfortunate refugees
vainly strove to soften the hearts of these barbarians, but, finding all
supplications vain, they took courage from despair, and, favoured by the
natural strength of the cave, repelled the attack of the first banditti
who attempted to force an entrance.
The ruffians now returned to the charge in greater numbers; but being
still unable to accomplish their object, they formed the diabolical plan
of setting fire to a heap of hay, straw, and greenwood, which they piled
up before the mouth of the grotto. The smoke penetrated into the cave
and in a short time the two thousand wretches it contained—mostly women
and children—were suffocated. Bayard, enraged at this barbarous act,
which sullied his own honour, ordered the ringleaders to be seized and
hanged before the entrance of the cave.
While these malefactors were in the hands of the executioner, a lad of
fourteen, the only survivor of the catastrophe, was seen to crawl out of
the grotto. Bayard ordered every aid to be rendered him which his state
required, and could not refrain from tears while listening to his
lamentable tale. The boy related that when the smoke began to spread in
the cavern, the nobles, resolving to die at least like soldiers, wanted
to sally forth, sword in hand, but were prevented by the peasants, who
fell upon them and disarmed them, saying, ‘You have led us hither, and
here with us you shall die!’ Thus, a few moments before a common doom
was to destroy both nobles and serfs, a horrible strife had arisen
between them in the darkness of the cave.
‘And thou, my friend,’ asked Bayard, ‘by what miracle hast thou escaped
death?’ ‘I had remarked,’ answered the lad, ‘a feeble ray of daylight in
a corner of the grotto, and applied my mouth to the crevice through
which it passed. I soon fainted, but this small portion of fresh air
preserved my life. When I recovered my senses, I remembered all that had
passed, but I was alone, and it took me a long time to crawl out of the
grotto.’ ‘All thy companions,’ answered Bayard, ‘have been buried, by my
orders, in consecrated ground; and behold! there hang their assassins!’
Unfortunately the history of our land is tarnished with similar deeds of
atrocity.
A cave in the Isle of Egg, one of the Hebrides, has a very narrow
entrance, through which one can hardly creep on knees and hands, but it
rises steep and lofty within, and runs into the bowels of the rock to
the depth of 255 measured feet. The rude and stony bottom of this cave
is strewed with the bones of men, women, and children, the sad relics of
the ancient inhabitants of the island, 200 in number, of whose
destruction the following story is related. ‘The Macdonalds, of the Isle
of Egg, a people dependent on Clanranald, had done some injury to the
Laird of Macleod. The tradition of the isle says that it was by a
personal attack on the chieftain, in which his back was broken; but that
of the other isles bears that the injury was offered to two or three of
the Macleods, who, landing upon Egg, and behaving insolently towards the
islanders, were bound hand and foot, and turned adrift in a boat, which
the winds and waves safely conducted to Skye. To avenge the offence
given, Macleod sailed with such a body of men as rendered resistance
hopeless. The natives, fearing his vengeance, concealed themselves in
the cavern; and, after strict search, the Macleods went on board their
galleys, after doing what mischief they could, concluding the
inhabitants had left the isle. But next morning they espied from their
vessels a man upon the island, and, immediately landing again, they
traced his retreat, by means of a light snow on the ground, to the
cavern. Macleod then summoned the subterraneous garrison, and demanded
that the inhabitants who had offended him should be delivered up. This
was peremptorily refused. The chieftain thereupon caused his people to
divert the course of a rill of water, which, falling over the mouth of
the cave, would have prevented his purposed vengeance. He then kindled
at the entrance of the cavern a huge fire, and maintained it until all
within were destroyed by suffocation.’[22]
Footnote 22:
Voyages in the Lighthouse Yacht, published in Lockhart’s ‘Life of Sir
Walter Scott.’
In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a no less horrible deed occurred during
the campaign of Essex against the Irish rebels. When the English forces
entered Antrim, the Scots of that county had sent their wives and
children, their aged and their sick, to the island of Rathlin for
safety. Sir John Norris was directed by the Earl to cross over and kill
all that he could find. The run up the Antrim coast was rapidly and
quietly accomplished. Before an alarm could be given the English had
landed close to the church which bears Columba’s name. The castle was
taken by storm, and every soul in it—about two hundred—put to the sword.
It was then discovered that the greater part of the fugitives, chiefly
mothers and their little ones, were hidden in the caves about the
shores. ‘There was no remorse,’ says Froude, ‘not even the faintest
shadow of perception that the occasion called for it. They were hunted
out as if they had been seals or otters, and all destroyed.’
When the barbarian Genghis Khan invaded Koondooz in Central Asia, 700
men took refuge, with their wives and families, in the cave of
Yeermalik, and defended themselves so valiantly that, after trying in
vain to destroy them by fire, the invader built them in with huge
natural blocks of stone, and left them to die of hunger. In the year
1840, the cave was visited by Captain Burslem and Lieutenant Sturt,
probably the only Europeans that ever entered its sepulchral recesses,
as the people in the neighbourhood believe it to be the abode of Sheitan
(the devil), and are as reluctant to guide a stranger as to explore it
themselves. The entrance is halfway up a hill, and is fifty feet high,
with about the same breadth. Not far from the entrance the travellers
found a passage between two jagged rocks, possibly the remains of
Genghis Khan’s fatal wall, so narrow that they had some difficulty in
squeezing through, and then before long came to a drop of sixteen feet,
down which they were lowered by ropes. Here they left two men to haul
them up on their return, and bade farewell to the light of day. The
narrow path, which led by the edge of a black abyss, sometimes over a
flooring of smooth ice for a few feet, widened gradually till they
reached a damp and dripping hall, so vast in size that the light of
their torches did not enable them to form any idea of its size. In this
colossal hall, or rather tomb, they found the remains of the victims of
Genghis Khan: hundreds of skeletons in a perfectly undisturbed state—
one, for instance, still holding the skeletons of two infants in its
long arms—while some of the bodies had been preserved, and lay
shrivelled, like the mummies reposing in the sepulchral vault of the
Great St. Bernard.
In the dark history of Philip II. of Spain, one of the darkest passages
is that of the rebellion and final destruction of the Moors of Granada.
Driven to despair by an intolerable tyranny, the unfortunate people at
length rose in arms against their oppressors; but all their bravery,
aided by the natural strength of their mountain fastnesses, failed to
defend them against the superior arms of their pitiless enemy. Defeated
in every encounter, driven from every stronghold, thousands perished by
famine or the sword, and those who submitted were either condemned to a
cruel death or exiled from their native soil. Many were driven to seek a
refuge in the caves of the Alpujarras, south-east of Granada, and of the
bold sierras that stretch along the southern shores of Spain. Their
pursuers followed up the chase with the fierce glee of the hunter
tracking the wild beast of the forest to his lair. There they were
huddled together, one or two hundred frequently in the same cavern. It
was not easy to detect the hiding-place amidst the rocks and thickets
which covered up and concealed the entrance. But when it was detected,
it was no difficult matter to destroy the inmates. The green bushes
furnished the material for a smouldering fire, and those within were
soon suffocated by the smoke, or, rushing out, threw themselves on the
mercy of their pursuers. Some were butchered on the spot; others were
sent to the gibbet or the galleys; while the greater part, with a fate
scarcely less terrible, were given up as the booty of the soldiers, and
sold into slavery.
Aben Aboo, the last chief of the insurgents, who had hitherto eluded
every attempt to seize him, but whose capture was of more importance
than that of any other of his nation, had a narrow escape in one of
these caverns not far from Berchal, where he lay hid with a wife and two
of his daughters. The women were suffocated, with about seventy other
persons; but the Morisco chief succeeded in making his escape through an
aperture at the further end, which was unknown to his enemies.
Unfortunately, the little king of the Alpujarras, as he was
contemptuously called by the Spaniards, was soon after killed in another
cavern by a traitor’s hand, and with him fell the last hope of the
Moriscos. His corpse, set astride on a mule, and supported erect in the
saddle by a wooden frame, concealed beneath ample robes, was led in
triumphal procession through the streets of Granada, and then
decapitated. The body was given to the rabble, who, after dragging it
through the streets with scoffs and imprecations, committed it to the
flames, while the head, inclosed in a cage, was set up over the gate
which opened on the Alpujarras. There it remained for many a year, no
one venturing to remove it, for on the cage was inscribed, ‘This is the
head of the traitor Aben Aboo. Let no one take it down, under pain of
death.’
The neighbourhood of Gortyna, in the island of Crete, has become
celebrated in modern times for a mountain-labyrinth, with numerous and
intricate passages, which exists in a valley near it, and in which the
myth of the Dædalean labyrinth was probably localised. During the
revolutionary war against the Turkish yoke (1822–1828) the Christian
inhabitants of the adjacent villages, for months together, lived in this
cavern, merely sallying out by day to till their lands, or to gather
their crops, when it was safe to do so. Though the dark recesses of the
cavern were not very inviting abodes for human beings for any long
period, yet the sense of safety gave it, doubtless, a peculiar charm;
for no one could approach within range of the numerous muskets pointed
from masked loopholes at its entrance, without being immediately shot
down; nor could either fire or smoke suffocate or dislodge its inmates,
as the entrance is in the side of a steep hill, 500 or 600 feet above
the bed of the wild valley in which it is situated, and thus is safe
from attack in every direction. History as well as tradition states
that, in all troubled times in Crete, the labyrinth of Gortyna has been
the retreat of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood; but when Captain
Spratt visited it in 1852, its only inhabitants were bats, who, by their
mode of hooking on to each other, were hanging from the ceiling like
clusters of bees. Under good native guides, he spent nearly two hours in
threading its tortuous passages, which turn in so many ways and have so
many branches as to justify the conclusion that a master hand must have
directed the excavation. The mark of the tool is seen upon every side of
the avenues and chambers, indicative of its artificial character.
Less fortunate than their brethren of Gortyna were the unfortunate
Cretans who, during the same war, took refuge in the cave of Melidoni.
In 1822, when Hussein Bey marched against the neighbouring village, the
inhabitants, to the number of three hundred, repaired to the cave,
taking with them their valuables and provisions sufficient for six
months. The entrance is so narrow and steep that they were perfectly
secured against an attack, and the Turks in their first attempt lost
twenty-five men. Finding that they refused submission on any terms,
Hussein Bey ordered a quantity of combustibles to be brought to the
entrance and set on fire. The smoke, rolling into the cavern in immense
volumes, drove the miserable fugitives into the remoter chambers, where
they lingered a little while longer, but were all eventually suffocated.
The Turks waited some days, but still did not dare to enter, and a Greek
captive was finally sent down on the promise of his life being spared.
The Turks then descended and plundered the bodies. A week afterwards,
three natives of the village stole into the cavern to see what had
become of their friends and relatives. It is said that they were so
overcome by the terrible spectacle that two of them died within a few
days. Years afterwards, when the last vestiges of the insurrection had
been suppressed, the Archbishop of Crete blessed the cavern, making it
consecrated ground; and the bones of the victims were gathered together
and partially covered up, in the outer chamber—a vast elliptical hall,
about eighty feet in height, and propped in the centre by an enormous
stalactitic pillar. On all sides the stalactites hang like fluted
curtains from the roof, here in broad sheeted masses, there dropping
into single sharp folds, but all on a scale of Titanic grandeur. In this
imposing and silent hall, under the black banners of eternal Night, lay
heaped the mouldering skulls and bones of the poor Christians. They
could not have had a more appropriate sepulchre.
Such have been the atrocities of Turkish warfare within the memory of
living man; but French officers have in our days emulated the cruelty of
Ottoman commanders, and shown that the nation which boasts of marching
at the head of civilisation has still retained much of its ancient
Gallic barbarism. When Marshal Pelissier filled with smoke the crowded
caves of the Dahra in 1844, and destroyed many hundreds of Kabyls whose
great crime it was to defend their country against the French hordes, it
has been stated, as an excuse for this atrocity, that he left open some
of the entrances to the caves, and that he only resorted to the smoke as
a means of compelling the fugitives to come out and surrender; but no
such excuse can be pleaded in favour of his successor, St. Arnaud. In
the summer of 1845,[23] this French commander received private
information that a body of Arabs had taken refuge in the cave of Shelas.
Thither he marched a body of troops. Eleven of the fugitives came out
and surrendered; but it was known to St. Arnaud, though not to any other
Frenchman, that five hundred men remained in the cave. All these people
Colonel St. Arnaud determined to kill, and at the same time to keep the
deed secret even from the troops engaged in the operation, as the
smoking of the Caves of the Dahra had not greatly tended to raise France
in the public opinion of Europe. Except his brother and Marshal Bugeaud,
whose approval was the prize he sought, no one was to know what he did.
He contrived to execute both his purposes. Thus he writes to his
brother:—‘I had all the apertures hermetically stopped up. I made one
vast sepulchre. No one went into the caverns; no one but myself knew
that under these there are 500 brigands who will never again slaughter
Frenchmen. A confidential report has told all to the marshal, without
terrible poetry or imagery. Brother, no one is so good as I am by taste
and by nature. From the 8th to the 12th I have been ill, but my
conscience does not reproach me. I have done my duty as a commander, and
to-morrow I would do the same over again; but I have taken a disgust to
Africa.’ With such nauseous sentiment wrote the man, ‘_good_ by taste
and nature,’ who seven years later was to attach the memory of his name
to the bloody days of December, and to deal with many a French
republican as he had dealt with the Arabs.
Footnote 23:
Kinglake.
CHAPTER XVI.
HERMIT CAVES—ROCK TEMPLES—ROCK CHURCHES.
St. Paul of Thebes—St. Anthony—His Visit to Alexandria, and death—
Numerous Cave Hermits in the East—St. Benedict in the Cave of Subiaco—
St. Cuthbert—St. Beatus—Rock Temples of Kanara—The Wonders of Ellora—
Ipsamboul—Rock Churches of Lalibala in Abyssinia—The Cave of
Trophonios—The Grotto of St. Rosolia near Palermo—The Chapel of Agios
Niketas in Greece—The Chapel of Oberstein on the Nahe—The repentant
fratricide.
The dim twilight of a forest, its leafy vaults, its majestic silence, or
its foliage moaning in the wind, are all apt to strike the mind with a
religious awe. But the solitude and stillness of caverns is equally well
adapted to awaken feelings of devotion, and thus we find that
contemplative minds in every age, and of every creed, have found in them
congenial retreats. The Indian fakir and the Mahometan dervish love the
seclusion of the silent grotto, and here also the Hebrew prophets not
seldom enjoyed their ecstatic visions.
[Illustration: INDIAN ROCK-CUT TEMPLE: PORCH OF THE CHAITYA CAVE TEMPLE,
AJUNTA.]
There can be no doubt that, during the first ages of Christianity many
an unknown anchorite retired to some solitary cave, as to a harbour of
refuge from the rude contact of the world; but the first hermit
mentioned in ecclesiastical history is St. Paul of Thebes, in Egypt,
who, during the persecution of Decius, in the middle of the third
century, retreated to the desert, where, dwelling in a cave, and living
on the fruits of trees, he reached his hundredth year. His friend and
disciple, St. Anthony, who first roused among his contemporaries a wide-
spread inclination for hermit seclusion, plays a far more conspicuous
part in the annals of the Church. Born of wealthy Coptic peasants, this
remarkable man, at the age of twenty, divided his whole property among
the poor, and thenceforth devoted himself to a life of the strictest
ascetism. He retired first to a rock-cave in the neighbourhood of his
native village, and then to the more distant ruins of a deserted castle,
where he spent twenty years as a hermit. Meanwhile his reputation for
sanctity had spread throughout all Egypt, and numerous candidates for a
hermit life besought him to take them under his spiritual care. He
yielded to their entreaties, and soon the neighbouring desert was
crowded with the huts of zealous anchorites, who revered him as their
model. But he was surrounded not only by these pious disciples; the
worldly-minded also came flocking to his cave for advice or assistance;
for the belief was general that, like the first Apostles, he was gifted
with the power of casting out devils and foretelling future events.
Anthony, thus disturbed in his solitary meditations, resolved to bury
himself still deeper in the desert, and fled to a cave in the furthest
parts of Egypt, near a source shaded by a few date-palms. Here he hoped
to be able to live entirely for prayer and contemplation, but his hopes
proved vain, for, after a long search, his disciples discovered his
retreat, and again anchorites and worldlings broke in upon his solitude.
In his hundredth year he was prevailed upon by St. Athanasius to visit
Alexandria, where, whenever he appeared, crowds gathered round him to
kiss the hem of his garment and to implore his blessing. Even the
Emperor Constantine the Great wrote to him; yet so indifferent had he
become to all worldly distinctions that he could with difficulty be
prevailed upon to have the letter read to him. Thus, honoured by high
and low, and yet avoiding all honour, Anthony reached the patriarchal
age of 105. At the approach of death he begged two of his most beloved
disciples to conduct him to the wildest part of the desert. Here he died
in their arms, after having first made them promise to keep the place of
his burial secret, as he feared that an undue reverence might be paid to
his bones.
Anthony’s example was followed far and wide over the eastern world.
Whole colonies of hermits settled in the desert of Thebes, near Lake
Moeris, in Southern Palestine, in Armenia, and Pontus. Their numbers
amounted to thousands, many living in rude huts, which they erected with
their own hands, while others found a congenial retreat in the grottoes
and rock-tombs which abound in many of the countries where they dwelt.
From the East the spirit of monastic seclusion soon spread to Western
Europe. St. Benedict, the founder of the order which has rendered such
signal service to learning during the Middle Ages, spent three years in
an inaccessible cave near Subiaco, five leagues from Tivoli. Romanus, a
monk in a neighbouring convent, alone knew of his retreat, and daily let
down by a rope, from the top of the rock in which the cave was situated,
the small quantity of bread which he needed for his subsistence. Here he
was at length discovered by some shepherds, who at first sight took him
for a wild beast, as he was clothed in skins, but soon discovered that
he was a saint by the wise lessons he gave them.
A similar longing for a life of pious seclusion induced St. Cuthbert to
quit the Convent of Lindisfarne, of which he had been prior, and to seek
a retreat in a grotto excavated by his own hands, on one of the Farne
Islands, on the coast of Northumberland. An ox-hide, which he hung
before its entrance and turned towards the side whence the wind blew,
afforded a scanty shelter against the rigours of a northern winter. But
the fame of his sanctity spread over all England, and numerous pilgrims
resorted to his cave, to profit by his advice, or to seek consolation in
their troubles. One day, when he had spent eight years in seclusion, the
king of Northumbria, attended by his principal nobles, landed on
Cuthbert’s island-rock to beg him to accept the episcopal dignity of
Durham, to which he had been elected. The holy anchorite yielded, with
many tears, and after an obstinate resistance, for he was loth to accept
duties which tore him from his solitude. After two years he resigned his
bishopric, and returned to his beloved cave, where he shortly after
died. According to a popular legend the Entrochi, or calcareous joints
of the petrified Lily-Encrinites, which are found among the rocks of the
Farne Islands, are forged by his spirit, and pass there by the name of
‘St. Cuthbert’s beads.’ While at this task, he is supposed to sit during
the night upon a certain rock, and to use another as his anvil.
‘Such tales had Whitby’s fishers told,
And said they might his shape behold,
And hear his anvil sound;
A deadened clang—a huge dim form,
Seen but, and heard, when gathering storm
And night was closing round.’—_Marmion._
The Beatenberg, situated on the northern side of the lake of Thun, is
named after a celebrated cave in which St. Beatus, originally a British
noble, who had come to preach the Gospel to the wild men of the
district, dwelt for many years, and died at the advanced age of ninety.
His relics remaining there, his fête-day attracted such crowds of
pilgrims that reforming Berne sent two deputies in 1528 to carry off the
saint’s skull and bury it between the lakes of Thun and Brienz; but
still the pilgrimages continued, and at length, in 1566, the Protestant
zeal of Berne went to the expense of a wall, and thus effectually shut
out the pilgrims, who, in more modern times, have been profitably
replaced by crowds of tourists.
Both in the heathen and the Christian world, grottoes, particularly such
as had been hallowed by the lives of sainted anchorites, have frequently
been consecrated to divine service; and to render them still more worthy
of their destination, the rude excavations of nature have not seldom
been enlarged and beautified with all the resources of art.
Among these subterranean places of worship, those of India are
deservedly renowned for their colossal size, and for the vast labour
bestowed upon the sculptures with which they are adorned. A description
of the famous rock-temples of Kanara, in the island of Salsette, near
Bombay, will give the reader some idea of their magnificence.
The way leads over a narrow mountain-path, through a jungle so dense
that the traveller is obliged to quit his palanquin, and to ascend on
foot the steep acclivity, from which, at some distance from the summit,
the large temple overlooks the country. This colossal work is hewn out
of the solid rock, ninety feet long and thirty-eight feet broad, with a
corresponding height, and forms an oblong square with a vaulted roof.
Two colossal rows of columns divide the hall into three naves or
avenues, and give it the form of an ancient basilica.
As the Temple of Kanara served the Portuguese for some time as a church,
during their occupation of the small archipelago of Bombay, the heathen
sculptures which decorated the interior have naturally been mostly
destroyed. This is the more to be regretted as the well-preserved and
masterly-executed capitals of the mighty columns justify the belief that
their artistic merit must have been worthy of the grand dimensions of
the hall. The beautiful portico, however, is still richly decorated. On
each side a recess contains a colossal, well-executed statue, and long
inscriptions in unknown characters are carved on the square pillars of
the entrance. The charms of a mysterious past thus add to the interest
of this beautiful monument, the work of an astonishing patience and
perseverance. The outer face of the portico, as well as the vestibule
extending before it, twenty-eight feet deep, have been considerably
injured by the ravages of time: many stones have started from their
joints, and a multitude of creeping plants cling to the mouldering
statues. Thus the efforts of man to rear eternal monuments are vain;
they must necessarily yield to the living powers of nature.
‘The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.’[24]
Footnote 24:
Shakespeare, ‘Tempest,’ iv. 1.
[Illustration: ROCK-TEMPLES OF AJUNTA.]
Steps are hewn in the rock to the summit of the mountain, and various
intricate paths lead to smaller excavations, consisting mostly of two
cells and a portico. Near each of them is a well or basin, likewise hewn
out of the rock, in which the rain-water collects, affording a grateful
beverage to the tired wanderer. Many of these caves are larger and more
perfect than the others, and some in their general effect resemble the
great temple, although far inferior in size and decoration.
The whole aspect of this perforated mountain shows that a complete cave-
town, capable of containing several thousand inhabitants, has been
hollowed out in its flanks. The largest excavation was, beyond a doubt,
the chief temple. The smaller caves, arranged according to the same
plan, likewise served for devotional purposes; and the rest were
dwellings more or less commodious and large according to the rank or
means of their possessors, or, what is still more likely, the abode of
pious Brahmans and their scholars at the time when India was the cradle
of arts and sciences, while the nations of Europe were still plunged in
barbarism.
From the summit of this wonderful mountain the spectator enjoys a
beautiful prospect. The island of Salsette lies before him as if spread
out on a map, affording a most agreeable variety of rice-fields and
cocoa-nut groves, of villages and meadows, of woody hills and fruitful
vales. The surrounding mountains form a foreground of grey rocks, dotted
with trees, or excavated into dark grottoes, once the abode of fakirs,
but now the retreats of tigers, snakes, huge bats, and enormous swarms
of bees, while towards the south the horizon is bounded by the island of
Bombay, with its forest of masts, towards the east by the mainland,
towards the north by Bassein and the neighbouring mountains, and towards
the south by the ocean. The enjoyment of the picturesque scene is marred
only by the many tigers which infest the mountains, and frequently
descend into the plain, where they not only carry away sheep and oxen,
but also tear many a poor Hindoo to pieces.
The rock-temples of Kanara are rivalled by those of Elephanta, Karli,
and Ajunta, and far surpassed in magnificence and extent by the
excavations of Ellora, near the town and fort of Dowlatabad, where a
whole mountain of hard red granite has been hollowed out into an immense
range of highly ornamented grottoes and temples, fit for the residence
of a whole pantheon of deities, and for the reception of a whole nation
of pilgrims.
About three miles to the north of Madras, where the rock touches the
sea, navigators had long remarked some pillars of stone rising from the
water and covered with rude sculptures. From these the spot received the
name of the Seven Pagodas. Most of them have since been destroyed by the
tides, and one only is still standing, though tottering to its fall.
These, however, were but the advanced posts of the colossal excavations
in the rocky wall behind; for here also are seen large grottoes,
porticoes, and temples, as at Ellora, though of somewhat smaller
proportions, and of less beautiful execution. They are dedicated to the
worship of Vishnu and Siva, and covered with inscriptions. A whole rock-
town, or at least a vast sanctuary, thus lies concealed on this solitary
coast.
Similar cave-temples are met with in Cochin China, Birmah, Malwah, and
Ceylon, where the spacious rock-temple of Dambool is deservedly
celebrated for its antiquity, and for its numerous statues of Buddha, in
the varied attitudes of exhortation and repose.
On the banks of the mysterious Nile we find rock-temples rivalling those
of India in colossal grandeur, and among these Ipsamboul is pre-eminent
in splendour.
‘After sailing for some hours,’ says Warburton,[25] ‘through a country
quite level on the eastern bank, we come upon a precipitous rocky
mountain, starting up so suddenly from the river’s edge, that its very
summits are reflected in the water. We moored under a sand-bank, and,
accompanied by half-a-dozen of the crew with torches, approached this
isolated and stupendous rock. Yet even here the daring genius of
Ethiopian architecture ventured to enter into rivalry with Nature’s
greatness, and found her material in the very mountains that seemed to
bid defiance to her efforts.
Footnote 25:
‘The Crescent and the Cross.’
‘On the face of the vertical cliff a recess is excavated to the extent
of about a hundred feet in width. From this four gigantic figures stand
out in very bold relief. Between the two central stony giants, a lofty
doorway opens into a vast hall, supported by square pillars, each the
size of a tower, and covered with hieroglyphics. Just enough painting
still glimmers faintly on these columns to show that they were formerly
covered with it; and the walls are carved into historic figures in
slight relief; these, as our torches threw an uncertain glare over them,
seemed to move and become instinct with life.
‘This temple was dedicated to Athor, the lady of Aboccis (the ancient
name of Ipsamboul), who is represented within under the form of the
sacred bow. This was, however, a mere “chapel of ease” to the great
temple, excavated from a loftier rock, about fifty yards distant.
Between these two a deep gorge once ran to the river, but this is now
choked up with sand, in whose burning waves we waded knee-deep to the
Temple of Osiris.
‘Here a space of about 100 feet in height is hewn from the mountain;
smooth, except for the reliefs. Along the summit runs a frieze of little
monkeys in long array, as if the architect felt the absurdity of the
whole business, or as Byron sometimes finishes off a sublime sentence
with a scoff. Then succeeds a line of hieroglyphics and some faintly-
carved figures, also in relief, and then four colossal giants that seem
to guard the portal. They are seated on thrones (which form, with
themselves, part of the living rock), and are about sixty feet high. One
is quite perfect, admirably cut, and the proportions admirably
preserved; the second is defaced as far as the knee; the third is buried
in sand to the waist; and the fourth has only the face and neck visible
above the desert’s sandy avalanche.
‘The doorway stands between the two central statues, and is surmounted
by the statue of Isis wearing the moon as a turban.
‘On entering, the traveller finds himself in a temple, which a few days’
work might restore to the state in which it was left, just finished,
three thousand years ago. The dry climate and its extreme solitude have
preserved its most delicate details from injury; besides which it was
hermetically sealed by the desert for thousands of years, until
Burckhardt discovered it, and Mr. Hay cleared away its protecting sands.
‘A vast and gloomy hall, such as Eblis might have given Vathek audience
in, receives you in passing from the flaming sunshine into that shadowy
portal. It is some time before the eye can ascertain its dimensions
through the imposing gloom, but gradually there reveals itself, around
and above you, a vast aisle, with pillars formed of eight colossal
giants, upon whom the light of heaven has never shone. These images of
Osiris are backed by enormous pillars, behind which run two great
galleries; and in these torchlight alone enabled us to peruse a series
of sculptures in relief representing the triumphs of Rameses the Second,
or Sesostris. The painting, which once enhanced the effect of these
spirited representations, is not dimmed, but crumbled away; where it
exists the colours are as vivid as ever.
‘This unequalled hall is one hundred feet in length, and from it eight
lesser chambers, all sculptured, open to the right and left. Straight on
is a low doorway opening into a second hall of similar height, supported
by four square pillars, and within all is the adytum, wherein stands a
simple altar of the living rock in front of four large figures seated on
rocky thrones. This inner shrine is hewn at least one hundred yards into
the rock, and here, in the silent depth of that great mountain, these
awful idols, with their mysterious altar of human sacrifice, looked very
preadamitic and imposing. They seemed to sit there waiting for some
great summons which should awaken and reanimate these “kings of the
earth, who lie in glory, every one in his own house.”
‘We wandered through many chambers, in which the air is so calm and
undisturbed that the very smell of the torches of the last explorers of
these caverns was perceptible.’
In Abyssinia the rock-churches of Lalibala likewise give proof of an
ancient state of civilisation, strongly contrasting with the barbarism
of the present times.
Like the temples of Ellora, some of these curious structures have been
hollowed out of single blocks of stone left standing in the centre of
open courts excavated in the bosom of the rock, while others are
completely subterranean. Though far inferior in magnificence and extent
to those wonderful edifices, they are yet very remarkable. The courts,
in which the three principal monolithic churches are respectively
dedicated to our Saviour, to the Holy Virgin, and to St. Emmanuel,
communicate with each other by narrow passages, the whole thus forming a
continued series of excavations. The Church of St. Emmanuel is forty-
eight feet long, thirty-two feet broad, and forty feet high, but it is
surpassed in size by the Church of the Holy Virgin, where the rock-walls
of the court are moreover perforated with sepulchral vaults and with
cells for the habitation of monks. The town of Lalibala is situated in a
beautiful country, 7,000 feet above the level of the sea, on the slope
of the mighty Ascheten mountain, and commands a prospect of Alpine
magnificence. Though it is now reduced to about 2,000 inhabitants, its
eight rock-churches (five monolithic and subaërial, three subterranean),
prove that it must once have been a place of considerable importance.
Divine service is still performed in all these churches, which are the
resort of numerous pilgrims, and to whose service above 500 priests,
monks, and nuns are attached.
Though ancient Greece has no such huge rock-temples to boast of as India
or Egypt, yet caverns played an important part in her ancient religious
history. ‘Before the old tribes of Hellas erected temples to the
divinities,’ says Porphyry, in his treatise _De Antro Nympharum_, ‘they
consecrated caves and grottoes to their service; in the island of Crete
to Zeus, in Arcadia to Artemis and to Pan; in the isle of Naxos to
Dionysos.’
Caves were the site of some of the most celebrated Grecian oracles. The
tripod of the Delphian pythoness stood over a subterranean hollow, from
which the divine inspiration was supposed to ascend; and pilgrims from
all parts of Hellas resorted to a cave in the neighbourhood of Lebadeia,
a city of Bœotia, and named after Trophonios, a mythical personage who
was supposed to have lived there for many years, and was subsequently
deified as an oracular god. Those who repaired to this cave for
information were required, after passing some preparatory days in a
chapel dedicated to Fortune and to the ‘good genius,’ to anoint
themselves with oil, to bathe in a certain river, and to drink of the
water of two neighbouring springs called Lêthê and Mnêmosynê, the first
of which made them forgetful of the past, while the second fixed in
their memory all they heard and saw in the cavern. They were then
clothed in a linen robe, took a honeyed cake in their hands, and, after
praying before an ancient statue of Trophonios, descended into the
subterranean chamber by a narrow passage. Here it was that the future
was unfolded to them, either by visions or extraordinary sounds. The
return from the cave was by the same passage, but the persons consulting
were obliged to walk backwards. They generally came out astonished,
melancholy, and dejected. The priests on their return placed them on an
elevated seat, called the seat of Mnêmosynê or remembrance, and the
broken sentences they uttered in their confused state of mind were
considered as the answer of the oracle. They were then conducted to the
chapel of the ‘good genius,’ where by degrees they recovered their usual
composure and cheerfulness. There can be no doubt that the priests
introduced themselves into the cave by secret passages, and worked upon
the excited imagination of their dupes by terrible sounds and
apparitions. During the palmy days of the oracle, the neighbourhood of
the Cave of Trophonios was decorated with temples and statues; at
present its very site is uncertain.
Like ancient paganism, Christianity not seldom celebrates her rites in
caves hallowed by the memory of saints and anchorites. A stately church
rises over the Grotto of the Nativity, at Bethlehem, and a magnificent
pile has been constructed at Jerusalem over the rock-tomb in which our
Saviour was buried. The grotto on Mount Carmel, to which the prophet
Elijah retreated from the world, is now dedicated to divine worship, in
the convent which bears his name; and the cave in which John the
Evangelist is said to have written the Apocalypse during his exile in
the island of Patmos has also been converted into a chapel.
One of the most celebrated rock-churches is the grotto of St. Rosolia,
the patroness of Palermo. This illustrious lady was niece to King
William the Good, and, as the legends inform us, no less remarkable for
her beauty than for her virtues, which made her the admiration of all
Sicily. Never was a princess more fitted to adorn society; but the world
had so few attractions for a spirit that could only breathe in the pure
regions of piety, that, at the age of fifteen, she retired to the
solitary mountains, and, from the date of her disappearance, in 1159,
was never more heard of for about five hundred years. The people thought
she had been taken up to heaven, as the fitting abode for her more than
human perfections; but in the year 1624, during the time of a dreadful
plague, a holy man had a vision that the saint’s bones were lying in a
cave near to the top of the Monte Pellegrino, and that if these were
taken up with due reverence and carried in procession thrice round the
walls of the city, they should immediately be delivered from the
scourge. The bones were accordingly sought and found, thrice carried
round the town, as the vision had described, and the plague suddenly
ceased. From that time St. Rosolia was revered as the patron saint of
Palermo, and the remote cave where she probably spent many years of her
solitary life, became one of the most renowned sanctuaries of the
Catholic Church, and the resort of innumerable pilgrims. The mountain is
extremely high, and so steep that before the discovery of St. Rosolia it
was looked upon as almost inaccessible; but a fine road, very properly
termed La Scala, or the stair, has been cut out in the rock, and leads
from terrace to terrace, over almost perpendicular precipices, to the
entrance of the holy grotto, which is situated near the very top of the
mountain, and commands a magnificent prospect. Within two miles of the
foot of the mountain, the eye discerns the city of Palermo, with its
beautiful villas and luxuriant gardens, and then, taking a wider range,
glances to the north, over the dark blue sea bounded by the Lipari
Islands and the ever-fuming cone of Stromboli; while to the east a large
portion of Etna, although at the distance of almost the whole length of
Sicily, towers like a giant above the minor mountain chains. A church
and other buildings, forming a kind of court yard, where some priests
reside, appointed to watch over the treasures of the place, and to
receive the offerings of pilgrims that visit them, have been erected
round the grotto.
As may easily be imagined, the history of rock-chapels has frequently
been embellished with legendary tales. The chapel of Agios Niketas (St.
Nicholas) in Crete, is at present merely a smoky-looking cave beneath a
large detached mass of rock, lying on the slope of an abrupt mountain;
but there are still the remains of a building which once extended far
beyond the present limits. The roof of the cavern, although very uneven,
is also elaborately ornamented with paintings, representing the
remarkable events in the life of the Saviour and of St. Nicholas, and
showing that considerable cost and artistic care have been bestowed upon
it. Though it is now abandoned, an event that is said to have happened
about four or five centuries ago gives this cave a special interest with
the natives. The church was crowded with Christians from the adjacent
villages on the eve of the festival of their patron saint Agios Niketas,
so as to be ready (as is usual with the Greeks) for the matin service at
daybreak. But the fires which the assembled party had lighted near it
had been observed at sea by a Barbary corsair then cruising off the
island, and guided him to the spot, where, under the darkness of the
night, he landed his crew in a neighbouring cove. Thus unobserved, they
stole up to the church, and, finding it full of the natives, closed the
door and windows upon them, and waited for day, the better to secure
their captives for embarkation. In this dreadful plight the unfortunate
Cretans raised their voices in a general prayer to Saint Niketas. Their
supplications were heard, for the priest soon after informed them that
the saint had shown him a way of escape—through the back part of the
cavern, by opening a small aperture communicating with another cavern
that led finally out upon the mountain slope over the rock. Through this
aperture they all silently crept unseen and unheard by the corsairs.
Another interesting legend is attached to a small rock-chapel situated
beneath the ruins of the ancient Castle of Oberstein, on the Nahe. The
Baron of Oberstein, having, in a fit of jealousy, hurled his younger
brother from the balcony of the castle, fled from the scene of his
crime. For years he wandered, a wretched outcast, from land to land; but
wherever he went the curse of Cain was upon him, and left him no rest by
night or day. At length he came to Rome, to confess his fratricide at
the feet of the Sovereign Pontiff, who comforted him with the assurance
that he would recover his lost peace by returning to Oberstein and
excavating with his own hands a rock-chapel for the interment of his
brother on the spot where he fell.
Soon after the self-banished lord made his appearance at Oberstein in a
hermit’s garb, and set to work upon the hard rock with indefatigable
zeal. Never was labour performed with better will, and such,
consequently, was the progress of the excavation that it seemed as if he
were assisted by the angels in his penitential task. At the expiration
of four years, the rock-chapel was completed, and the bones of the
murdered man were conveyed with great ceremony to the tomb which had
been prepared for their reception at the foot of the altar. As soon as
they were lowered into the grave, the murderer bent over them; a smile
of ineffable happiness was seen to illumine his emaciated features, and
he dropped down dead upon the remains of his brother.
CHAPTER XVII.
ICE-CAVES AND WIND-HOLES.
Ice-caves of St. Georges and St. Livres—Beautiful Ice-stalagmites in the
Cave of La Baume—The Schafloch—Ice Cataract in the Upper Glacière of
St. Livres—Ice Cavern of Eisenerz—The Cave of Yeermalik—Volcanic Ice-
caves—Æolian Caverns of Terni—Causes of the low temperature of Ice-
caves.
Some caves, remarkable for an extremely low temperature even in summer,
form natural ice-cellars, though unconnected with glaciers or snow
mountains, and in latitudes and at altitudes where ice could not under
ordinary circumstances be supposed to exist. Besides the interest
attaching to these natural curiosities, these ice-caves are sometimes
lucrative sources of revenue to their owners, or answer various purposes
of use or comfort.
In hot summers, when the supplies of the artificial ice-houses fail in
Geneva and Lausanne, the hotel-keepers have recourse to the stores laid
up for them by nature in the ice-caves or glacières of St. Georges and
St. Livres, situated in the canton of Vaud, on the slope of the Jura.
Other ice-caves are made use of as dairies, or as storehouses for
cheese; and the quarries of Niedermendig, near the small town of
Andernach, on the Rhine, which are likewise remarkable for a glacial
temperature, serve as excellent beer-cellars.
To Mr. Browne, who has made them his special study, we are indebted for
an interesting account of the ice-caves of France and Switzerland,[26]
which, as may naturally be expected in halls and galleries hung with
drapery of transparent silver, not seldom offer scenes of beauty
rivalling the most renowned stalactital grottoes.
Footnote 26:
‘Ice Caves of France and Switzerland: a Narrative of Subterranean
Exploration.’ By the Rev. G. F. Browne. Longmans, 1865.
[Illustration: LOWER GLACIÈRE OF ST. LIVRES.]
In the Glacière of Grâce-Dieu, or La Baume, near Besançon, Mr. Browne
was particularly struck with three large stalagmites of ice rising in a
line across the middle of the cave. The central mass was remarkable only
for its size, the girth being sixty-six and a half feet at some distance
from the ice-floor, with which it blended; but nothing could be more
strikingly lovely than the stalagmite to its right, owing to the good
taste of some one, who had found that much ice was wont to accumulate on
that spot, and had accordingly fixed the trunk of a small fir-tree, with
the upper branches complete, to receive the water from the corresponding
fissure in the roof. The consequence was that, while the actual tree had
vanished from sight under its crystal covering, the ice with which it
was incrusted showed every elegance of form which a mould so graceful
could suggest, each twig of the different boughs becoming, to all
appearance, a solid bar of frosted ice, from which complicated groups of
icicles streamed down. But the mass to the left was the grandest and
most beautiful of all. It consisted of two lofty heads, like weeping
willows in Carrara marble, with three or four others less lofty,
resembling a family group of lions’ heads in a subdued attitude of
grief, richly decked with icy manes. Similar heads seemed to grow out
here and there from the solid sides of the huge mass, which measured
seventy-six and a half feet in girth about two feet from the floor. When
this column was looked at from the side removed from the entrance to the
cave, so that it stood in the centre of the light which poured down the
long slope from the outer world, the transparency of the ice made the
whole look as if it were set in a narrow frame of impalpable liquid
blue—the effect of light penetrating through the mass at its extreme
edges.
Other and no less striking beauties rewarded our subterranean explorer
on his visit to the Schafloch or Trou-aux-Moutons, a vast ice-cave on
the Rothhorn, in the canton of Berne, which takes its name from the fact
that, when a sudden storm comes on, the sheep and goats make their way
to it for shelter, though never going so far as the spot where the ice
begins. On entering the cave the way lies over a wild confusion of loose
masses of stone, which soon, however, begin to be intermingled with ice,
until the latter entirely hides the naked rock under a crystal mantle.
‘On either side of the cave was a grand column of ice, forming the
portal, as it were, through which we must pass to further beauties. The
ice-floor rose to meet these columns in a graceful swelling curve,
perfectly continuous, so that the general effect was that of two columns
whose roots expanded and met in the middle of the cave. Convinced that
internal investigations would prove interesting, I began to chop a hole
in one of the pillars about two feet from the ground, and having made an
entrance sufficiently large, proceeded to get into the cavity which
presented itself. The flooring of the dome-shaped grotto in which I
found myself was loose rock, at a level of about two feet below the
surface of the ice-floor, on which my guide Christian still stood. The
dome itself was not high enough to allow me to stand upright, and from
the roof, principally from the central part, a complex mass of delicate
icicles passed down to the floor, leaving a narrow burrowing passage
round, which was itself invaded by icicles from the lower part of the
sloping roof, and by stubborn stalagmites of ice rising from the floor.
The details of this central cluster of icicles, and, in fact, of every
portion of the interior of the strange grotto were exceedingly lovely,
and I crushed with much regret, on hands and knees, through fair crystal
forests and frozen dreams of beauty. In making the tour of this grotto,
contorting my body like a snake, to get in and out among the ice-
pillars, and do as little damage as might be, I yet, with all my care,
was accompanied by the incessant shiver and clatter of breaking and
falling ice. Having squeezed myself out again through the narrow hole, I
now passed between the two gigantic columns, and found that the sea of
ice became still broader and bolder, until we came to the edge of a
glorious ice-fall, round and smooth and perfectly unbroken, passing down
like the rapids of some river too deep for its surface to be disturbed,
and plunging majestically into a dark gulf, of which we could see
neither the roof nor the end.’
We will now follow Mr. Browne to the Upper Glacière of St. Livres, where
the interesting discovery was made that the ice-stream which filled the
cave, instead of terminating with the wall of rock at its end, turned
off to the right, and was lost in darkness. By tying a candle to a long
stick, and thrusting it down the slope of ice, it was further found that
the stream passed down at a very steep incline, and poured under a
narrow and low arch in the wall of the cave, beyond which nothing could
be seen. Steps were now cut down the slope by one of the party, who was
carefully let down, and, his work being completed, the others followed
him through the arch—a rather awkward undertaking, for, on pushing
through, their breasts were pressed on to the ice, while their backs
scraped against the rock which formed the roof.
‘As soon as this trough was passed,’ says Mr. Browne, ‘the ice spread
out like a fan, and finally landed us in a second cavern, 72 feet long
by 36 feet broad, to which this was the only entrance. The breadth of
the fan at the bottom was 27 feet, and near the archway a very striking
column poured from a vertical fissure in the wall, and joined the main
stream. The fissure was partially open to the cave, and showed the solid
round column within the rock: this column measured 18½ feet in
circumference, a little below the point where it became free of the
fissure, and it had a stream of ice 22 feet long pouring from its base.
The peculiar structure of the ice gave the whole mass the appearance of
coursing down very rapidly, as if the water had been frozen while thus
moving, and had not therefore ceased so to move.... At the farthest end
of the cave, a lofty dome opened up in the roof, beneath which a very
lovely cluster of columns had grouped itself, formed of clear porcelain-
like ice, and fretted and festooned with the utmost delicacy, as if
Andersen’s Ice Maiden had been there in one of her amiable moods and had
built herself a palace.’
[Illustration: ICE STREAMS IN THE UPPER GLACIÈRE OF ST. LIVRES.]
In Upper Styria, the Frauenmauer Mountain, which overlooks the mining
town of Eisenerz, contains a remarkable ice-chamber, consisting of a
grotto from thirty to forty fathoms long, decked with ice-crystals,
pillars of ice, and cascades of the same material, the floor being
composed of ice as smooth as glass. In the summer pleasure parties
assemble in the cave, and amuse themselves with sliding down its sloping
ice-floors.
In his work on the Natural Wonders of the Austrian Empire, the
naturalist Sartori describes his visit to an ice-cave on the Brandstein,
a peak situated in the same district, which thus appears to be rich in
glacières. He found _crimpons_ necessary for descending the frozen snow,
which led from the entrance to the floor of the cave, where he
discovered pillars and capitals and pyramids of ice of every possible
shape and variety, as if the cave had contained the ruins of a Gothic
church or a fairy palace. At the further end, after passing large
cascades of ice, his party reached a dark grey hole, which lighted up
into blue and green under the influence of the torches; they could not
discover the end of this hole, and the stones which they rolled down
into it seemed to go on for ever.
Other natural glacières are also mentioned as occurring in Bohemia,
Hungary, the Harz, in several places in North America, and probably
there are few mountainous regions without them.
The Cave of Yermalik, already mentioned among the silent retreats of
nature which have been rendered infamous by the cruelty of man, is
likewise highly interesting as a natural glacière. After leaving the
roomy dome in which they found the skeletons of the victims of Genghis
Khan, Captain Burslem and Lieutenant Sturt proceeded through several low
arches and smaller caves, and reached at length a vast hall, in the
centre of which was an enormous mass of clear ice, smooth and polished
as a mirror, and in the form of a gigantic beehive, with its dome-shaped
top just touching the long icicles which depended from the jagged
surface of the rock. A small aperture led to the interior of this
wonderful congelation, which was divided into several compartments of
every fantastic shape. In some the glittering icicles hung like curtains
from the roof; in others, the vault was smooth as glass. Beautifully
brilliant were the prismatic colours reflected from the varied surface
of the ice when the torches flashed suddenly upon them as they passed
from cave to cave. Around, above, beneath, everything was of solid ice,
and being unable to stand on account of its slippery nature, they slid,
or rather glided mysteriously, along the glassy surface of this hall of
spells. In one of the largest compartments the icicles had reached the
floor, and gave the idea of pillars supporting the roof.’[27]
Footnote 27:
Burslem, ‘A Peep into Toorkistan.’
Rocks of volcanic formation seem to afford favourable opportunities for
the congelation of water. Ice-caves are found in Mount Etna, on the Peak
of Teneriffe, and among the lava-currents of Iceland.[28] Scrope visited
one of these natural glacières near the village of Roth, in the
neighbourhood of Andernach, on the Rhine. It formed the mouth of a deep
fissure in a current of basalt derived from an ancient volcanic cone
above it, and its floor was covered with a crust of ice at the time of
his visit, about noon on a very hot day in August.
Footnote 28:
The Cave of Suitshellir.
The phenomenon of wind-grottoes is analogous to that of ice-caves, and
not seldom associated with it. Here cold currents of air, increasing in
violence as the day is hotter, are found to blow from the interstices of
rocks. One of the most celebrated of these Æolian caverns is found near
Terni in Italy. The entrance is closed by an old gate, through the
crevices of which the wind issues with a rustling noise, while in the
grotto itself the current is sufficiently strong to extinguish a torch.
The proprietors of some neighbouring villas have put the phenomenon to
an ingenious use. Leaden pipes, branching out from the grotto, convey on
sultry summer days an agreeable coolness through masks of gypsum with
wide distended mouths, which are fixed in the walls of the apartments.
The small town of Roquefort in France has been renowned ever since the
time of the Romans for the delicious flavour of its cheese, which is
said to owe its excellence to the cool cellars in which it is matured.
These are excavated on the northern slope of a great chalk plateau, and
communicate with numerous fissures in the rock, from which air-currents
stream forth of so low a temperature as to cause a thermometer marking
+23° R. in the shade, and in the external atmosphere, to fall to +4° R.
when exposed to their influence. The cellars are so valuable that one,
which cost 12,000 francs in construction, sold for 215,000 francs.
In times of ignorance, superstition could not fail to attach its fables
to the phenomenon of wind-grottoes. A cave near Eisenach was supposed to
be the seat of purgatory, and popular credulity or terror willingly
transformed the sounds produced by the rushing air-currents into the
wailings of tormented souls.
Fortunately, modern science affords us a more satisfactory explanation
of the phenomenon. Pictet represents the case of a cave with cold
currents of air to be much the same as that of a mine with a vertical
shaft ending in a horizontal gallery, of which one extremity is in
communication with the open air, at a point much lower, of course, than
the upper extremity of the shaft. The cave or wind-hole corresponds to
the horizontal gallery, and the various fissures in the rock take the
place of the vertical shaft, and communicate freely with the external
air. In summer the columns of air contained in these fissures assume
nearly the temperature of the rock in which they rest—that is to say,
the mean temperature of the district; and therefore they are heavier
than the corresponding external columns of air which terminate at the
mouth of the cave. The consequence is, that the heavy cool air descends
from the fissures, and streams out into the cave, appearing as a cold
current, and the hotter the day—that is, the lighter the columns of
external air—the more violent will be the disturbance of equilibrium,
and therefore the more palpable the current.
The evaporation which takes place as the air-currents descend through
the moist rock-fissures likewise tends to lower their temperature.
Several naturalists have attempted to explain the phenomena of ice-caves
in a similar manner, as being produced by cold currents still further
refrigerated by the evaporation caused in the moist and porous rocks
through which they pass. But to this theory there are weighty
objections, as in many ice-caves there is no current whatever, and in
all the cases of cold air streams investigated or mentioned by De
Saussure, the lowest temperatures observed were still considerably above
the freezing-point, and consequently incapable of converting water into
ice.
Mr. Browne believes that, in many cases, the phenomenon may be
satisfactorily accounted for by the position and surroundings of the
caves in which it occurs; though, no doubt, cold currents and
evaporation may often have an influence in maintaining the low
temperature of ice-caves.
In every one of the fourteen natural glacières which he visited, the
level at which the ice was found was considerably below the level at the
entrance of the cave; so that, on ordinary principles of gravitation,
the heavy cold air within could not be dislodged by the lighter warm
summer air without. Heat naturally spreads very slowly in a cave like
this; and even when some amount of heat does reach the ice, the latter
melts but slowly, for ice absorbs 60° C. in melting; and thus when ice
is once formed, it becomes a material guarantee for the permanence of
cold in the cave.
Another means for preventing the encroachments of the hotter seasons is
the dense covering of trees and shrubs, which, in the case of many of
the glacières, shields their entrance or their roof from the rays of the
sun, and thus keeps off the effects of direct radiation. Mr. Browne
found all the glacières that came under his observation thus protected,
with the single exception of that of St. Georges, where, in consequence
of an incautious felling of wood immediately near the mouth, trunks of
trees had been laid horizontally over it, to prevent the rays of the sun
from striking down on to the ice. He moreover invariably found that the
entrances to the caves were more or less sheltered against all winds—a
very important condition, as air-currents from without would infallibly
bring in heated air, in spite of the specific weight of the cold air
stored within. There can be no doubt, too, that the large surfaces which
are available for evaporation have much to do with maintaining a
somewhat lower temperature than the mean temperature of the place where
the cave occurs. Another great advantage which some glacières possess
must be borne in mind, namely, the collection of snow at the bottom of
the pit in which the entrance lies. This snow absorbs, in the course of
melting, all the heat which strikes down by radiation, or is driven down
by accidental turns of the wind; and the snow water thus forced into the
cave will, at any rate, not seriously injure the ice.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE GLACIÈRE OF ST. GEORGES.]
It is easy to understand how, in caves thus protected against the
influence of summer heat, a great part of the ice accumulated during the
winter may be preserved, and that, for an explanation of the phenomenon,
it is by no means necessary to have recourse to cold blasts descending
from the interior of the rock in which they are situated. It is indeed a
common belief that the ice-caves are colder in summer than in winter,
and consequently contain a greater abundance of ice during the former
season; but this belief may well be considered as one of those popular
fallacies, which—though, by dint of repetition, they come to be common
articles of faith—have in fact no substantial proofs to support them.
CHAPTER XVIII.
ROCK TOMBS AND CATACOMBS.
Biban-el-Moluk, the Royal Tombs of Thebes—The Roman Catacombs—Their
Extent—Their Mode of Excavation—Touching Sepulchral Inscriptions—
Antony Bosio, the Columbus of the Catacombs—The Cavaliere di Rossi—The
Catacombs of Naples and Syracuse—The Catacombs of Paris.
The remoteness of caves and grottoes from the busy haunts of life, their
eternal silence and their nightly gloom, have ever pointed them out as
fit resting-places for the dead. From the earliest times they have been
used as sepulchral vaults, and where nature neglected to hollow out the
rock, it has often been excavated for this purpose by the hand of man.
Thus the Pharaohs of Egypt rested not in temples and mausoleums reared
in the heart of cities, but they chose the desert-ravine for their
sepulchre, and hid their tombs in deep excavations in the earth.
A more impressive scene can hardly be imagined than that which is
afforded by these splendid memorials. Of all such monuments which still
mark the site of ancient Thebes, perhaps none are more striking to the
traveller than the royal tombs—Biban-el-Moluk—which the pride of
monarchs, whose very name is now a mystery, excavated four thousand
years ago in the bosom of the Libyan mountains.
‘The next morning at daybreak,’ says Warburton,[29] ‘we started for the
Tombs of the Kings. I was mounted on a fine horse, belonging to the
sheikh of the village, and the cool air of the morning, the rich
prospect before us, and the cloudless sky, all conspired to impart life
and pleasure to my relaxed and languid frame. I had been for a month
almost confined to my pallet by illness, and now, mounted on a gallant
barb, sweeping across the desert, with the mountain breezes breathing
round me, I felt a glow of spirits and exhilaration of mind and body to
which I had been long a stranger. For a couple of hours we continued
along the plain, which was partially covered with wavy corn, but flecked
widely here and there with desert tracts. Then we entered the gloomy
mountain gorges, through which the Theban monarchs passed to their
tombs. Our path lay through a narrow defile, between precipitous cliffs
of rubble and calcareous strata, and some large boulders of coarse
conglomerate lay strewn along this desolate valley, in which no living
thing of earth or air ever met our view. The plains below may have been,
perhaps, once swarming with life and covered with palaces; but the
gloomy defile we were now traversing must have ever been as they now
are, lonely, lifeless, desolate—a fit avenue to the tombs for which we
were bound.
Footnote 29:
‘The Crescent and the Cross.’
‘After five or six miles’ travel, our guide stopped at the base of one
of the precipices, and, laying his long spear against the rock,
proceeded to light his torches. There was no entrance apparent at the
distance of a few yards, nor was this great tomb betrayed to the outer
world by any visible aperture, until discovered by Belzoni. This
extraordinary man seems to have been one of the few who have hit off in
life the lot for which Nature destined them. His sepulchral instincts
might have been matter of envy to the ghouls; with such unerring
certainty did he guess at the place containing the embalmed corpses most
worthy of his body-snatching energies.
‘We descended by a steep path into this tomb, through a doorway covered
with hieroglyphics, and entered a corridor that ran some hundred yards
into the mountain. It was about twenty feet square, and painted
throughout most elaborately in the manner of Raphael’s Loggia at the
Vatican, with little inferiority of skill or colouring. The doorways
were richly ornamented with figures of a larger size, and over each was
the winged globe or a huge scarabæus. In allusion, probably, to the
wanderings of the freed spirit, almost all the larger emblems on these
walls wore wings, however incompatible with their usual vocations;
boats, globes, fishes, and suns, all were winged. On one of the
corridors there is an allegory of the progress of the sun through the
hours, painted with great detail; the god of day sits in a boat (in
compliment to the Nile he lays aside his chariot here), and steers
through the hours of the day and night, each of the latter being
distinguished by a star. The Nile in this, as in all other circumstances
of Egyptian life, figures as the most important element; even the
blessed souls for its sake assume the form of fishes, and swim about
with angelic fins in this River of Life. One gorgeous passage makes way
into another more gorgeous still, until you arrive at a steep descent.
At the base of this, perhaps 400 feet from daylight, a doorway opens
into a vaulted hall of noble proportions, whose gloom considerably
increases its apparent size. Here the body of Osirei, father of Rameses
the Second, was laid about 3,200 years ago, in the beautiful alabaster
sarcophagus which Belzoni drew from hence, the reward of his enterprise.
Its poor occupant, who had taken such pains to hide himself, was
“undone” for the amusement of a London conversazione.
‘There are numerous other tombs, all full of interest; but as the reader
who is interested in such things will consult higher authorities than
mine, I shall only add that the whole circumstance of ancient Egyptian
life, with all its vicissitudes, may be read in pictures out of these
extraordinary tombs, from the birth, through all the joys and sorrows of
life, to the death, the lamentations over the corpse, the embalmer’s
operations, and finally the judgment and the immortality of the soul. In
one instance the Judge is measuring all men’s good actions in a balance
against a feather from an angel’s wing; in another, a great serpent is
being bound head and foot, and cast into a pit; and there are many other
proofs, equally convincing, of the knowledge that this mysterious people
possessed of a future life and judgment.’
But not the kings alone; the illustrious, the wealthy, the whole nation
reposed in rock-tombs magnificently sculptured or rudely excavated,
according to the means of the defunct. Behind the ruins of the stately
temples of ancient Thebes, which extend from Gourna to Medinet Abou, and
fill the narrow strip of desert between the inundated fields and the
foot of the mountains, lies an interminable necropolis, whose graves,
like the cells of a bee-hive, one close to the other, are hewn in the
rocky ground of the plain, or in the slopes of the neighbouring hills.
These grottoes, originally destined for sarcophagi and mummies, are now
occupied by fellahs and their herds, as they were in the fifth and sixth
century by pious anchorites; and, being roomy and situated at a
considerable height above the plain, may be considered as the most
healthy dwellings of the country.
The oldest graves are hewn in the mountains; and at a later period, when
the rocky plain at their foot alone gave room for these excavations, it
gradually became invaded by the dead. In the more splendid of these
mausoleums, high gates and walls inclosed deep courtyards, scooped out
of the rock, and from these long corridors led to subterranean halls,
profusely decorated with sculptures and paintings.
Similar cities of the dead were found in Upper Egypt, near the cities of
the living, wherever the adjoining rocks allowed them to be excavated.
Those of Syout—the ancient Lycopolis, where along an extent of several
miles the whole declivity of the Libyan mountains is perforated with
graves rising in terraces to their very summit—of El Kab (Eileithyia),
of Assuan (Syene), of Madfuneh (Abydos), of Kan (Antæopolis), and of a
hundred other places, would in any other country excite the wonder of
the traveller; here, where along the Nile one gigantic necropolis
follows upon another, they hardly attract any attention.
But the ancient Egyptians not only embalmed human bodies and preserved
them in rock-tombs, they also converted into mummies the various animals
to which they paid divine homage, and deposited them in subterranean
cavities. This honour was paid to Apis, the ox-god, to the sacred Ibis,
to dogs, cats, and even to the repulsive crocodile.
* * * * *
Besides the Rome of the Cæsars and the Rome of the Popes, there is a
third Rome, scarcely less remarkable than the other two. The two former,
gilded by the warm sunbeam, proudly rise above the banks of the Tiber
with their ruins, palaces, and churches, while the latter lies hidden
beneath the earth.
[Illustration: GALLERY WITH TOMBS.]
From the cupola of St. Peter’s, the most favourable station for a
panoramic view of all the monuments and buildings of the Eternal City,
the eye is also best able to embrace at one glance the general
topography of the catacombs or of subterranean Rome. Fifteen great
consular roads, over which the victorious legions once marched out to
subjugate the world, radiate from the centre of the town, and furrow the
arid Campagna, until they are finally lost in the hazy distance. To the
right and left of these causeways the catacombs have been hollowed out
in the depths of the earth, and, though separated by the Tiber into two
distinct regions, yet their various subdivisions trace a vast circle,
the size of which may be measured by the circumference of the town
itself. To form some idea of their extent, we must fancy an intricate
wilderness of galleries and arched alcoves with their layers of
sarcophagi, one above another; their _lucernaria_, for light or
ventilation; their stairs, straight or winding; and all this, not on one
level only, but floor beneath floor—one, two, three, four, five—hewn out
on a labyrinthine, yet harmonious and economic plan. Network is perhaps
a feeble description of these vast and intricate mazes; a spider’s web
seen through the glass of a naturalist, or rather four or five spiders’
webs, one within the other, would seem a more fitting illustration.
Such is the immensity of this city of the dead that, according to the
opinion of those who have made themselves best acquainted with all its
subdivisions, their galleries, supposing them ranged in a line, would
form a street 900 miles long, and lined by no less than six millions of
tombs!
So vast a necropolis would command attention in any country, or as the
memorial of any age, or of any part of the human race; but to us the
catacombs of Rome are doubly interesting, as the mysterious crypts which
served the first confessors of our faith for the purposes of sepulture
and sometimes of concealment. Their extent at once precludes the idea of
their having been excavated in a clandestine manner, as was at one time
erroneously believed; and, moreover, history tells us that, apart from
some passing storms of persecution, the Christians had as little reason
as the Jews, their religious ancestors, for making a secret of their
faith, or of their places of interment. From the times of the Apostles
their community constantly grew and multiplied throughout the Roman
world—in Rome especially, the centre of that world—and there can be
little doubt that from Nerva to the middle of the reign of Marcus
Aurelius (from 96 to about 166) and so onward to the great persecution
under Decius (A.D. 249–256), the Christians, if exposed here and there
and at times to local persecutions, were growing in unchecked and still
expanding numbers. But as the living community increased, so also must
the number of its dead, a reverence for whom was, among the survivors,
not only a solemn duty but a deep-rooted passion. The Christians not
only inherited from the Jews the ancient usage of interment, but this
respect for the dead was strengthened by the belief that Christ had
risen bodily from the grave, and that a bodily resurrection was to be
their own glorious privilege. Hence the burning of the dead, customary
among the wealthier pagans, was to them a profanation; and as the body
of the slave was as holy as that of his master, it claimed the same
right of decent burial.
But where was room for the spacious burial-places required for so vast a
community?
Within the walls of the city interment was very properly forbidden by
the law, and at a convenient distance beyond its crowded precincts,
large plots of ground could hardly be obtained; but the formation of
subterranean cemeteries on a vast scale was greatly facilitated by the
geological formation of the land. Three different kinds of stone compose
the groundwork of the Roman campagna: the _tufa litoide_, as hard and
durable as granite, which furnished the materials for the palaces and
temples of the Cæsarian city; the _tufa granolare_, which, though
consistent enough to retain the form given it by the excavators, cannot
be hewn or extracted in blocks, and the loose _tufa friabile_, or
_pozzuolana_, which has been extensively used from the earliest ages for
mortar or Roman cement. It is evident that neither the hard lithoid nor
the loose tuff were suitable for the excavation of the catacombs, while
this purpose could be admirably attained in the courses of the granular
tuff, which, though not too hard to be worked, is yet solid enough to
make walls for long and intricate passages, to be hewn into arches
vaulting over deep recesses for the reception of coffins, and to support
floor below floor down to the utmost depth to which the formation
reaches.
Neither in the stone quarries nor in the sand-pits of ancient Rome is
there the slightest sign that they were ever used for the purposes of
sepulture, while in the granular tuff not a yard seems to have been
excavated except for the making of tombs, which line the walls
throughout their prodigious length, as close to one another as the
berths in the sides of a ship. Though the most ancient catacombs were
excavated by the Jews, yet these excavations are of a very limited
extent when compared with those of Christian origin, where, instead of
the seven-branched candlestick and other sacred emblems of the Jewish
persuasion, every ornament or inscription marked or painted upon the
walls bears witness to the faith of those who were deposited—to use the
peculiar and appropriate expression—within these narrow cells.
Everywhere we see Christian symbols only—the horse, emblematic of
strength in the faith; the hunted hare, of persecution; the dove and the
cock, of the Christian virtues of vigilance and meekness; the peacock
and the phœnix, of resurrection; the anchor, of hope in immortality; the
palm-leaf, of the martyr’s triumph over death, and many others.
The sepulchral inscriptions are short and simple, but often extremely
tender and touching, recalling to memory, in a few brief words, the
innocence and purity of life, the beauty and the wisdom, or the amiable,
peace-loving character, of the deceased. The pompous or desponding tone
of the heathen mortuary inscriptions disappears; the Christian ‘sleeps
and sleeps in peace.’ There is no sign of affectation or hypocrisy in
these simple epitaphs, and the ennobling influence of the new creed upon
the spirit of man is, perhaps, nowhere more conspicuous than in the
unostentatious inscriptions traced upon the tombs of its first
confessors.
The use of the catacombs for the various purposes of interment,
assembly, or concealment began, no doubt, with the first persecution
under Nero. Most of the inscriptions however, bear the date of the
fourth or fifth century, and some are evidently of a much later period.
When this custom may have ceased is uncertain, but in the Middle Ages
the catacombs were entirely forgotten, and remained blocked up, until
towards the end of the sixteenth century, when they were reopened and
explored by the indefatigable and courageous Antony Bosio, who devoted
thirty-three years of his life to this labour. During his frequent
wanderings through the Roman Campagna, this zealous archæologist once
found, to the left of the Appian Way, near to the church of Sancta Maria
in Palmis, a brick vault in a field covered with rubbish. He immediately
presumed it to be the entrance of a catacomb, and descended through the
narrow opening. Fired with scientific ardour, he penetrated further and
further into recesses untrodden for centuries by the foot of man. The
passage soon became so narrow and low as to oblige him to creep, but
neither the difficulty of the exploration, nor the fear of being crushed
to death by the crumbling stones, could restrain him; and thus, day
after day, he continued his perilous search, until, finally, a complete
subterranean city revealed itself, although he could not ascertain its
limits, for, however far he might probe its intricacies, new passages
were still branching out on every side, and the maze descended in
several successive stories deeper and deeper into the earth. After
Bosio, other archæologists have continued his researches, and in our
days the Cavaliere de Rossi—to whose indefatigable zeal is due, amongst
others, the discovery of the Catacomb of Callistus, where many of the
early popes have been entombed—has all but completed the topography of
subterranean Rome.
Besides the ancient metropolis of the world, several other old Italian
towns possess remarkable catacombs or subterranean burial-places. Those
of Naples, historically far less interesting than those of Rome, are
executed on a far more spacious plan. They are situated not beneath the
town itself, but in a neighbouring mountain, where they have been
excavated to a distance of more than two miles. Large galleries,
eighteen feet broad, and fourteen or fifteen high, branch out into a
number of smaller passages, while the walls on both sides are pierced,
like those in Rome, with horizontal sepulchral cavities, six, or even
seven, one above the other.
The Catacombs of Syracuse, under the site of the ancient Achradina, are
the largest and best preserved known. They are all excavated in the
solid rock, and form lofty vaults, very different from the narrow and
dangerous burrows of subterranean Rome. A broad gallery runs through the
whole of the labyrinth, and from this many other passages of an inferior
width branch out, leading to large circular vaults with openings at the
top for the admission of light. Many of these have been closed, as they
were equally dangerous for the people in their neighbourhood and their
cattle, so that torches are necessary for visiting them. Along the walls
are a number of niches, which served as sepulchres, so that these
excavations, which originally were quarries, and during the flourishing
times of the city were used by its vast population for various household
purposes, were ultimately converted into a city of the dead.
The Catacombs of Paris, though ancient as quarries, are of a very modern
date as places of sepulture. Until the end of the reign of Louis XVI.
the principal burying-ground of Paris had been the Cemetery of the
Innocents, near the church of the same name. Originally situated beyond
the walls of the town, it had in course of time been so surrounded by
the growing metropolis as to occupy its centre. Here, during nearly ten
centuries, numberless bodies had been deposited, so that, from the
malaria it engendered, it became a constant source of danger to the
living. At length the cemetery became so intolerable a nuisance that its
suppression and conversion into a public market-place was decreed in
1785.
The question now arose where the bones to be displaced should be
deposited, and, from their proximity to the town and their extent, the
ancient quarries were chosen as the most favourable spot for a vast
subterranean necropolis. But these immense excavations, which, having
been abandoned for several centuries, had in many places fallen in,
needed a full year for repairs before they could be safely used for
their new purpose. At length, on April 7, 1787, they were solemnly
consecrated, and the same day the workmen began to remove the bones from
the Cemetery of the Innocents—an operation which needed more than
fifteen months for its completion. Gradually many others of the ancient
cemeteries of Paris were in like manner removed to the catacombs, so
that they are said to contain the bones of more than three millions of
bodies. All these bones are symmetrically piled up along the sides of
the galleries; the apophyses of the large thigh and arm bones are
disposed in front, so as to make a nearly uniform surface, interrupted
from space to space by a row of skulls. Some of the crypts or sepulchral
chambers are rather lugubriously decorated with festoons or pyramids of
skulls and cross-bones, and many of the stone pillars which support the
vaults have likewise received ornaments of the same sexton taste. Sixty-
three staircases lead from different parts of the town into the
catacombs, and are used by the workmen and agents appointed to take care
of the subterranean necropolis; but visitors are admitted only every
three months by the entrance at the Barrière du Maine. A descent of
ninety steps brings them to a narrow gallery, which conducts them, after
several windings to the more roomy vaults where the bones are deposited;
and after wandering for some time among these gloomy memorials which are
piled up on either side, they finally emerge into daylight through
another gallery, similar to the first. No doubt Paris affords many a
more pleasant ramble, but hardly one more interesting, or capable of
making a deeper impression on the mind.
CHAPTER XIX.
CAVES CONTAINING REMAINS OF EXTINCT ANIMALS.
The Cave Hyena and the Cave Bear—The Cavern of Kirkdale—The Moa Caves in
New Zealand—Various Species of Moas—Their enormous size.
Besides their picturesque beauty or their solemn grandeur, some caves
are extremely interesting as containing the bones of _extinct_
quadrupeds or birds. Unrivalled in point of antiquity by the oldest
tombs erected by man, they carry us back to times which, though of
comparatively recent date, are still so far removed from the present day
as almost to terrify the imagination—for how many ages must have
elapsed, and what changes of climate must have taken place, since the
hyena or the tiger inhabited the grottoes of northern Europe?
In many cases the bones found in ossiferous caves must have been washed
into them by currents of water, or else they may be the remains of
animals that accidentally dropped in through holes in the roof; but
there can be no doubt that frequently the caves in which the bones of
extinct carniverous animals have been found, served as their dens while
they were living. The abundance of bony dung associated with the remains
of the hyena, as well as the great number of bones all belonging to one
species which are frequently found congregated in the same cave, is
strongly confirmatory of this opinion, no less than the circumstance
that the walls of several ossiferous caves, when deprived of their
stalactital covering, have been found smoothed or rounded off from the
frequent ingress and egress of their former inhabitants as they squeezed
themselves or dragged their prey through a narrow passage. Besides, the
hyenas and bears of the present day frequently live in caves, thus
justifying the inference that their extinct predecessors had the same
habit.
The antiquity of many of the animal remains found in caves is proved not
only by their being dissimilar to existing species, but by the manner in
which they are entombed. For ages they accumulated on the floor of the
cave, often to a considerable depth, mixed with mud or sand or fragments
of rock—then, when, from a change of level or some other cause, the
cavern became uninhabited, a thick crust of stalagmite was slowly
formed, and burying them all, as under solid stone, preserved them
undisturbed, until some accident revealed their existence after a time
the length of which escapes all calculation. The dim vista into the past
appears still more shadowy in the case of the cavern discovered by Dr.
Schmerling at Choquier about two leagues from Liège, where three
distinct beds of stalagmite were found, and between each of them a mass
of breccia and mud, mixed with quartz, pebbles, and in the three
deposits the bones of extinct quadrupeds!
Ossiferous caves have been found and examined in many parts of the
world: in France, in Belgium, chiefly in the valleys of the Meuse and
its tributaries; in Austria and Hungary, in Germany and England.
It is remarkable that while the remains of a large and extinct species
of bear, although found in our caves, are much more common on the
Continent, the bones of the hyena form by far the largest proportion of
those obtained from the English caverns. Thus under the incrustated
floors of our rock-crevices and hollows, we And the proofs that our
island was once inhabited by brutes which are now confined to Africa and
the adjacent parts of Asia. But the extinct hyena of England was a much
larger and more formidable animal than either the striped hyena of
Abyssinia or the spotted hyena of the Cape, the latter of whom it most
resembled. The abundance of these animals, and the length of the period
during which they inhabited England, may be inferred from Dr. Buckland’s
account of the opening of the celebrated cavern of Kirkdale.
‘The bottom of the cave, on first removing the mud, was found to be
strewed all over, like a dog-kennel, from one end to the other, with
hundreds of teeth and bones, and on some of the bones marks could be
traced, which, on applying one to the other, appeared exactly to fit the
form of the canine teeth of the hyena that occurred in the cave. Mr.
Gibson alone collected more than three hundred canine teeth of the
hyena, which must have belonged to at least seventy-five individuals,
and adding to these the similar teeth I have seen in other collections,
I cannot calculate the total number of hyenas, of which there is
evidence, at less than two or three hundred.’
The grisly bear of the Rocky Mountains (_Ursus ferox_) is the most
ferocious of its race at the present day. It is about nine feet long,
and is said to attain the weight of 800 pounds. Its strength is so
prodigious that even the bison contends with it in vain. But this huge
and formidable animal was surpassed in size and strength by the extinct
bear (_Ursus spelaeus_) which once inhabited the caverns of Europe, at a
time when vast and interminable forests covered the land, and the Rhine
and the Danube flowed through wastes like those through which the
Mackenzie or the Yenissei now find their way to the ocean.
From the proportions of the molar teeth, and from some peculiarities of
appearance and wearing, it has been inferred that this extinct species
lived chiefly on vegetable food; but its prodigious strength, and the
huge canines with which its jaws were armed, enabled it to cope with its
contemporaries, the large Auerox and the teichorhine rhinoceros, and to
defend itself successfully against the large lion or tiger whose remains
have also been found in the caverns of western Europe, and which, if we
may judge by the size of their canine teeth, must have been more than a
match for the largest felides of the present day.
Besides the hyena and the bear, more than a hundred species of extinct
animals have been discovered in our ossiferous caves. In those of
Paviland, Glamorganshire, bones of a primeval elephant have been found;
and in that of Wirksworth, Derbyshire, the almost entire skeleton of a
rhinoceros lay buried in a considerable mass of gravel and osseous
fragments. How the large creature came there is a question that may well
exercise the ingenuity of a geologist.
Though in these and similar cases, the bone-caves have been found to
contain the remains of animals very different from those now existing in
the same region, yet in general they show a remarkable relationship, in
the same land or continent, between the dead and the living. Thus in the
caves of Brazil there are extinct species of all the thirty-two genera,
excepting four, of the terrestrial quadrupeds now inhabiting the
provinces in which the caves occur, such as fossil ant-eaters,
armadilloes, tapirs, peccaries, guanacoes, opossums, and numerous South
American gnawers, monkeys and other animals.
[Illustration: CAVE IN DREAM LEAD MINE, NEAR WIRKSWORTH, DERBYSHIRE.]
The kangaroo, as is well-known, is peculiar to Australia, and caverns in
that country have been described by Sir T. Mitchell, containing fossil
bones of a large extinct kangaroo.
A singular wingless bird, the Apteryx australis, is found only in the
wilds of the interior of New Zealand, where it takes refuge in the
clefts of rocks, hollow trees, or in deep holes which it excavates in
the ground. The caves of that country show us that it was preceded by
other wingless birds of a gigantic structure—the Moas, by the side of
which even the ostriches of the present day would shrink into
comparative insignificance.
These wonderful creatures would probably have remained unknown to the
present day, if, in 1839, the thigh-bone of a Moa had not fallen by
chance into the hands of Professor Owen, who from this single fragment
drew up a surprisingly correct notice of the bird. This memoir, sent out
to New Zealand, gave a stimulus to further researches, and from the
larger quantity of the Moa’s bones now sent to England, Professor Owen
built up the beautiful skeleton which, along with those of the Mylodon
robustus, of the Mammoth, and of the primeval stag, forms one of the
most conspicuous ornaments of the splendid Museum in Lincoln’s Inn
Fields.
But the reconstructive genius of our great palæontologist, not satisfied
with this triumph, has detected a whole group of ostrich-like birds
among the remnants of the past, which the New Zealanders, who, as we may
suppose, are no adepts in comparative anatomy, all confound under the
common name of the Moa; and thus five species of Dinornis, the
Palaeopteryx, the Aptornis, and the comparatively small Notornis, have
been, as it were, resuscitated by a miracle of science. A specimen of
the last-named species of these birds was caught alive in a remote,
unfrequented part of the south island of New Zealand in 1850 by some
sealers, who, ignorant of the value of their prize, killed and devoured
it as if it had been a common turkey. Fortunately, however, the skin of
this unique bird, the link between the living and the dead, the last
perhaps of a race coeval with the gigantic Moas, was preserved from
destruction.
The largest species of Moa (_Dinornis robustus_) must have stood, when
alive, about thirteen or fourteen feet high, since Dr. Thomson saw a
complete leg, which stood six feet from the ground. Like the ostrich,
this feathered giant was incapable of flight, its rudimentary wings
being unable to raise it from the ground. It had three toes on each
foot, and tradition says that its feathers were beautiful and gaudy.
Portions of the eggs of the bird have been found among their bones, of a
sufficient size to estimate the probable size of a whole egg, and the
conclusion is that the hat of a full-grown man would have been a proper-
sized egg-cup for it. From the structure of the toes, which were well
adapted for digging up roots, and from the traditional report that the
Moas were in the habit of swallowing stones to promote digestion, it may
be concluded that they were herbivorous.
This is about as much as we know of the aspect and habits of this
colossal Struthionide, whose apparent confinement to the small New
Zealandic group is one of the most curious enigmas of its history. As it
is extremely improbable that so gigantic a race was originally formed
for so narrow a sphere, we are led to believe that New Zealand is but
the remnant of a vast continent now whelmed under the waves of the
Pacific.
When the group was first peopled by the Maories, about five hundred
years ago, the Moas had already become excessively rare, and the last of
them seem to have perished during the seventeenth century, though the
New Zealanders believe that some of them still live in the remote and
unfrequented wilds of their native land.
The bones of the various species of Moa have been partly found in
morasses, partly in the beds of mountain torrents, but chiefly in
various caves, which, no doubt, served the living animals as dwellings
or places of refuge.
One of these caverns, called by the New Zealanders ‘Te Anaoteatua,’ or
the Cave of the Spirit, was visited by Dr. Thomson,[30] who describes it
as very remarkable. It is situated in the tertiary, extremely cavernous,
and undermined limestone mountain chain which extends along the west
coast of the northern island, and whose picturesque beauties and natural
curiosities are destined to occupy a conspicuous place in some future
guide-book. Its entrance, resembling the gateway of an old castle, is
concealed by a thick foliage of shrubs, and a dark green creeper adheres
to the limestone rock and covers the opening. The cave extends in a
tortuous direction underneath the hill for upwards of a mile, and
consists of several different passages. From its roof and sides numerous
stalactites are hanging, some of them six feet long, and composed of
transparent calcareous spar, while others have a red tint. In that part
of the cave which Dr. Thomson explored, there were three openings in the
roof at different places, each from ten to fifteen feet in
circumference, through which light was seen streaming in, one hundred
and fifty feet above the head. Immediately below these openings there
were heaps of wood and _débris_ washed down from the surface; but these
openings did not throw much light into the cave, so that even during the
day it was perfectly dark. A subterranean stream of water runs through
part of it, and then disappears under the rock.
Footnote 30:
‘On the Moa Caves of New Zealand.’ Edinburgh New Philosophical
Journal, vol. lvi. 1854.
Before the introduction of Christianity, this cave was held in the
greatest terror by all New Zealanders, and no one would have ventured to
enter it; but as Moa bones fetch a high price, the love of money at
length conquered the superstitious fears of some Christian natives, and
their boldness was rewarded by a tolerably rich harvest of bones,
although their search was made in a very hasty and imperfect manner.
Another cave situated in the same neighbourhood, and bearing the
indigenous name of ‘Te Anaotemoa’ or the Cave of the Moa, did not enjoy
the privilege of spiritual protection, and the Maories were in the habit
of resorting to it to procure the skulls of the Moas, to keep the powder
which they used for tattooing, and their long bones for the manufacture
of fish-hooks, before they became acquainted with the use of iron.
The Cave of the Moa is in a limestone hill, with two openings, one
towards the north-east and the other towards the south-west. The north-
east opening has evidently been caused by the falling in of the roof,
and is apparently of no great age; the south-west entrance is 14 feet
high and 10 feet broad, and covered over with trees and bushes. The cave
is 165 feet long, the greatest breadth 28 feet, and the height 60 feet.
The roof is oval, and numerous stalactites drop gracefully from it,
giving a cathedral-like effect to the whole. One part of the floor is
covered over with calcareous spar, another part with a large deposit of
soft stalagmites, and the part of the floor furthest distant from the
south-west opening is covered with earth, limestones, and mud, which
appear to have fallen down when the roof of the cave gave way, which now
forms the north-east opening. It is under this earth, and the soft
deposit of carbonate of lime, that the Moas’ bones are found. Dr.
Thomson got only four skulls in this cave, and the scarcity of them was
accounted for by their use in former days as powder-holders. There was
nothing to lead him to think that these bones had been deposited in the
cave by water, for he found a remnant of almost every bone in the body,
from the spine and the rings of the trachea down to the last bone of the
toes. The bones belonged to the largest and also to the smaller species
of Moas.
It would require several days’ labour of many men to clear out the
bottom of this cave properly, in order to see what bones it contains;
but, as far as Dr. Thomson saw, there were no osseous remains of man or
of any animals, except Moas, in it, nor any marks of fire, sculpture,
nor figures of any kind on the walls of the cave.
There are, no doubt, many other grottoes and cavities containing Moas’
bones in the islands, but they are carefully kept secret by the natives,
as, on account of the high price paid for the bones, they may almost be
regarded as small gold-mines.
CHAPTER XX.
SUBTERRANEAN RELICS OF PREHISTORIC MAN.
The Peat Mosses of Denmark—Shell Mounds—Swiss Lacustrine Dwellings—
Ancient Mounds in the Valley of the Mississippi—The Caves in the
Valley of the Meuse—Dr. Schmerling—Human Skulls in the Cave of Engis—
Explorations of Sir Charles Lyell in the Cave of Engihoul—Caverns of
Brixham—Caves of Gower—the Sepulchral Grotto of Aurignac—Flint
Implements discovered in the Valley of the Somme—Gray’s Inn Lane an
ancient Hunting Ground for Mammoths.
Among the various researches of geologists, there are perhaps none of a
more general interest than those which relate to the antiquity of the
human race. We would gladly know whether those strata and caves which
contain so many relics of the past afford us also some insight into the
primitive condition of man—some indication of the times when he first
appeared upon the stage of life. Within the last years many discoveries
have been made which have thrown light upon the subject, and proved
that, though man, geologically speaking, is of recent origin, and
probably the youngest born of creation, his ancestry still stretches
back at least as far as that remote period when the huge Mammoth ranged
over the north, when the cavern bear and the cavern hyena tenanted the
excavations of our limestone hills, and the uncouth form of the
rhinoceros brushed through the dense primeval forests of our land. In
the following pages I intend briefly to point out some of the most
interesting of these discoveries.
The peat-mosses of Denmark, varying in depth from ten to thirty feet,
show their enormous antiquity by the changes which have taken place in
the vegetation of the land since the first periods of their growth. At
their lowest levels lie thick prostrate trunks of the Scotch fir, which
must once have grown on their margin, but which is not now, nor has ever
been in historical times, a native of the Danish isles. At higher levels
the pines disappear, and are supplanted by the sessile variety of the
common oak, while still higher occurs the pedunculated variety of the
same oak, now in its turn almost superseded by the common beech. It is
impossible to calculate the number of ages needed to bring about these
vast changes in the forest scenery of Denmark—a very moderate estimate
carries them back seven thousand years—but at every depth in the peat,
and under all these various trees, implements and other articles of
human workmanship have been found, which show that, since the appearance
of man, the fir and the oak have successively flourished and
disappeared.
In addition to the peat-mosses, the Danish ‘shell-mounds’ throw some
light on the prehistoric ages of that northern land. These mounds, or
‘refuse-heaps,’ consisting chiefly of thousands of cast-away shells of
the oyster, cockle, and other molluscs of existing species, may be seen
at certain points along the shores of nearly all the Danish islands. The
shells are plentifully mixed up with the bones of various quadrupeds,
birds, and fishes, which served as the food of the savages by whom the
mounds were accumulated, while scattered all through them are rude
implements of stone, horn, wood, and bone, with fragments of coarse
pottery, mixed with charcoal and cinders, but never any implements of
bronze or of iron. Similar refuse-heaps are found near the huts of many
wild nations of the present day, as, for instance, near the miserable
wigwams of the Fuegians, who live chiefly upon limpets.
The most striking proof that the Danish refuse-heaps are very old is
derived from the character of their imbedded shells. These, indeed,
belong entirely to living species, but the common eatable oyster is now
unknown in the brackish waters of the Baltic, and the eatable mussels,
cockles, and periwinkles, which in the refuse-heaps are as large as
those which grow in the open sea, now only attain a third of their
natural size. Hence we may confidently infer that in the days when the
savage inhabitants of the Danish coasts accumulated these heaps, the
ocean must have had freer access than now to the Baltic, and mixed its
waters through broader channels with those of that inland sea.
As in the peat-bogs the implements and weapons found buried with the
Scotch fir are all made of stone, whereas those coinciding with the oak
epoch are made of bronze, we may farther conclude that the stone
hatchets and knives of the refuse-heaps likewise belong to the same
distant period when evergreen forests flourished in the Danish isles.
The ancient Swiss lacustrine dwellings, so frequently mentioned of late
years, afford us another highly interesting glimpse into remote
prehistoric ages. They seem first to have attracted attention during the
dry season of 1853–4, when the lakes and rivers were unusually low, and
when the inhabitants of Meilen on the Lake of Zurich resolved to raise
the level of some ground, by throwing upon it the mud obtained by
dredging in the adjoining shallow water. During these dredging
operations they discovered a number of wooden piles deeply driven into
the bed of the lake, and, among them, many stone instruments, fragments
of rude pottery, fishing gear, and the bones of various animals; those
which contained marrow being split open, in the same way as those found
in the Danish shell-mounds.[31]
Footnote 31:
See also the article on Lacustrine Abodes, in the Edin. Review, July
1862.
The ruins thus unexpectedly brought to light were evidently those of a
village of unknown date, and since then many other hill-dwellings (more
than a hundred and fifty in all) have been detected near the borders of
the Swiss lakes, at points where the depth of water does not exceed
fifteen feet. Such aquatic sites were probably selected as places of
safety, since they could be approached only by a narrow bridge or by
boats, and the water would serve for protection alike against wild
animals and human foes. The relative age of the pile-dwellings is
clearly illustrated by the nature of the relics that lie scattered among
their ruins. In some, only bronze utensils or ornaments are found; in
others all the articles are of stone. The former, indicating an advance
in civilisation, are evidently of a more recent age, but, even among the
villages of the stone period, some are of later date than others, as
they exhibit signs of an improved state of the arts. Thus we have here a
long perspective into an unknown past, for even the bronze villages are
probably of an age long antecedent to the Roman period. The oldest stone
settlements are perhaps as old as the times of the Danish refuse-heaps;
but even among their ruins, some domesticated animals occur, namely, the
ox, sheep, goat, and dog, and the appearance of three cereals indicates
that the population had already made some progress in the agricultural
arts. Amber ornaments, which could only have found their way from the
Baltic, as also hatchets and wedges of jade, of a kind not occurring in
Switzerland or in the adjoining parts of Europe, and which some
mineralogists would derive from the East, prove the existence of an
active commercial intercourse, even at that early age, which the Swiss
archæologists and geologists carry back as far as 7,000 years.
In the basin of the Mississippi, and especially in the valley of the
Ohio and its tributaries, many large mounds have been found, which have
served in some cases for temples, in others for outlook or defence, and
in others for sepulture. Some of these earthworks are on so grand a
scale as to embrace areas of fifty or a hundred acres within a simple
inclosure; and the solid contents of one mound are estimated at twenty
millions of cubic feet, equal to about one-fourth of the bulk of the
Great Pyramid of Egypt. From several of these repositories pottery and
ornamental sculpture have been taken, as also weapons made of unpolished
hornstone and various articles in silver and copper. An active
commercial intercourse must have existed between the Ohio mound-builders
and the natives of distant regions, as mica from the Alleghanies, sea-
shells from the Gulf of Mexico, obsidian from the Mexican mountains, and
implements made of native copper from Lake Superior, have been found
among the buried articles.
The extraordinary number of the mounds implies a long period during
which a settled agricultural population, considerably advanced in the
industrial arts, occupied the fertile valleys or the alluvial plains in
the basin of the Mississippi, covered, since then, with vast forests,
and tenanted by wild hunters without any traditionary connexion with
their more civilised predecessors. The epoch when this people
flourished, or the adverse circumstances which swept them away, are all
equally unknown; but the age and nature of the trees found growing on
some of their earthworks afford at least some data for estimating the
minimum of time which must have passed since the mounds were abandoned.
Trunks, displaying eight hundred rings of annual growth, have been cut
down from them, and several generations of trees must have lived and
died before the mounds could have been overspread with that variety of
species which they supported when the white man first set foot in the
valley of the Ohio. In a memoir on this subject, General Harrison, who
was skilled in woodcraft, observes that ‘beyond all doubt no trees were
allowed to grow so long as the earthworks were in use; and when they
were forsaken, the ground, like all newly cleared ground in Ohio, would
for a time be monopolised by one or two species of tree, such as the
yellow locust and the black or white walnut. When the individuals which
were the first to get possession of the ground had died out one after
the other, they would in many cases, instead of being replaced by the
same species, be succeeded (by virtue of the law which makes a rotation
of crops profitable in agriculture) by other kinds, till at last, after
a great number of centuries (several thousand years, perhaps), that
remarkable diversity of species characteristic of North America, and far
exceeding what is seen in European forests, would be established.’
In all the cases hitherto mentioned, the remains or relics of
prehistoric man, however remote a date we may assign to them, have been
found associated with fossil shells and mammalia of living species. In
the instances I am now about to relate, we advance a step further back,
and find man the contemporary either of extinct mammalia or such as
could now no longer exist in the lands where once they throve. As the
mere mention of the numerous caves in Belgium, England, France, and
Germany, in which human bones or articles of human workmanship have been
found embedded along with the fossil remains of extinct animals, would
tire the reader’s patience, I select from the number a few which have
afforded the most convincing proofs of the antiquity of man. The credit
of having given the first impulse to these fruitful investigations is
due to the late Dr. Schmerling, of Liège, who, with untiring zeal,
devoted several years of his life to the exploring of the ossiferous
caverns which border the valley of the Meuse and its tributaries. To
gain access to many of the caves was in itself no easy task, as their
openings could be reached only by a rope tied to a tree; and when we
consider that, after these arduous preliminaries, Dr. Schmerling had
frequently to creep on all fours through contracted passages leading to
larger chambers, there to superintend by torchlight, week after week,
and year after year, the workmen who were breaking through a stalagmitic
crust as hard as marble, in order to remove, piece by piece, the
underlying bone breccia nearly as hard, and that while thus directing
their labours he stood for hours with his feet in the mud, and with
water dripping from the roof on his head, in order to mark the position
and guard against the loss of each single bone which they brought to
light, we can scarcely praise too highly his rare devotion to the cause
of science.
Among these caverns thus laboriously explored, that of Engis was found
to contain the remains of at least three human beings deeply buried
under a thick floor of stalagmite. The skull of one of these, who may
have been a beauty when the Meuse flowed at least fifty feet above its
present channel, was embedded by the side of a mammoth’s tooth. Another
skull was buried five feet deep in a breccia in which the tooth of a
rhinoceros, several bones of a horse, and some of the reindeer, together
with some ruminants, occurred. On the right bank of the Meuse, on the
opposite side of the river to Engis, is the cavern of Engihoul, where
likewise bones of extinct animals, mingled with those of man, were
observed to abound; but with this difference, that whereas in the Engis
cave there were several human crania and but very few other bones, in
Engihoul there occurred numerous bones of the extremities belonging to
at least three human beings, and only two small fragments of a cranium.
None of the caves examined by Schmerling contained an example of an
entire skeleton, and the bones were invariably so rolled and scattered
as to preclude all idea of their having been intentionally buried on the
spot. As no gnawed bones nor any coprolites were found, he inferred that
the caverns of the province of Liège had not been the den of wild
beasts, but that their organic and inorganic contents had been swept
into them by streams communicating with the surface of the country. In
1860 Sir Charles Lyell, on a visit to Liège, determined still further to
examine the Cave of Engihoul, into which Schmerling had delved in 1831,
and engaged some workmen to break through the crust of stalagmite with
the intention of searching for bones in the undisturbed earth beneath.
Bones and teeth of the cave-bear were soon found, and, at the depth of
two feet below the crust of stalagmite, three fragments of a human
skull, and two perfect lower jaws with teeth, all associated with the
bones of bears, large pachyderms and ruminants, and so precisely
resembling these in colour and state of preservation as to leave no
doubt that man was contemporary with the extinct animals.
Our English bone-caves have likewise afforded abundant proofs of the
antiquity of our race. In 1858 a new series of caverns having been
accidentally discovered near the sea at Brixham, by the roof of one of
them being broken through in quarrying, the Royal Society resolved to
have it scientifically and thoroughly examined. The united length of the
galleries which were cleared out under the superintendence of
experienced geologists amounted to several hundred feet. Their width
never exceeded eight feet. They were sometimes filled up to the roof
with mud, but occasionally there was a considerable space between the
roof and floor. The numerous fossils discovered during the progress of
the excavations were all numbered and labelled with reference to a
journal in which the geological position of each specimen was recorded
with scrupulous care.
As in many other bone-caverns, the underground passages and channels
were generally found floored with a layer of stalagmite, varying in
thickness from one to fifteen inches, and next below occurred loam or
bone-earth from two to fifteen feet in thickness. In the latter were
found remains of the mammoth, of the cave-bear, of the cave-lion, and
other extinct mammalia. No human bones were obtained, but many flint
knives, chiefly from the lowest part of the bone-earth, and one of the
most perfect lay at the depth of thirteen feet from the surface, and was
covered with bone-earth of that thickness.
At one point in the overlying stalagmite a perfect reindeer’s horn was
found sticking, and in another an entire humerus of the cave-bear—a
convincing proof that both these animals must have lived after the flint
tools were manufactured, or in other words that man in this district
preceded the cave-bear. ‘A glance at the position of Windmill Hill, in
which the caverns are situated, and a brief survey of the valleys which
bound it on three sides, are enough to satisfy a geologist that the
drainage and geographical features of this region have undergone great
changes since the gravel and bone-earth were carried by streams into the
subterranean cavities. Some worn pebbles of hematite, in particular, can
only have come from their nearest parent rock at a period when the
valleys immediately adjoining the caves were much shallower than they
now are. The reddish loam in which the bones are embedded is such as may
be seen on the surface of limestone in the neighbourhood, but the
currents which were formerly charged with such mud must have run at a
level seventy-eight feet above that of the stream now flowing in the
same valley.’[32]
Footnote 32:
Lyell, ‘Antiquity of Man,’ p. 101.
In 1861, Colonel Wood found, in a newly discovered cave of the peninsula
of Gower, in Glamorganshire, the remains of two species of rhinoceros,
R. teichorhinus and R. hemitœchus, in an undisturbed deposit, in the
lower part of which were some well-shaped flint knives, evidently of
human workmanship. This is the first well-authenticated example of the
occurrence of human implements in connexion with R. hemitœchus—the first
proof that this extinct brute, elsewhere the usual companion of the
mammoth, has been coeval with man.
In 1852, on the side of a hill near the small town of Aurignac in the
South of France, a sepulchral grotto was discovered which, though
unadorned and rude, is of the highest interest, as in point of antiquity
it surpasses all other burial-places known, and leads us back to times
long anterior to the oldest traditions of our race. In that year a
labourer observed that rabbits, when hotly pursued by the sportsman, ran
into a hole which they had burrowed in a talus of rubbish washed down
from the hill above. Expecting no doubt to ‘drag some struggling savage
into day’ he reached as far into the opening as the length of his arm,
and drew out, to his surprise, one of the long bones of a human
skeleton. His curiosity being excited he then began to dig a trench
through the middle of the talus, and in a few hours found himself
opposite a large heavy slab of rock, placed vertically against the
entrance. Having removed this, he discovered on the other side of it an
arched cavity almost filled with bones, among which were two entire
skulls, which he recognised at once as human.
The good people of Aurignac, highly interested in the discovery, flocked
to the cave, and as they probably expressed a wish to see the bones of
what they supposed to be their forefathers enjoy a Christian burial, the
mayor ordered these human relics to be removed from the lonely spot in
which they had so long reposed in peace, and to be re-interred in the
parish cemetery. But before this was done—having, as a medical man, a
knowledge of anatomy, though, as it seems, a very imperfect idea of the
ethnological value of the discovery—he ascertained that the bones must
have formed parts of no less than seventeen skeletons of both sexes.
Unfortunately, the skulls were injured in the transfer, and the
interment was so negligently conducted that when, after the lapse of
eight years, M. Lartet visited Aurignac, even the place could not be
pointed out into which the skeletons had been thrown.
The eminent antiquary, however, resolved systematically to investigate
the ground inside and outside the vault, and, having obtained the
assistance of some intelligent workmen, made the following interesting
discoveries, which amply rewarded him for his trouble. Outside the
grotto, he found a layer of ashes and charcoal, about six inches thick,
extending over an area of six or seven square yards, and going no
further than the entrance of the cave, there being no cinders or
charcoal in the interior. Among the ashes were fragments of sandstone,
reddened by heat, which had once formed a hearth, not fewer than a
hundred flint articles, and knives, projectiles, sling-stones, and
chips. Here also lay scattered the bones of various animals, some
belonging to species extinct for thousands of years in France, such as
the mammoth, the Siberian rhinoceros, the reindeer, and the gigantic
Irish deer; and among these bones those which had contained marrow were
invariably split open, as if for its extraction, many of them being also
burnt. The spongy parts, moreover, were wanting, having been eaten off
and gnawed after they were broken—the work, according to M. Lartet, of
hyenas, whose bones and coprolites were mixed with the cinders and
dispersed through the overlying soil. These beasts of prey are supposed
to have prowled about the spot, and fed on such relics of the funeral
feasts as remained after the retreat of the human visitors.
In the cave itself, along with some detached human bones which had
escaped removal to the churchyard, were also found the bones of animals
and some rude works of art, flat pieces of shell pierced through the
middle as if for being strung into a bracelet, and the carved tusk of a
young boar, perforated lengthwise as if for suspension as an ornament.
The bones of animals inside the vault differed in a remarkable manner
from those of the exterior, as none of them were broken, gnawed, half-
eaten, or burnt, like those which were found lying among the ashes on
the other side of the great slab which formed the portal. They seemed
also to have been clothed with their flesh when buried in the layer of
loose soil strewed over the floor, as they were often observed to be in
juxtaposition, and in one spot all the bones of the leg of an _Ursus
spelæus_ were lying together uninjured. When we consider that it is
still the custom of many savage tribes to bury with the bodies of the
dead pieces of meat, such as the bear’s fat haunch, so that they may not
lack food on their long journey to the land of spirits, we gain a most
interesting glimpse into the life of prehistoric man, the contemporary
of the reindeer, the cave-bear, and the mammoth in the South of France.
Armed with flint weapons, he had established his supremacy over the wild
beasts of the forest. Rude and ferocious as no doubt he was, he
carefully preserved the remains of his friends and kinsfolk, and
performed funeral feasts before the vaults in which their bodies were
interred.
The lower parts of the Valley of the Somme, far above Amiens and below
Abbeville, as far as the sea, are covered with a bed of peat, in some
places more than thirty feet thick. Near the surface of these moor
grounds Gallo-Roman remains have been found, and, still deeper, Celtic
weapons of the stone period; but the thickness of the superincumbent
vegetable matter is far inferior to that of the underlying peat, so that
many thousands of years must necessarily have passed since the first
growth of that swampy vegetation. But, however remote its age, it is
still of later date than the adjoining or underlying alluvial deposits
of clay, gravel, and sand, which cannot originally have ended abruptly
as they do now, but must have once been continuous further towards the
centre of the valley. A long time must necessarily have elapsed between
their deposition and subsequent denudation, and the first growth of the
peat. In the lowest, and consequently oldest, of these beds, there has
been found also a mixture of freshwater and marine shells, bones of the
primitive elephant and teichorhine rhinoceros, and a number of flint
implements shaped by the hands of man. Thus we have here convincing
proofs that a race of savages inhabited the Valley of the Somme long
before it was scooped out to its present depth, and when as yet not a
trace existed of the thick bed of peat which now covers its lower
grounds, and required so many thousand years for its formation.
Similar flint implements, in connexion with the bones of extinct
animals, have been disinterred from ancient drift formations in many
parts of England—in Surrey, Middlesex, Kent, Bedfordshire, and Suffolk.
In the British Museum there is, among others, a flint spear-headed
weapon which was found with an elephant’s tooth near Gray’s Inn Lane in
1715.
When, according to the old myth, Evander led Æneas over the site of
future Rome, they saw the cattle grazing in what was to be the Forum,
and heard them bellowing among the future dwellings of the rich senators
and knights,
——‘passimque armenta videbant
Romanoque Foro et lautis mugire Carinis.’
The change thus pointed out by Virgil was far less than that exemplified
by these few relics of a time when possibly no intervening sea separated
Britain from the rest of the world.
CHAPTER XXI.
TROGLODYTES OR CAVE-DWELLERS—CANNIBAL CAVES.
Cave Dwellings in the Val d’Ispica—The Sicanians—Cannibal Caves in South
Africa—The Rock City of the Themud—Legendary Tale of its Destruction.
Caves were probably the earliest habitations of primitive man, the first
rude shelter for which he had to do battle with the hyena or the bear.
As we have seen in the preceding chapter, some of the oldest relics of
his prehistoric existence have been discovered in caves; and at a far
later period, when he had already made some progress in the arts, we
find many races still adhering to the subterranean dwellings of their
forefathers. Such a state of things may possibly be indicated in the
mythical stories of the Greek and Trojan heroes, who, near the base of
Mount Etna, are said to have found caverns tenanted by the troglodytic
tribe of the Cyclops.
In another part of Sicily the old cave-dwellings of the Val d’Ispica
deservedly attract the antiquarian’s attention. The vale is a narrow
gorge, situated between Modica and Spaccafurno; and throughout its whole
length of about eight Italian miles, the rock-walls on both sides are
pierced with innumerable grottoes, which at first sight might be taken
for the productions of nature, but on a closer inspection evidently show
that they are the work of man, and have been originally excavated to
serve as dwellings. The luxuriant vegetation of the Val forms a pleasing
contrast with the naked sterility of the plain in which it is imbedded;
a small rivulet flows along the bottom, and irrigates wild fig-trees and
stately oleanders; on a higher level grow broad-leaved acanthuses and
wild artichokes, while thick festoons of cactus hang down from the top
of the rocks and shade the entrance of the grottoes. These are excavated
at various heights above the bottom of the vale, and often consist of
two or three stories, one above the other. A great part of the rock-wall
on the right bank of the brook has fallen in, and exposes to sight the
internal arrangement of the dwellings. On the mounds of rubbish the
visitor is able to ascend to the entrances of the caves, which
originally can have been accessible only by ladders. The chambers are
seldom more than twenty feet deep and six feet high and broad. The
above-mentioned rock-slip has laid open, among others, a dwelling of
three stories, with flights of steps in a good state of preservation, to
which, on account of its superior dimensions, the neighbouring peasants
have given the name of Castello d’Ispica, and which may have been the
abode of a chieftain.
Several mortar-like basins or troughs, hollowed in the rock, evidently
served for the pounding of corn, so that the inhabitants, whoever they
were, must have known at least some of the arts of civilised life. A few
of the rooms or burrows (for their size hardly warrants a better name)
are still tenanted by shepherds, whose whole furniture consists of a
kettle, a few pots, and some skins to lie upon. Parthey, a learned
German traveller,[33] who visited many of the caves (the whole number
probably exceeding 1,500), nowhere found the least traces of ornament
about them; the doors and windows were mere rough holes broken through
the rock. Thus there can be no doubt that the fragments of painted vases
and sculptured marble that have been found here and there in the caves
belong to a much later period, for a people sufficiently advanced in the
arts to paint vases and to chisel marble could not possibly have been
content with a mole-like existence. If we seek to ascertain the probable
age of this cavern city, all circumstances combine to throw back its
origin to a very ancient date. The total want of artistic decoration at
once forbids us to assign these extensive but rude excavations to one of
the Greek tribes which successively founded colonies in the island after
expelling the aborigines from their ancestral seats. In the Roman, the
Saracenic, or some later period a band of fugitives might indeed have
found a temporary retreat in this remote vale, but could hardly have
remained concealed long enough to execute a work which evidently
required long years of undisturbed toil. Thus it has been conjectured
that these caves were the dwellings of the ancient Sicanians, a people
who became known to history only when about to disappear for ever from
the stage of the world, having left no memorial of their existence save
perhaps these rude vestiges of an infant state of society.
Footnote 33:
‘Wanderungen durch Sicilien.’
We may justly presume that the aborigines of Malta, the Balearic
Islands, and Sardinia were likewise troglodytes when the first foreign
colonists landed on the shores of these islands. And such, after the
lapse of more than thirty centuries, are the Sarde shepherds of the
present day, who frequently have no better dwellings than the caves of
the rocks.
In Southern Italy the traveller meets with traces of the same primitive
mode of life. Near a place called Iscalonga, in the province of
Basilicata Mr. Mallet found many inhabited caves, excavated in dry tufa
of extreme antiquity. Some of the troglodytes came out to see him pass,
and looked savage and queer enough in their rough brown blanket-cloaks,
with peaked hoods and sheepskins.
Irrespective of climate, we at the present day find cave-dwellers among
the tribes of the frozen regions of the North and the Arabs of the stony
wastes bordering on the Red Sea, in the Libyan deserts, and in the
sandstone rocks of Southern Africa, wherever nature has formed grottoes
or the soft material admits of an easy excavation.
Amongst the many interesting objects of the Transgariep country are the
celebrated cannibal caverns which extend from the Moluta river to the
Caledon river. Thirty years ago they were inhabited by a race of men
who, like the lion or the panther, were the scourge of the whole
neighbouring country. Their mode of living was to send out hunting
parties, who would conceal themselves among the rocks and bushes, and
lie in ambush near roads, drifts, gardens, or watering-places for the
purpose of surprising and capturing women, children, or travellers. The
influence of the chieftain Moshesh induced them to change their evil
practices for a better mode of life, and they are now said to be an
inoffensive people of agriculturists and traders. When Mr. James Henry
Bowker visited the caves near the sources of the Caledon river, in 1868,
he met at one of them an old savage, one of the most ill-looking
ruffians he had ever beheld, who had formerly assisted at the cooking
and bone-picking of many a human victim, and, like the Last Minstrel,
seemed greatly to regret that
‘Old times were changed,
Old manners gone;’
and that
‘The bigots of the iron time
Had called his _harmless life_ a crime.’
The largest cavern is situated amongst the mountains beyond Thaba
Bosigo, the residence of the old chief Moshesh, about ten miles distant
from the deserted missionary station Cana. The entrance to this cavern
is formed by the overhanging cliff, and its arched and lofty roof is
blackened with the smoke and soot of the fires which served for the
preparation of many a horrible repast. At the further end of the cave
some rough irregular steps led up to a gloomy-looking natural gallery
where the victims not required for immediate consumption were confined.
The cannibals, consisting of Betshuana and Kafir tribes, had the less
excuse for their barbarity as they inhabit a fine agricultural country,
which likewise abounds in game; but it is said that, having in a time of
famine been reduced to the horrible extremity of eating human flesh,
they acquired a taste for it, and continued to relish it as a delicacy
even in times of abundance. Though they are now reported to be no longer
cannibals, there is reason to fear that they have not yet entirely
abandoned their diabolical way of living, for among the numerous bones
which strewed the floor of the cavern and had chiefly belonged to
children and young persons, Mr. Bowker found some that could hardly have
been there many months. The skull of a child which lay before the mouth
of the cavern afforded a touching example of ‘life in death,’ for a
little bulb had sprung up from its cavity and covered it with a graceful
tuft of drooping leaves.
At the distance of a ten days’ journey from Medina on the road of the
pilgrim caravans from Damascus, lies the deserted rock-city of the
Themud, where a whole people had hewn their dwellings in the black rock,
decorating the entrances with small columns on both sides, and tracing
numerous inscriptions on the walls. No European traveller has ever
visited this curious spot, for the Bedouins render the neighbourhood
insecure, and the pilgrims to the holy cities allow no infidel to
accompany them on their journey. How the subterranean city came to be
deserted is still a secret of the past; but probably its ruin must be
traced back as far as the first or second century of the Christian era,
for Mahomet cites it more than once in his Koran as a warning to all
true believers. According to the legend the prophet Saleh once came to
Themud to convert the idolatrous inhabitants to the belief of the one
true God. As a proof of his divine mission they required a miracle to be
performed, upon which the prophet, raising his staff, struck the rock,
which immediately opened and gave passage to a she-camel with its young.
But the obdurate pagans, still persisting in their incredulity, killed
the camel, and the young would no doubt have shared its mother’s fate,
if it had not speedily retired into the rock whence it had come forth.
The sacrilegious crime of the Themud did not long remain unpunished. A
dreadful earthquake destroyed them to the last man, and ever since the
place is cursed. When the caravan passes by, the pilgrims raise loud
shouts and hurry along as fast as they can, fearful of their dromedaries
becoming shy from the wailings of the young camel, which is still
supposed to exist in the rock.
CHAPTER XXII.
TUNNELS.
Subterranean London—The Mont Cenis Tunnel—Its Length—Ingenious Boring
Apparatus—The Grotto of the Pausilippo—The Tomb of Virgil.
The most renowned subterranean works of previous ages are generally of a
religious character, as they have been executed to serve either as
resting-places for the dead, or as temples in which gods or saints were
worshipped. Thus the rock-tombs of the Egyptian Pharaohs and the sacred
grottoes of India still bear witness to the feelings which conceived and
realised the idea of these stupendous excavations.
Our own times furnish no similar examples of underground temples or
mausoleums on a scale so grand as to command the admiration of
posterity. We neither scoop out whole mountains nor deeply plunge into
the entrails of the earth to reverence the dead or to testify our
devotion; our subterranean labours all bear the stamp of practical
utility. But never yet has the genius of man executed such wondrous
excavations as those of the present day; and though the purposes for
which they are performed may seem commonplace and prosaic when compared
with the ideal aims of the unknown artists who planned the Pharaonic
rock-tombs, or the temples of Ellora, yet the boldness of their
conception entitles them to rank among the grandest architectural works,
while the difficulty of their execution would have appalled the most
enterprising engineers of any age.
Modern London alone has more subterranean wonders to boast of than all
the capitals of the ancient world. As in the human frame numberless
vessels and nerves provide for the circulation of the blood, and convey
telegraphic signals through every part, so in the vast body of our
metropolis an amazing system of subterranean communication carries off
the sewerage of its millions of inhabitants, provides them with light
and water, conveys intelligence from one end to the other of its
enormous circuit almost with the rapidity of thought, transports
thousands of travellers below the crowded streets, and, not satisfied
with all these achievements, opens passages under the broad river to
which it owes its boundless wealth.
[Illustration: BORING MACHINE IN THE TUNNEL, MONT CENIS.]
But even the wonders of subterranean London, or of Paris—where troops
moving underground can march from one fortified caserne to the other, so
that, in a more literal sense than Pompey, the rulers of France can say
that they have but to stamp upon the ground to make legions start up
from the soil—are surpassed by those which the railroad calls forth in
its triumphal progress through the world. The Alps themselves, with
their eternal snows, no longer oppose a barrier to the locomotive; and
we have lived to witness the completion of the most gigantic tunnel ever
yet devised by man. The borer has slowly but indefatigably done its work
in the entrails of Mont Cenis, and the subterranean junction of France
and Italy has been at length achieved. The tunnel, which pierces 12,201
metres, or nearly seven miles, of solid rock, opens on the Italian side
at Bardonneche, 1,291 metres (about 4,000 feet) above the level of the
sea, and on the French side at Modane, at a height of 1,163 metres. From
each opening the tunnel gently ascends towards its culminating point in
the centre of the mountain, so as to allow the waters to drain off on
either side. The direction of the excavations was determined by
trigonometrical measurement, which of course required the nicest
accuracy, as a deviation of but half a centimetre on both sides would
amount to no less than 120 metres in the centre.
[Illustration: BORING MACHINE IN THE SECOND WORKING GALLERY, MONT CENIS
TUNNEL.]
For this purpose a signal was erected on the mountain above the
culminating point or the centre of the tunnel; and opposite to each
entrance, in the same longitudinal axis, a large theodolite pointed to
the above-mentioned signal and towards a light in the interior of the
tunnel, so that the slightest deviation from the requisite direction was
rendered mathematically impossible.
The machines used in the drivage of the tunnel were worked by means of
compressed air. The comminuted rock produced during the boring was
continuously removed by a jet of water squirted into the hole by the
machine—a precaution which was found to be of great economy in the wear
of the tools. Under ordinary conditions the working speed was about 200
strokes per minute, at which rate from eight to ten holes, of 1·6 inches
diameter and 35 inches deep, could be bored in the shift of six hours.
The tunnel is of an [18] section, 13 feet broad and 9¾ feet high; eight
machines were employed at one time; they were mounted on a wrought-iron
frame, which travelled on a railway, and could be removed to a safe
distance when the blasting took place. From 65 to 70 holes were bored in
the face of the rock, and then loaded with uniform charges, made up into
cartridges, and primed with fuses of different lengths, so as to explode
in groups at definite intervals. A horizontal series at about mid height
was first fired, then followed two vertical side rows, then a group near
the crown of the arch, and finally a horizontal series near the floor.
In this way the rock was blown down in nearly uniform fragments of from
six to eight inches in the side. At first, owing to the hardness of the
quartz-slate which had to be pierced, the work went on very slowly; but
at a greater depth, the mountain was found to consist of limestone
strata, so that at length it advanced about thirteen feet per day.
The compressed air which set the borers in motion served also for the
ventilation of the tunnel, as every stroke of the piston liberated
sufficient pure air to drive back to a considerable distance from the
workmen the suffocating gases, produced by the blasting, which otherwise
would render breathing impossible. Air-pumps placed before the entrance
finally conducted the fumes of the gunpowder or dynamite into the open
air. It is evident that the difference in height of the two openings,
and the gradual ascent towards the centre, will insure a thorough
ventilation. In the beginning of September 1869 the Italian side of the
tunnel, which is 5,913 metres long, was completed, while on the French
side only 4,222 metres were accomplished and 2056 remained to be bored,
and it was calculated that this gigantic enterprise would most probably
be terminated by the beginning of 1871. It was, however, completed a few
days earlier.
When Louis Quatorze, that model of regal pomposity, succeeded in placing
the crown of Spain on the head of his grandson Philip of Anjou, he bid
him grandiloquently farewell with the words: ‘Go, my son! the Pyrenees
no longer exist.’ With more truth is our age able now to declare that
the Alps have ceased to be a barrier between nations.
There can be no doubt that the Mont Cenis tunnel will soon be followed
by similar undertakings, some probably on a still grander scale. The
governments of Italy, Switzerland, and Germany have already decided upon
piercing a tunnel through the Mount St. Gothard. In winter the traveller
will no longer be obliged to ascend the solitudes of the Schöllenen, to
cross the Devil’s Bridge, and then, after traversing the valley of
Urseren, to pursue his perilous way up to the summit of the pass, before
a zigzag descent, along yawning precipices, leads him into the sunny
vale of the Ticino; but at Göschenen on the north he will plunge at once
into the bowels of the mountain, and in an hour will suddenly emerge at
Airilo into the genial south. In early spring the change of climate will
be almost miraculous; on one side winter still reigning supreme, the
earth covered with deep snow and the cold wind moaning through the
leafless trees—and then, after a short interval of darkness, the rich
vegetation of an Italian vale bursting forth in all its first
luxuriance, birds singing in the chestnut groves, and the green meads
enamelled with myriads of flowers.
It is curious to compare these stupendous works with the most celebrated
tunnel of ancient times, the Grotto of the Pausilippo, near Naples,
which serves as a passage for the travellers who intend visiting
Puzzuoli, Baiæ, or Cumæ, without being obliged to ascend the mountain or
to cross the bay. It is about a mile long, from thirty to eighty feet
high and twenty-eight feet broad, so as to allow three carriages to pass
abreast. Twice a year, in February and October, the last rays of the sun
dart for a few minutes through the whole length of the grotto; at all
other times a speck of gray uncertain light terminates the long and
solemn perspective. The origin of this celebrated grotto is unknown.
Some old chroniclers have imagined it as ancient as the Trojan war;
others attribute it to the mysterious race of the Cimmerians.
The Neapolitans attribute a more modern, though not more certain, origin
to their famous cavern, and most piously believe it to have been formed
by the enchantments of Virgil, who, as Addison very justly observes, is
better known at Naples in his magical character than as the author of
the ‘Æneid.’ This strange infatuation most probably arose from the fact
that the tomb, in which his ashes are supposed to have been deposited,
is situated above the grotto, and that, according to popular tradition,
it was guarded by those very spirits who assisted in constructing the
cave. King Robert, a wise, though far from poetical, monarch, conducted
his friend Petrarch with great solemnity to the spot, and, pointing to
the entrance of the grotto, very gravely asked him whether he did not
adopt the general belief, and conclude that this stupendous passage
derived its origin from Virgil’s powerful incantations.
‘When I had sat for some time,’ says Beckford,[34] ‘on a loose stone
immediately beneath the first gloomy arch of the grotto, contemplating
the dusky avenue, and trying to persuade myself that it was hewn by the
Cimmerians, I retreated, without proceeding any further, and followed a
narrow path which led me, after some windings and turnings, along the
brink of the precipice, across a vineyard, to that retired nook of the
rocks which shelters Virgil’s tomb, most venerably mossed over and more
than half concealed by bushes and vegetation. The clown who conducted me
remained aloof at awful distance whilst I sat communing with the manes
of my beloved poet, or straggled about the shrubbery which hangs
directly above the mouth of the grot.
Footnote 34:
‘Italy.’
‘Advancing to the edge of the rock, I saw crowds of people and
carriages, diminished by distance, issuing from the bosom of the
mountain, and disappearing almost as soon as discovered in the windings
of the road. Clambering high above the cavern, I hazarded my neck on the
top of one of the pines, and looked contemptuously down on the race of
pigmies that were so busily moving to and fro. The sun was fiercer than
I could have wished, but the sea breezes fanned me in my aërial
situation, which commanded the grand sweep of the bay, varied by
convents, palaces, and gardens, mixed with huge masses of rock, and
crowned by the stately buildings of the Carthusians and fortress of St.
Elmo. Add a glittering blue sea to this perspective, with Caprea rising
from its bosom, and Vesuvius breathing forth a white column of smoke
into the æther, and you will then have a scene upon which I gazed with
delight for more than an hour, forgetting that I was perched upon the
head of a pine with nothing but a frail branch to uphold me. However, I
descended alive, as Virgil’s genii, I am resolved to believe, were my
protectors.’
CHAPTER XXIII.
ON MINES IN GENERAL.
Perils of the Miner’s Life—Number of Casualties in British and Foreign
Coal Mines—Life in a Mine—Occurrence of Ores—Extent and Depth of
Metallic Veins—Mines frequently discovered by Chance—The Divining Rod—
Experimental Borings—Stirring Emotions during their Progress—Sinking
of Shafts—Precautions against Influx of Water—Expense—Shaft Accidents—
Various Methods of working Mineral Substances—Working in Direct and
Reverse Steps—Working by Transverse Attacks—Open Quarry Workings—
Pillar and Stall System—Long Wall System—Dangerous Extraction of
Pillars—Mining Implements—Blasting—Heroes in Humble Life—Firing in the
Mine of Rammelsberg—Transport of Minerals Underground—Modern
Improvements—Various Modes of Descent—Corfs—Wonderful Preservation of
a Girl at Fahlun—The Loop—Safety Cage—Man Machines—Timbering and
Walling of Galleries—Drainage by Adit Levels—Remarkable Adits—The
Great Cornish Adit—The Georg Stollen in the Harz—The Ernst August
Stollen—Steam Pumps—Drowning of Mines—Irruption of the Sea into
Workington Colliery—Hubert Goffin—Irruption of the River Garnock into
a Mine—Ventilation of Mines—Upcast Shafts—Fire Damp—Dreadful
Explosions—The Safety Lamp—The Choke Damp—Conflagrations of Mines—The
Burning Hill in Staffordshire.
Few metals are found in a native state, nor are they commonly scattered
in loose masses, nuggets, grains, or scales over the surface of the
earth. Hence the seeker’s trouble is by no means confined to the task of
gathering these masses, or of separating them by washing from the
alluvial sand or gravel with which they are mixed; much more frequently
they are chemically combined with other substances from which a far
advanced state of science is alone able to separate them, or deeply
imbedded in subterranean mines, often so difficult of access as to tax
for their working all the energies of man and all the resources of his
metallurgic skill. The labours of the miner require indeed no less
courage and presence of mind than those of the mariner. He no more knows
whether he shall ever return from the pit into which he descends in the
morning for his hard day’s work than the sailor knows whether he shall
ever revisit the port which he is leaving. He is perpetually at war with
fire and earth, with air and water, and this eternal strife levies a no
less heavy tribute of death and suffering than the storms of the raging
seas.
In the year 1867, 1,190 persons perished in our 3,192 collieries, which
employ a total of 333,116 workmen. Of these, 286 were killed by
explosions; 449 by falls of rock; 211 by other subterranean causes; 156
in the shafts; and 88 above ground. In the same year, 293 lives were
lost in the Prussian collieries, where 102,773 workmen find employment.
Of these, 39 perished by fire-damp; 106 by fall of roof; 65 in shafts;
74 by casualties under ground; and 9 by casualties above ground. These
melancholy lists may give us some idea of the number of serious but non-
fatal accidents which are not mentioned in the official accounts. Every
visitor to a coal-mine will meet with many pit lads who have been
‘lamed’ (or injured) several times in a few years, and who reckon events
by the mournful chronology of their various ‘lamings.’ Collieries, as
will be seen in the sequel, are indeed peculiarly liable to frightful
accidents; yet the number of lives lost in the inspected ironstone mines
of Great Britain, in 1866, amounted to 81. Extending our view to the
mines of Austria and Russia, of France and Belgium, of Mexico and Peru,
&c., &c., where the same dangers cause, no doubt, an equal amount of
death or suffering, we may justly conclude that not a day, probably not
an hour, passes that does not doom more than one miner to an untimely
grave or to permanent mutilation.
But if mining is attended with a lamentable amount of individual
suffering, the benefits derived from it by mankind in general are so
important that the whole fabric of modern civilisation may be said to
rest upon its basis.
Coal and the useful metals rule the world. Wherever they occur in large
masses they establish the prosperity of a people on the surest
foundations; and England is in a great measure indebted for her high
station among the nations of the earth to the treasures hidden beneath
her soil.
A large mine displays unquestionably some of the most interesting scenes
of human activity. The restless industry pervading its subterranean
caves and galleries impresses the visitor with feelings of wonder akin
to those which he experiences when he first sets foot on a man-of-war;
and if he feels giddy on seeing the sailor climb the loftiest masts, the
sight of the yawning abyss into which the miner undauntedly descends
seems terrible to his unaccustomed eye; and as he penetrates further and
further into the recesses of this unknown world, his sensations are not
rendered more agreeable.
The intricate passages branching out into a mysterious distance; the
vaults and high halls faintly illumined here and there by a glimmering
lamp; the dark forms emerging every now and then from some obscure
recess, and then again plunging into night, like demon shades; the
clanking of hammers, the rushing of waters, the creaking of wheels, the
monotonous sound of machinery, or the loud explosion which, repeated by
subterranean echoes, rolls like muttering thunder from vault to vault,
the oppressive air in the low galleries, through which he can only move
in a stooping position; the fear of being crushed any moment by a
falling rock, or shivered to atoms by fire-damp combustion,—all combine
to produce an impression which can seldom be made by any scenes above
ground.
The admiration which this imposing spectacle necessarily calls forth in
his mind increases when he reflects how much skill and experience was
required, and how many improvements and inventions had to be made,
before mining could be brought to its present state of perfection.
Ores sometimes occur, like coal, in layers or beds, running parallel
with the strata of the inclosing rocks, or in prodigious irregular
masses. Most commonly, however, they are found in veins traversing the
rocks in every conceivable direction, and filling the crevices and
chasms which former terrestrial revolutions have rent in the hard stone.
From the wild and titanic powers that have here been at work, it may
easily be imagined how irregular the direction of these veins must be,
and under how many various forms they must appear. Here they are
horizontal, there vertical; here they form thin layers, there they fill
chasms several hundred feet thick. Sometimes they split into several
minor branches, or make abrupt bends, and frequently they have been
rent, torn, or displaced in every possible manner by subsequent
revolutions.
Their length is as various as their thickness or their direction. Some
are short, while others traverse the rocks to a distance of many miles.
Thus the argentiferous veins in the neighbourhood of Clausthal, in the
Harz, are three leagues long, and the famous Veta Madre, or chief lode
of Guanaxuato in Mexico, has been traced for a length of eight miles.
With regard to depth, the lower extremity of hardly a single mineral bed
or vein of any note has as yet been pointed out, though many have been
worked to a considerable depth. Thus, one of the pits of St.
Andreasberg, in the Harz, is 2,485 feet deep, though, on account of its
high situation in the mountains, not much more than 280 feet below the
surface of the sea, while, in the coal mines of Valenciennes and Liège,
the deepest shafts are sunk from 1,300 to 1,600 feet below the level of
the ocean. The shaft of the colliery of Sacrée Madame, near Charleroi,
is 800 yards deep, and that of Dukinfield Colliery 2,050 feet.
The great difficulty of carrying on mining operations at great depths
will, probably, for ever prevent most metalliferous veins from being
followed to their origin in the bowels of the earth; for while on high
mountains the rarefaction of the atmosphere prevents respiration, the
increasing pressure or impurity of the air at a depth of four or five
thousand feet below the level of the sea must necessarily hinder the
free expansion of the lungs. The weakness of our organisation soon sets
limits to our progress, whether we wish to rise into the air or to
penetrate into the interior of the earth; and it is only on spiritual
wings that we soar aloft to the stars, or wander through the mysterious
depths of our planet.
How have the ores been collected or precipitated in the veins or strata
where they are often found in such enormous quantities? Partly they
ascended as vapour from unknown depths, and then were condensed in the
crevices, mixing with the gangue or the stones which filled the volcanic
chasms; and partly their solutions, of which the mineral springs of the
present day afford us so many examples, permeated the porous rocks, and
saturated them on cooling, or were forced to relinquish their valuable
contents by some more powerful chemical affinity. Thus, numberless years
before man appeared upon the stage of his future empire, the means were
provided without which it would never have been possible for him to
establish his dominion over the earth, and to make himself master of the
treasures it bears on its surface.
When we consider the frequent upheavings and subsidences of the earth-
rind and the denuding power of water, which, in the long series of ages,
cuts deep ravines into the mountains and washes away whole strata, we
cannot wonder that many metalliferous veins emerge or crop out on the
surface of the earth, so that a fortunate chance sufficed for their
discovery. Thus, a poor Indian looking for wood first found the rich
deposits of silver that had so long been buried in obscurity under the
sterile soil of Copiapo in Chili (1632). Partridges, in whose stomachs
grains of gold were found, are said to have led to the discovery of the
rich mines of Kremnitz and Schemnitz in Hungary; and Ramm, a huntsman of
the emperor Otho the Great, having bound his horse to a tree in a forest
near Goslar in the Harz Mountains, the fretful steed, stamping with
impatience and tearing up the soil, pointed out the celebrated lode of
the Rammelsberg, which is still worked to the present day.
But if in these and similar instances the treasures of the subterranean
world have revealed themselves spontaneously to man, in many other cases
laborious and costly investigations have been found necessary for their
discovery.
As civilisation advanced, and the value of the metals, of coal and salt,
came to be more and more appreciated, nothing could be more natural than
the desire of no longer relying upon the discoveries of chance or upon
the mines bequeathed by former ages, but of sounding the mysterious
recesses of the earth, and forcing her, by dint of patient exploration,
to reveal the riches she conceals under her surface.
Thus, as far back as the eleventh century, the _divining_ rod came into
practice, and found full credence in a superstitious age. A forked
branch of the hazel-tree, cut during a peculiar phase of the moon, was
the means employed in Germany for the discovery of buried treasures, of
veins of metal, of deposits of salt, or of subterranean sources. But the
miraculous rod did not indiscriminately show its powers in every hand;
it was necessary to have been born in certain months, and soft and warm—
or, according to the modern expression, _magnetic_—fingers were
indispensable for handling it with effect. The diviner possessing these
necessary qualifications took hold of the rod by its branches so that
the stem into which they united was directed upwards. On approaching the
spot where the sought-for treasure lay concealed, the magical rod slowly
turned towards it, until finally the stem had fully changed its position
and pointed vertically downwards. To increase the solemnity of the
scene, the wily conjurors generally traced magical circles that were not
to be passed, burnt strong smelling herbs and spices, and uttered
powerful charms to disarm the enmity of the evil spirits that were
supposed to guard the hidden treasures.
At present, the divining-rod has lost its old reputation, and more
rational means are employed for the discovery of mineral wealth. Relying
on experience, tact, and geological knowledge, the investigator
carefully examines the country where ores or coal are supposed to be
concealed, and having fixed upon an appropriate spot, has recourse
either to experimental digging or to boring for testing the truth of his
opinion. These expensive explorations, though often unsuccessful,
frequently prove highly remunerative, and many a saline spring, or coal
seam, or metallic vein would, without their assistance, have remained
unknown and unproductive.
Boring through hard stone is necessarily a very tedious work, but as it
proceeds it awakens not only in those who are directly interested in its
success, but in every intelligent witness, all the stirring emotions of
a game of chance. ‘Of all branches of business,’ says Williams, a
thoroughly devoted miner—‘of all the experiments that a man of
sensibility can be engaged in, or attend to, there is, perhaps, none so
amusing, so engaging, and delightful as a successful trial upon the
vestigia, or appearances, of a seam of coal, or other mineral
discoveries. When you are attending the people who are digging down or
forward upon the vestige of the coal, and the indications are increasing
and still growing better under your eye, the spirit of curiosity and
attention is awakened, and all the powers of expectation are elevated in
pleasing hopes of success. And when your wishes are at length actually
fulfilled—when you have discovered a good coal of sufficient thickness,
and all circumstances are favourable, the heart then triumphs with solid
and satisfactory joy.'
In a mining country like England, where the spirit of enterprise is
continually on the look-out for new sources of profit, it may naturally
be supposed that searches for coal or metallic ore must be frequently
undertaken. Thus in all our mining districts there are professional
master-borers, who engage for a fixed price to drill the hardest rock to
any depth that may be required.[35] Their chief implements are boring-
rods, made of the best and most tenacious Swedish iron; chisels fitted
with screws, tipped with good steel, with a face of two and a half to
three and a quarter inches, and generally eighteen inches in length; and
a wimble, which is a hollow iron instrument like an auger, whose cavity
is from six to ten inches in length, with an opening up at one side,
with partial overlap, the better to receive and hold the chopped strata.
Footnote 35:
In the North of England the prices of boring in the ordinary strata of
that coal-field are as follows:—
_s._ _d._
First five fathoms 5 6 per
fathom.
Second five ” 11 0 ”
Third five ” 16 6 ”
Fourth five ” 22 0 ”
and so increasing 5_s._ 6_d._ per fathom on each succeeding depth of
five fathoms. In boring through very hard strata the prices are from
80 to 100 per cent. higher.
When the bore is intended to penetrate to a considerable depth, a lofty
triangle of wood is set above the bore-hole. In boring, the lowermost
rod is the chisel, which continually operates on the rock or stratum.
The uppermost rod terminates in a stout ring, through which passes a
cross-piece held by two men in working, and which is also suspended to a
springing pole by a chain. One or more rods being pushed into the
ground, two men on a wooden stage take hold of a cross stave at the end
of the springing pole and work it steadily up and down, while two men
below, by means of the cross-piece, at the same time heave the suspended
rods a few inches, and then allow them to fall by their own weight,
walking slowly round the hole. By these combined operations of chopping
and scooping the workmen make slow but sure way through whatever
substance may be in contact with the chisel. When the hole is too deep,
and the added rods become too heavy to be conveniently lifted by manual
labour, a brake or lever, or a horse-gin or steam-engine, is employed.
As the boring proceeds, it is also frequently necessary to lower pipes
into the hole made, to prevent the falling of fragments from the sides
of the cylinder.
[Illustration: PROCESS OF BORING.]
When the position of a mineral vein is ascertained, its direction known,
and some reasonable conjecture made concerning its extent, thickness,
and value, measures must be taken to obtain, by subterraneous
excavation, the buried mineral, and for this purpose vertical pits or
shafts must be sunk, and horizontal galleries, or, as they are sometimes
called, _levels_, must be driven, to prepare the way for its convenient
extraction, and at the same time to carry off, so far as may be, the
water which either rises into the mine from springs, or drains into it
from the surrounding strata. Some idea may be formed of the extent of
these works in many of the more considerable mines, when we learn that
the total amount of sinking in the Consolidated Mines in Cornwall is
stated to amount to more than twelve miles of perpendicular depth
(including, of course, the winzes or underground shafts), and that the
horizontal galleries extend to as much as forty miles in length. A mine
like this is, in fact, a large subterranean town, with numerous lanes
and avenues, passages and thoroughfares.
[Illustration:
SECTION OF A LEAD MINE IN CARDIGANSHIRE.
_a._ Shafts. _b._ Levels.
]
In sinking a shaft, danger is to be apprehended both from the falling in
of loose and incoherent strata, and from the lateral springs, which
sometimes empty themselves into the workings to an extent which it would
at first appear hopeless to contend against. In such cases there is no
safety to be obtained without walling the shaft with brick or stone, or
securing it by timber or metal tubbing. For this purpose many of our
coal pits were formerly lined throughout with three-inch boards, nailed
to a circular wooden framework called a crib, which was firmly attached
to the sides of the pit at convenient distances. But this method,
although it has been known to keep out a pressure of water equal to 100
pounds on the square inch, is not considered so safe as the metal
tubbing now adopted in all difficult works. In comparatively solid
ground the cast-iron tubs are forced down the shaft, but in soft ground
they sink by their own weight. As they descend, fresh tubs are added,
until the work is finished. When we consider that, in the coal-pits in
the north of England, many shafts have a diameter of as much as fifteen
feet, that in some cases they are sunk to a depth of nearly 300 fathoms,
and that, under the most favourable circumstances, even where tubbing is
not required to guard against the influx of springs, it is necessary to
line almost the whole of the interior with bricks, to prevent the loose
strata from falling or being washed in, we cannot wonder that as much as
100,000l. and ten years of labour have, in some cases, been expended
before the seam of coal has been reached that was to repay all this vast
outlay of capital and time. Unsightly and filthy as such a shaft may be,
it is in reality a great triumph of architectural skill.
In most of our collieries one shaft serves for winding up the coal, for
the passage of the men up and down, for ventilation, and for drainage by
means of the engine-pumps. To answer these various purposes it is
subdivided or bratticed by brick or wooden partitions into two, three,
or four compartments; but this arrangement is very defective, for the
safety of the workmen requires that in every large coal-pit, and indeed
in every mine, there should be at least two separate shafts. When the
partitions of the single shaft become injured or burnt, which has not
unfrequently been the case, the ventilation of the pit may suddenly be
deranged, and many lives have thus been endangered. The obstruction of a
shaft by the breakage of an engine has caused some of the most appalling
tragedies in mining history. On January 10, 1862, the beam of the
pumping engine broke at the Hartley Colliery in the Newcastle coalfield,
and striking, like a huge catapult, with its enormous weight of forty
tons, against the sides of the shaft as it descended, accumulated an
enormous mass of rubbish and broken timbers at the depth of 138 yards
from the surface. Two hundred and four colliers were thus shut out from
all hope of rescue, for no exertion could possibly remove, in time
enough to save them, the vast pile of ruins that obstructed their escape
to the upper world.
The methods of working, winning, or excavating mineral substances
naturally vary, according to the magnitude and direction of the beds,
lodes, or seams in which they are contained. With a vein of moderate
width, as soon as the preparatory labours have brought the miners to the
point of the vein from which the ulterior workings are to ramify, the
first object is to divide the mass of ore into solid rectangular
compartments by means of oblong galleries, generally pierced ten fathoms
below one another, with pits of communication opened up, thirty, forty,
or fifty yards asunder, which follow the slope of the vein. These
galleries and shafts are usually of the same breadth as the vein, unless
when it is very narrow, in which case it is necessary to cut out a
portion of the roof or the floor. Such workings serve at once the
purposes of mining, by affording a portion of ore, and for the complete
investigation of the nature and riches of the vein, a certain extent of
which is thus prepared before removing the cubical masses. It is proper
to advance first of all in this manner to the greatest distance from the
central point which can be mined with economy, and afterwards to remove
the rectangular blocks in working back to that point. This latter
operation may be carried on in two different ways, by attacking the ore
from above or from below. In either case the excavations are disposed in
steps, similar to a stair, upon their upper or under side. The first is
styled a working in _direct_ or descending steps; the second a working
in reverse, or ascending steps. By this method a number of miners are
able to proceed simultaneously without interfering with each other.
In rich lodes and in the case of thick masses, the system of working in
large chambers or extensive excavations, or by transverse attacks, is
employed. Superficial deposits are worked like open quarries.
In British practice, coal is generally worked on the post (or pillar and
stall) system, or on the long-wall system.
The pillar and stall principle is carried out in the working away of a
certain portion of the coal as a first measure, and in leaving the
remainder in pillars, which are either to serve permanently for the
support of the roof, or to be at some future time partially or totally
removed. In the North of England, where this system has been brought to
perfection, it is also named panel-work, because the whole area is
divided into quadrangular panels, each panel containing an area of from
eight to twelve acres, and round each panel is at first left a solid
wall of coal of from forty to fifty yards thick. Through the panel walls
roads and air-courses are driven in order to work the coal contained
within these walls. Thus all the panels are connected together with the
shaft as to roads and ventilation, and each district or panel has a
particular name, so that any circumstance relating to the details of the
colliery can be readily referred to a specified place.
[Illustration: PART OF A COLLIERY LAID OUT IN FOUR PANELS.]
A. Engine shaft: divided F, G. Two panels completed as
into three compartments, to the first work.
an engine pit and two
coal pits.
B, C. Dip head level. D. Panel, with the rooms a a
in regular progress to
the rise.
A, E. The rise or crop gallery. H. Panel fully worked out.
K, K. Panel walls.
By this plan, of which the above illustration gives a distinct idea, the
pillars of a panel may be worked out at any time most suitable for the
economy of the mine, and the loss of coal amounts to no more than about
a tenth, instead of a third or a half by the old methods.
When the pillars of a panel are to be worked out, the most distant range
is first attacked, and as the workmen cut away the furthest pillars,
props of wood are placed between the pavement and the roof, within a few
feet of each other, as shown by the dots at I. This is continued till an
area of one hundred square yards is cleared of pillars. This operation
is termed ‘working the _goaf_.’ The only use of the prop-wood is to
prevent the stratum which forms the ceiling over the workmen’s heads
from falling down and killing them by its splintery fragments.
Experience has proved that before proceeding to take away another set of
pillars, it is necessary to allow the last made goaf to fall. The
workmen then begin to draw out the props. This is a most hazardous
employment. Knocking down the more remote props one after another, they
quickly retreat under the protection of the remaining props. Meanwhile
the roof stratum begins to break by the sides of the pillars and falls
down in immense pieces; while the workmen still persevere, boldly
drawing and retreating till every prop is removed. Nay, should any props
be so firmly fixed by the top pressure that they will not give way to
the blows of heavy mauls, they are cut through with axes, the workmen
making it a point of honour to leave not a single prop in the goaf. If
any props are left, it causes an irregular subsidence of the strata, and
throws more pressure on the adjacent pillars. The miners next proceed to
cut away the pillars nearest to the sides of the goaf, setting prop-
wood, then drawing it, and retreating as before, until every panel is
removed excepting small portions of pillars which require to be left
under dangerous stones, to protect the retreat of the workmen. While
this operation is going forward and the goaf extending, the
superincumbent strata, being exposed without support over a larger area,
break progressively higher up; and when strong beds of sandstone are
thus giving way, the noise of the rending rocks is very peculiar and
terrific; at one time loud and sharp, at another hollow and deep. As the
pillars of the panels are taken away, the panel walls are also worked
progressively backwards to the pit-bottom, so that only a small portion
of the coal is eventually lost.
When mines are fully worked, the main shaft is frequently continued down
to other seams of coal, which are excavated in the same way as the first
seam. In such cases the workings communicate with each other by shafts
called ‘staples,’ which are sunk at intervals between the seams of coal.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF MINING OPERATIONS.]
The principle of long-wall working (Shropshire and Derbyshire method) is
the extraction of all the available coal by the single process of first
working, maintaining the roads by means of stone-walls or wooden props.
This system is applicable with advantage only to thin seams which lie
near to the surface, and in which the workings may be of a very limited
extent.
[Illustration:
TOOLS USED BY MINERS IN CORNWALL.
_a._ Pick. _b._ Gad. _c._ Shovel. _d._ Mallet. _e._ Borer. _f._
Claying-bar. _g._ Needle or nail. _h._ Scraper. _i._ Tamping-bar.
]
According to the various hardness of the minerals or of the rocks in
which they are embedded, different means and implements for dividing the
masses are employed. In loose earth, sand, and clay, shovels and
scrapers suffice; in gypsum, coal, and rock-salt, the pick becomes
necessary; in many hard slates, gads must be driven into the small
openings made with the point of the pick. In still harder stones,
forming the great majority of those which occur in veins and strata,
recourse must be had to the explosive power of gunpowder, which is also
largely employed in our coal-mines. The tools used for this purpose are
the borer, an iron bar tipped with steel, formed like a thick chisel,
which is held by one man straight in the hole with constant rotation on
its axis, while another strikes the head of it with the iron sledge or
mallet; the scraper for clearing out the hole from time to time; the
claying-bar, a tapering iron rod, which, after the introduction of some
tenacious clay into the cavity, is forced into it with great violence,
and, condensing the clay into all the crevices of the rock, secures the
dryness of the hole; and the nail, a small taper rod of copper, which,
after the charge has been introduced, is inserted to reach the bottom of
the hole, which is now ready for tamping. For this purpose, any soft
species of rock free from flinty particles, which might provoke a
premature explosion, is introduced in small quantities at a time, and
rammed very hard by the tamping bar, which is held steadily by one man
and struck with a sledge by another. The hole being thus filled, the
nail is withdrawn by putting a bar through its eye and striking it
upwards. Thus a small perforation or vent is left for the safety fuse, a
woven cylinder containing gunpowder, and protected by a coating of tar.
The fire being applied, the men retire to a safe distance.
Often, in order to lose as little time as possible, a number of shots
are fired together, so that the explosions, pouring out their tongues of
flame in rapid succession, and awakening the subterranean echoes far and
wide, afford a highly interesting spectacle. But woe to the miner if he
be too hasty to return to his post, for it often happens that a
treacherous shot goes off several minutes after being lighted, and,
exploding in the face of the imprudent workman, disfigures him for life,
or kills him on the spot.
Accidents in blasting arise also from other causes, such as a negligent
handling of the powder while preparing the charge, or some delay in
retiring after the fuse has been kindled. It was an incident of the
latter kind which some years back called forth the following instance of
heroism.
‘In a certain Cornish mine,’ says Thomas Carlyle,[36] ‘two miners, deep
down in the shaft, were engaged in putting in a shot for blasting; they
had completed their affair, and were about to give the signal for being
hoisted up. One at a time was all their coadjutor at the top could
manage, and the second was to kindle the match and then mount with all
speed. Now it chanced, while they were still below, one of them thought
the match too long, tried to break it shorter, took a couple of stones,
a flat and a sharp, to cut it shorter, did cut it off the due length,
but, horrible to relate, kindled it at the same time, and both were
still below. Both shouted vehemently to the coadjutor at the windlass,
both sprang at the basket; the windlass-man could not move it with them
both. Here was a moment for poor miner Jack and miner Will! Instant
horrible death hangs over both, when Will generously resigns himself.
“Go aloft, Jack, and sit down. Away! In one minute I shall be in
heaven!” Jack bounds aloft, the explosion instantly follows, bruises his
face as he looks over; he is safe above ground; and poor Will?
Descending eagerly, they find poor Will, too, as if by miracle, buried
under rocks which had arched themselves over him, and little injured; he
too is brought up safe; and all ends joyfully, say the newspapers, which
have duly specified the event.
Footnote 36:
‘Life of Sterling,’ p. 278.
‘Such a piece of manly promptitude and salutary human heroism was worth
investigating. It was investigated and found to be accurate to the
letter, with this addition and explanation, that Will Verran, an honest,
ignorant, good man, entirely given up to Methodism, had been perfect in
the “faith of assurance;” certain that _he_ should get to heaven if he
died, certain that Jack Roberts would not, which had been the ground of
his decision in that great moment; for the rest that he much wished to
learn reading and writing, and find some way of life above ground
instead of below. By aid of the Misses Fox and the rest of that family,
a subscription (modest _Anti_-Hudson Testimonial) was raised for this
Methodist hero; he emerged into daylight with fifty pounds in his
pocket; did strenuously try, for certain months, to learn reading and
writing; found he could not learn those arts, or either of them; took
his money and bought cows with it, wedding at the same time some likely
milkmaid.’
Several attempts have recently been made to diminish the dangers of
blasting, by substituting gun-cotton or nitroglycerine for gunpowder; or
by firing charges by means of the electric battery, but hitherto without
much success.
An enormous quantity of gunpowder is consumed for blasting in many of
the larger mines. In 1836, 64,000 pounds were used in the Consolidated
Mines in Cornwall, and 90,100 pounds in the Fowey Consolidated Copper
Mines. The total amount of gunpowder consumed in the Cornish and
Devonian Mines in the year 1837 reached 300 tons, which cost 13,200_l_.
This one item may serve to give some idea of the enormous working
expenses of a large mining concern.
Sometimes the rock is so tenacious as to render boring too tedious and
expensive an operation, and fire becomes necessary for subduing the
solidity of the stone. In this manner the ancient mine of Rammelsberg,
near Goslar, is forced to yield its treasures, and whole forests are
annually consumed in order to loosen the hornstone and indestructible
spar of its metalliferous veins. Every Saturday morning the fire is
applied to the numerous piles of billets and faggots that have been
distributed throughout the course of the week. Those in the upper floors
of exploitation are first burned, in order that the inferior piles may
not obstruct by their vitiated air the combustion of the former. Thus at
four o’clock in the morning the fires are kindled in the upper ranges,
and then from pile to pile the firemen descend towards the lower floor,
which occupies them till three o’clock in the afternoon. The vaults of
Rammelsberg now afford a truly magnificent spectacle. The rising flames,
flickering against the walls of the vaults, and ascending in broad
sheets towards their roof; the dense clouds of smoke rolling towards the
air vents; the crackling of the wood; the loud detonations of the stones
rent by the expansive force of heat from the primitive rock; the lurid
glare of the conflagration; the naked workmen with their mighty
stirring-poles, flitting like dark spirits before the blazing pile; the
intense heat, and the air loaded to suffocation with sulphurous fumes,—
all combine to produce a picture worthy of Dante’s ‘Inferno.’ During the
Sunday the noxious vapours engendered by the conflagration have time to
disperse; and on the Monday morning the workmen detach, with long forks
of iron, the ores that have been loosened by the flames.
The ore being extracted from its bed, it becomes necessary to bring it
to the light of day, an operation which is of course of the greatest
importance, and not seldom requires the aid of complicated machinery,
particularly in coal mines, where large masses have to be conveyed as
economically and speedily as possible to the upper world.
A great improvement has been effected of late years in the facility of
transporting minerals underground, by the introduction of small
tramroads, and the saving of expense thus effected sometimes amounts to
one-half the former cost. Many of our larger mines are provided with
miles of this subterranean railroad, and the advantage is greater,
because for the most part there is a slight descent from the workings to
the bottom of the shaft, to allow of a more complete system of drainage
than could otherwise be attained. But frequently where the galleries are
low, narrow, and crooked, the carriage is still effected by means of
sledges, barrows, or little waggons, which are with difficulty dragged
or pushed along, over planks or uneven and muddy roads; and sometimes
even the interior transport of the ore is executed on the backs of men—a
most disadvantageous practice, which is gradually wearing out.
[Illustration: CONVEYANCE OF MINERALS UNDERGROUND.]
In great mines, such as the coal and salt mines of Great Britain, the
salt mines of Wielitzka, the copper mines of Fahlun, the lead mines of
Alston Moor, horses have long been introduced into the workings, to drag
heavier waggons, or a train of waggons attached to one another. In some
cases these animals are brought to the surface at stated intervals, but
generally when once let down the pit they for ever bid adieu to the
light of day. Strange to say, this _unnatural_ mode of existence, which
would soon undermine the vigour and spirits of man, agrees admirably
well with their health, of which the greatest care is taken, as their
useful services are duly appreciated by their owners. They are
abundantly fed with hay and oats of the best quality; their stalls are
large and well ventilated; and as they labour in a mild and equable
temperature, they remain free from many complaints to which horses are
liable. Their good condition and sleek, shining coats prove that they
have no sentimental longing for green fields or the bright sunshine. In
a few of the largest collieries it has been found advantageous to
establish underground stationary engines, which bring the trains of
waggons, by means of an endless rope, along the galleries to the bottom
of the shaft. In other mines, such as those of Worsley in Lancashire,
subterranean canals are cut, upon which the mineral is transported in
boats.
In the European mines, the ores are usually lifted from the bottom of
the shaft to the surface by steam-power, or horse-gins; but in Spanish
America, men, and even women, are employed for this purpose. The steep
ladders which they ascend with heavy weights upon their backs, consist
merely of the thick trunks of fir-trees, into which, at intervals of
every ten or eleven inches, deep notches have been cut; but these rude
steps are mounted with perfect security and ease by the sure-footed
Indians.
In many European mines, where the workmen are let down or raised by
means of ropes, wire cables, or chains, they sometimes sit on transverse
round pieces of wood or in a kind of chair, consisting of two strong
leather belts, one of which serves as a seat, and the other for
supporting the back. In Wielitzka ten of these chairs are attached to
the cable at distances of seven or eight feet one from another. The
persons seated in the uppermost and lowest chairs direct the descent,
and take great care to prevent the conveyance grazing against the sides
of the shaft, for were it to be hooked fast by a nail or any other
projection, a fall into a deep precipice of several hundred feet would
be the almost inevitable and fatal consequence. The old method of
descending into a colliery was by a corf or strong basket, hooked on by
a chain to the rope that hung down the shaft. Stepping into this, the
men would swing down the dark hollow, gaily and readily, but not always
safely.
Thus, in the year 1835, in a colliery near Liège, seven workmen were
already seated in a corf that was about to descend into the shaft, when
one of their comrades, anxious to seize the opportunity, came hurrying
along, and, in spite of all remonstrances, jumped into it; but the rope,
unable to bear the shock and the increased weight, suddenly snapped, and
all eight were precipitated into the abyss, from which not one of them
came forth alive.
In the Swedish mines small barrels or tuns are generally used as
vehicles of descent, and the workmen are uncommonly dexterous in
preventing their little aërial skiff from striking against the rugged
rock-walls, when it would run the danger of being wrecked. Women, and
even children, who find occupation in the mines, are often seen standing
on the narrow edge of one of these swinging, turning, or oscillating
tuns, with an arm slung round the rope; and such is the power of habit
that they will quietly knit where even a stout-nerved man would be
appalled by the frowning cliffs above or the black abyss below.
In the year 1785 a girl, descending alone into the pit of Fahlun, and
unable to direct the tun, could not prevent it from striking against a
rock. Jerked out of her conveyance by the violence of the shock, she
fell upon a narrow ledge, about one hundred feet from the bottom of the
pit, to which she clung with all the energy of despair. Her position was
indeed terrific, for the least motion would have precipitated her into
the dark grave which seemed to yawn for her reception, and to have given
her but a momentary respite in order to make her feel more bitterly the
pangs of approaching death. Already her strength was giving way, already
a cloud swam before her eyes, when some bold miners, venturing their own
lives in the hazardous undertaking, succeeded in rescuing her from her
awful position, and snatching her as it were from the very jaws of
death.
Another method much adopted, and preferred by the pitmen in our
collieries, was passing down and up in the loop. The pitman inserted one
leg into a loop formed by curving the terminal chain and hooking it back
upon an upper link, and then twined his arm tightly round the rope
above. In this way he descended through any depth, and, as he alleged,
with greater safety than in a bucket, out of which he might be ejected,
while nothing except the breaking of the rope could harm him in loop.
At present the safety-cage is generally used. This is simply a vertical
railway carriage running down and up upon guides, and thereby
introducing into the shaft the improvements of the iron road. Into one
of its square narrow compartments two or three men crouch together,
others get into an upper compartment, and down the cage moves easily and
safely, the men needing only to take care that hands or fingers do not
hang beyond the edge, while four or five minutes of easy motion carry
them down a thousand or fifteen hundred feet below the surface of the
earth.
[Illustration: MINERS DESCENDING SHAFT IN OWEN’S SAFETY CAGE.]
In many mines the workmen climb up and down the shafts on fixed ladders,
with landing-stages for resting; and it may easily be imagined how
severely their strength must be taxed when, after their hard day’s
labour, they have still to ascend step by step a thousand or even two
thousand feet, before they can return to their families. Some of the
Cornish mines require a full hour to rise from the lowest depths to
‘grass,’ and besides this considerable loss of time, diseases of the
lungs and heart, which often terminate fatally, or prematurely make the
miner an invalid, are the consequence of these fatiguing journeys.
‘O thou grumbling clerk in London city,’ exclaims the author of
‘Cornwall and its Mines,’[37] ‘whose daily fatigues only extend to the
ascent into and descent from the trim omnibus that takes you to or from
Peckham or Kennington! Only think for a moment of travelling some four
or five times the height of St. Paul’s daily—before and after work! O
thou querulous socialist, demagogue, or artisan, who canst sit in a
comfortable coffee-house, under a flaming gas-light, immediately before
and after work—or in your own snug parlour, by your own fireside or
murmuring kettle—do but think for a moment of the Cornish miner, and
what he must do before he can reach home or house! I fully believe that
the best cure for discontent and gloom in fortunate workmen would be to
put them upon the treadmill of a deep Cornish mine—for a temporary
treadmill it is.’
Footnote 37:
London: Longmans, 1857.
It had long been deemed of the utmost importance to devise some easier
mode of locomotion; but it was not till 1833 that the circumstance of
two water-wheels having been thrown out of work by the opening of the
deep Georg Adit in the Hartz mines suggested the idea of employing the
pump-rods for aiding the ascent of the miners. The trial was first made
with a portion of one hundred fathoms. This was divided into twenty-two
portions; and on each portion iron steps were fixed, at intervals of
four feet, while hand-holds were fixed at convenient distances. A
reciprocating motion of four feet was given to each rod, and the miners
stepped to and fro from a bracket or ledge on one rod to the parallel
one on the other. As one rod is always descending while the other is
ascending, and _vice versâ_, it is easy to understand how this alternate
stepping on to the little platforms must lead to the ascent or descent
of the miner. At the division between each two of the twenty-two
portions, there is a larger platform on which he may rest awhile; and
nothing is lost by his rest, for the reciprocal motion goes on, and is
ready again for his use when he is ready for it. This first machine
surpassed expectation. Short as the length of ascent was, many invalids
of the district were now able to resume their underground labours, as
the fatigue of mounting or descending was reduced, by the alternate
action of the machinery, to a mere easy lateral motion.
The advantages of this new method in saving both time and power were so
obvious that it was soon imitated in the other deep metalliferous veins
of the Hartz; and at present power-ladders or _man-engines_ of an
improved construction, such as the substitution of a single rod for the
double apparatus above described, are in very general use over the
Continent, whence they have passed in a modified form into Cornwall,
where they are worked by steam. In Fowey Consols Mine the machine
extends to a depth of 1,680 feet. The rod is eight inches square, with
twelve-inch platforms at intervals of twelve feet; and there are
stationary platforms equidistant at the side of the shaft. When a miner
is about to descend the steps on a movable platform, the rod descends
and carries him down twelve feet; he steps upon a fixed platform while
the rod rises again; he then steps upon another movable platform, and
descends another twelve feet, and so on to the bottom. In ascending,
there is simply a reversed process. It is a very interesting sight to
witness the ascent or descent of bodies of miners at certain hours of
the day and night. You see them passing each other in the shafts, in a
kind of zig-zag course, of as great regularity as any zig-zag will
permit. As one miner steps off the rod platform to one fixed platform,
another steps on to it from another fixed platform on the other side.
Thus there are two streams of miners moving in opposite directions along
the same rod at the same time, and this curious spectacle is rendered
doubly pleasing when we consider how much distressing toil has been
alleviated by the employment of the man-engine. Machinery constructed on
the same principle has been latterly adopted in the mines of Anzin, for
transporting the coal step by step to the surface; and it is evident
that when coal mines are worked at greater depths than at present,
ropes, however strong, will no longer be able to sustain even their own
weight, and the whole transport up and down a shaft of perhaps 3,000 or
3,500 feet must be performed by means of similar machines.
[Illustration: TIMBERING OF A MINE.]
Wherever the excavated rock is not hard or solid enough to bear the
superincumbent weight, the galleries of a mine must necessarily be
supported by timbering or walling. Timbering is most used, frequently in
the form represented in the annexed woodcut; and when we consider how
miles upon miles of galleries are thus supported, we can easily imagine
that whole forests must be engulfed in our mines. It has been calculated
that for the total quantity of timber in use for mining purposes in
Cornwall, it would require no less than 140 square miles of forest of
Norwegian pine, averaging a growth of 120 years. The expense thus
incurred is enormous; the cost for timber, duty free, in Cornish and
Devon mines, amounted in 1836 to 94,138_l._ and is probably still larger
at the present time. For timbering, no tree is more esteemed than the
larch or the Norwegian pine, on account of its great durability in the
wet; but whatever wood may be employed, it is necessary to peel off the
bark, experience having shown that unless this is done the wood rots
much more easily, as the fibres of the rind attract a far greater
quantity of moisture than the smooth surface of the splint. Like the
potato and the grape, subterranean timbering is exposed to the attacks
of a fungus, producing what is called dry-rot. The parasite germinates
in the sap which remains in the wood, or at least derives its
nourishment from it. Its vegetation is at first scarcely perceptible;
but soon its white fibres multiply, and form at length small sponges on
the surface. The decomposition of the wood now advances with rapid
strides, and terminates at last in the total destruction of the ligneous
fibres. Not satisfied with depriving the roof of its support, the dry-
rot likewise produces a vitiation of the air, so that wherever timbering
is employed, it is reckoned among the great enemies of the mine and of
the miner. Many remedies have been recommended, among which _kyanizing_,
or saturating the wood with a solution of corrosive sublimate, is one of
the most efficacious, though unfortunately too expensive to be of
universal use. Mushrooms of various kinds likewise flourish upon the
moist surface of the spars, and various insects collect near this
parasitic vegetation.
[Illustration: TRANSVERSE SECTIONS OF WALLED DRAIN GALLERIES.]
The timbering of a mine also affords very convenient lurking-places to
the numerous rats which are met with underground, where they contrive to
live upon the crumbs or offal of the miners’ meals, or upon candle-ends
and remains of wicks. Not seldom the timbering of a gallery, weakened by
rot, gives way under the pressure of the roof, which falls in with a
tremendous crash, and sometimes buries the unfortunate miner under its
ruins. Another disadvantage attending timbering is its liability to
catch fire, and thus, wherever the cost is not found too great, the
chief galleries of a mine are now usually constructed of stone.
Sometimes the two sides of a gallery are lined with vertical walls, and
its roof is supported by an ogival vault or an arch. If the sides of the
mine are solid, a simple arch is sufficient to sustain the roof; and at
other times the whole surface of a gallery is formed of a single
elliptic vault, the great axis of which is vertical, and the bottom is
surmounted by a wooden plank, under which the waters run off.
[Illustration:
DRAINAGE OF A MINE BY ADIT LEVELS.
_a._ Shaft. _b._ Shallow adit. _c._ Deep adit. _d._ Mineral lode.
]
The miner is generally in a state of perpetual warfare with the water,
which threatens to inundate the scene of his labours; and as in a leaky
ship the pumps must be kept continually working to prevent the vessel
from sinking, so here also perpetual efforts are necessary to keep off
the encroachments of this never-tiring foe. When a mine is situated
above the level of a valley or of the neighbouring sea, its drainage may
be effected in a comparatively easy manner by means of sloping
galleries, dry-levels or adits, which in many cases serve also for the
transport of the ore or coal. In some mines these drainage levels are
executed on a truly gigantic scale. Thus the Great Cornish Adit, which
extends through the large mining district of Gwennap, begins in the
valley above Carnon, and receives the branch adits of fifty mines in the
parish of Gwennap, forming excavations and ramifications which have an
aggregate extent of between thirty and forty miles, and which are in
some places 400 feet below the surface of the ground. The longest branch
is from Cardrew mine, and is five and a half miles in length. This great
adit opens into the sea at Restronget Creek, and empties its waters into
Falmouth Harbour.
A similar great drain is Nent Force Level, in the north of England,
which drains the numerous mines in Alston Moor. It consists of a
stupendous aqueduct nine feet broad, and in some places from sixteen to
twenty feet high. For more than three miles it passes under the course
of the river Nent, to Nentsbury engine-shaft, and is navigated
underground by long narrow boats. At the distance of a mile in the
interior, daylight is seen at its mouth like a star, and this star is
continually enlarging upon you until you find yourself in open daylight.
The ramifications of the Great Adit Levels of the mines of Freiberg in
Saxony have a total length of seventy-two miles; but the most stupendous
works of this description are those in the district of Clausthal and
Zellerfeld, in the Hartz, where, as the mining operations have been
carried on deeper and deeper, adits have been successively driven below
adits. Four of these levels date from times previous to the seventeenth
century; but, as they were found insufficient, the famous Georg Stollen
was added to their number in 1777. This gigantic tunnel, which, piercing
the hard rock, required twenty-three years for its completion, is above
five miles long, and passes 900 feet below the church of Clausthal. It
serves the double purpose of a draining gallery and of a navigable
canal. The water is always kept at a height of from fifty to sixty
inches; and the boats, which carry about five tons, are propelled by
means of a chain attached to the vault, along which the boatmen drag or
push them forward. In this economical manner about 20,000 tons of ore
are annually brought to daylight. The boats are made and repaired in a
subterranean wharf, which, though far from being one of the largest, may
probably boast of being the deepest.
Until 1851 the Georg Stollen answered all the purposes for which it was
constructed, but at the end of that period the increased depth and
extension of the mines rendered necessary the addition of a new great
adit level, which has been named the ‘Ernst August Stollen,’ in honour
of the late king of Hanover. In spite of its vast dimensions, this
magnificent work, which is six and three-quarter miles long, about ten
feet high, and six and a half broad, required only thirteen years for
its completion, and may justly be considered as one of the triumphs of
modern engineering. The excavation was begun simultaneously at ten
different points, and such was the admirable precision of the plans that
all the junctions of the different sections of the gallery fitted
accurately into each other.
Below the Ernst August Gallery (437 yards), the form of the country
allows no deeper adit level to be driven; but to provide for the
increasing vertical extension of the workings, a new underground
gallery, without any opening to the surface, and at a depth of 262 yards
below the former, is already in contemplation. The water is to be raised
to the Ernst August Level by a special hydraulic machine placed in a
vertical shaft, which will serve at the same time for raising the ore
and for the passage of the miners. The expense is calculated at about
60,000_l._ but will be amply repaid by the new field of mineral wealth
which it will open. Thus in the Hartz one magnificent work is but the
precursor of another.
When a mine is so situated that drainage galleries cannot be
established, engines must be employed for pumping up the waters. Thus,
in Cornwall, where most of the copper mines open almost at the sea
level, an enormous influx of water can be kept in check only by an
equally enormous steam-power. In the United and Consolidated Mines
between Truro and Redruth, seven steam-pumps, working with the united
strength of 2,000 horses, are kept constantly in motion, and raise above
2,500,000 gallons of water in twenty-four hours.
In 1837 the whole quantity of water pumped out of the earth by sixty
Cornish engines attained the amazing aggregate of close upon thirty-
seven millions of tons; but since then mining has been carried on more
extensively and deeper, and consequently additional steam-power has
become necessary to keep pace with the increasing waters.
‘Even to the eye of an observer who is practised in machinery[38] of
great magnitude, the first sight and the subsequent examination of such
engines is very gratifying. To watch the labour of a giant would be
interesting; but to see the giant not only labouring at ease amidst his
enormous work but at the same time at the command of a child, who should
be able to stop him at any moment—this would be doubly interesting. Such
is the case with the great Cornish engines, for even the largest of them
may be stopped by a child of ten or twelve years of age. Another
peculiar feature, too, of these engines is this, that they work with a
quietness—or absence of clash and clatter—which is in the inverse ratio
of their magnitude. The water makes a great rush in the pumps, but the
engine itself is calm and comparatively noiseless—like a great mountain
reposing in calm greatness while a perpetual spring brawls at its feet.’
Footnote 38:
‘Cornwall, its Mines and Miners.’
In the coal-fields of the North equally gigantic efforts must be made to
keep down the water.
In sinking to the coal at Dalton-le-Dale, eight or nine miles from
Durham, the borers penetrated the vast bed of sand beneath the magnesian
limestone, which appears to contain the chief subterranean water-stores
of the district. In this case their outburst was truly terrific,
amounting, on June 1, 1840, to the enormous quantity of 3,285 gallons
every minute. To oppose this formidable enemy the spirited proprietors
of the mine at once proceeded to erect the necessary steam-power for
pumping off 3,000 or 4,000 gallons a minute; but, the waters still
increasing, it became necessary to meet them with a double and treble
force, so that finally the floods had to be kept down by steam engines
of an aggregate power equivalent to 1,584 horses and setting twenty-
seven sets of pumps in motion.
Sometimes the influx of water into a coal mine is so enormous that no
human contrivance can oppose it, and man is obliged to give up the
conflict in despair. During the progress of the attempted winning of a
pit at Haswell in the county of Durham, the engine power erected pumped
out the water to the amount of 26,700 tons per day; but still the floods
came in, and at last won the victory.
From the same cause many collieries have been closed, of late years, on
the banks of the Tyne, and among these the famous Wallsend Colliery,
which has given its name to the best kinds of coal.
The drowning of a coal mine not seldom occurs from the irruption of
water accumulated in old wastes or ancient workings occupying a higher
level in the vicinity. The growing pressure of such a body of water upon
the beds or barriers below becomes enormous; and then the water, testing
every weak point of the body opposed to its escape, at length
unexpectedly rushes into the space which it finds open before it. All
the works below are completely filled, and the mines are for a time
rendered useless, or, it may be, for ever abandoned. This was the cause,
in 1815, of the celebrated accident at Heaton, near Newcastle-on-Tyne,
in which ninety lives were lost. The water flowed from two adjoining old
collieries which had been abandoned seventy years before. A barrier of
six feet withstood a pressure of thirty fathoms of water. But an
irruption was aided at last by a natural fissure of the rock, and the
catastrophe followed before any adequate protection could be interposed.
About thirty years later a tremendous calamity of the like kind, after
an outlay of 100,000_l._, totally ruined the Baghilt coal mines, in
Wales. The water came from adjoining mines, which had been long
abandoned.
If correct plans and descriptions of all the ancient workings had been
preserved, these accidents, which happen frequently, might easily be
prevented, as an exact knowledge of the localities would enable the
owners to leave sufficiently strong barriers in parts where they are now
often most inadequate. Such is the importance of accurate mining records
that thousands of pounds would be freely given at this moment by many
owners for a knowledge of old works of which no plan exists and which no
memory can now recall. Fortunately, the legislature has now taken steps
to introduce a system of registration such as has already existed long
ago in Prussia, Austria, and Belgium, and which, at least, will answer
the purpose of obtaining greater security for the future.
Sometimes an enormous fall of rain, descending on the neighbouring
country, finds its way into the mines through fissures in the ground or
by breaking through galleries, and causes irreparable mischief;
sometimes even a whole river bursts into the works and ruins them for
ever. Thus, in 1856, the South Tamar Consols, in Devonshire, was flooded
by the giving way of the bed of the Tamar, under which the workings were
carried.
Even the Sea has been known to take fatal vengeance for the undermining
of her domain.
Workington Colliery extended to the distance of 1,500 yards under the
Irish Channel, and the workings, being driven considerably to the rise,
were brought at length within fifteen fathoms of the bottom of the sea.
The pillars of coal which supported the overlying strata were hardly
strong enough to support the roof, but the imprudence of a manager eager
to produce a larger quantity of coal weakened even this insufficient
support by working it partly away. Heavy falls of the roof, accompanied
by discharges of salt water, gave repeated warnings of the impending
catastrophe, which took place on July 30, 1837. So violent was the
irruption that many persons at a distance of hundreds of yards observed
the whirlpool commotion of the sea as it rushed into the gulf beneath.
Some few workmen near the shaft had time to escape, but thirty-six men
and boys and as many horses were destroyed by the waters, which in a few
hours entirely filled the excavations, the extension of which had tasked
the labour of years.
The heroic devotion of a miner has invested with a more than ordinary
interest the inundation of the mine of Beaujonc, near Liège, which took
place on February 28, 1812. One hundred and twenty-seven persons were in
the pit when the waters burst in from some old workings. Thirty-five had
time to make their escape through the shaft; twenty-two were drowned in
their eagerness to reach it; the majority, severed from the upper world
by an impassable gulf, remained behind. Hubert Goffin, the overman,
could have ascended in the tub; but, though the father of six children,
his sense of duty would not allow him to desert his post, and he
resolved to save all his men or to perish with them. As the rising
waters forced the prisoners to seek a higher level, the boys burst out
weeping and the boldest began to despair; but Goffin revived their
courage by reminding them that their friends without would make every
effort to save them. As one day after another passed, the prisoners
suffered all the horrors of hunger, which some of them endeavoured to
appease by devouring the candles they had brought with them. Others went
to the water in the hopes of finding the body of some drowned comrade.
Two of the pitmen quarrelled, and were on the point of coming to blows.
‘Let them fight,’ said the others; ‘if one of them is killed we will eat
him’—a declaration which at once put an end to the dispute. To satisfy
their thirst they had nothing but the foul water of the pit. Some made
vows to all the saints, others complained in their delirium that they
had to wait for their meals. In the midst of these scenes of horror,
Goffin alone retained his courage, and, exhorting, consoling,
encouraging, and reproving on all sides, appeared as the guardian angel
of his despairing comrades.
Meanwhile every effort was being made from without to bring them
succour. Although as soon as the accident took place the pumps were
incessantly at work, the water had risen to a height of 14 metres in the
shaft on the following morning, and as it was still rising there was
reason to fear that the captives, blocked up in a constantly narrowing
space, would soon be suffocated. It was resolved to strike a gallery
from the neighbouring pit of Mamouster to Beaujonc, a distance of 175
metres. Unfortunately, only two men could hew at a time, but such was
the ardour with which the work was prosecuted that on the morning of
March 4 a shout of triumph announced that the longed-for communication
was effected, and that the prisoners were alive. Crawling through the
narrow passage, they were wrapped up in woollen blankets and
strengthened with soup and wine before being hoisted to the surface.
Goffin and his son, a lad of twelve, were the last to leave the pit; as
a brave sea captain, after some great catastrophe, never thinks of his
own safety till he has satisfied himself of that of his men. With the
exception of those who were drowned immediately after the accident took
place, all were saved. The joy of some families, the despair of others,
may be imagined when the final count was made. As a reward for Goffin’s
admirable conduct, he was decorated with the cross of the Legion of
Honour and received a pension of 600 francs. Nine years later he was
killed by an explosion of fire-damp, and thus the hostile elements with
which he had so long waged a successful war triumphed over him at last.
The sudden irruption of an immense body of water into a mine naturally
causes a compression of the air in those galleries which are cut off
from all communication with the shaft. This pressure, which may rise to
three or four atmospheres—or, in other words, may be three or four times
greater than that of the external air—not only produces symptoms of
suffocation and cerebral congestion in the unfortunate miners who are
exposed to it, but, forcing its way through fissures in the roof or
violently rupturing it, sometimes produces the effect of an explosion of
gunpowder, throwing the earth to a distance, and even overturning
houses. One of the most interesting of the accidents of this kind on
record occurred in 1833, in an extensive Scotch colliery, into which the
waters of the river Garnock had broken through a cavity in its bed. As
the stream poured into the mine the opening gradually enlarged, until at
length the whole body of the river plunged into the excavations beneath.
The river was affected by the tides, and this engulfment took place at
low water; but as the tide rose the sea entered with prodigious force,
until the whole workings, extending for many miles, were completely
filled. No sooner, however, had this taken place, than the pressure of
the water in the pits became so great that the confined air, which had
been forced back into the high workings, burst through the surface of
the earth in a thousand places, and many acres of ground were seen to
bubble up like the boiling of a cauldron. Great quantities of sand and
water were also thrown up, like showers of rain, during a period of five
hours, and an extensive tract of land was laid waste.
Besides the danger of being crushed to death by a fall of rock, or
immured in a living tomb by an obstruction of the shaft or an irruption
of water, the miner has another, and often still more formidable, enemy
to encounter in the noxious gases frequently evolved in coal-pits. Thus
in all well-regulated mines the greatest attention is paid to
ventilation, so that no part of the workings may be left without a
proper supply of air. In ordinary cases the natural currents, which set
in different directions through the shafts and galleries, may
sufficiently purify the atmosphere; but in the coal mines which are
peculiarly subject to the evolution of foul gases, artificial or
mechanical means must be resorted to for driving away the hurtful
vapours as quickly as they form. To establish a proper air current, the
usual method is to keep a large fire continually burning at the bottom
of one of the two shafts of the pit, or of one of the two compartments
of the single shaft, and the difference of temperature thus caused
between the column of air of the _upcast_ shaft and the _downcast_
becomes the motive power which impels or drags the air current in
obedience to it.[39] Yet this meets but half the difficulty; for the air
current, which naturally tends to the shortest passage, must be forced
to do its duty in every corner of the pit, and not suffered to escape
through the upcast shaft before it has performed the longest circuit.
For this purpose a great number of mechanical contrivances are adopted,
in the shape of ‘stoppings,’ of brick, or wood, or stone, all so placed
as to divert
Footnote 39:
Mr. Samuel Plimsoll (‘Letters on the Iron Trade,’ _Times_, February
10, 1868) informs us that in the Belgian coal mines the ventilation is
carried on in a more economical and effective manner. Here no furnaces
are lighted at the bottom of the _upcast_, because one-twentieth of
the coal required for a furnace will make steam for an engine to work
fans which act somewhat in the manner of huge paddle-wheels in steam-
ships, and by rapid rotation over the shaft produce a draught which
the incoming air rushes to meet, and thus powerfully promote
ventilation. These fans they can work and control, and are therefore
independent of those atmospheric influences to which some of our
greatest calamities have been ascribed—the damp, heavy atmosphere of
early winter. In the great colliery of Sacrée Madame, near Charleroi,
one of these fans will draw 34,000 cubic metres (about 918,000 cubic
feet) per minute.
and drive the air current into the several galleries of the pit, and to
make it perform every kind of complex movement, from turning back upon
its own right or left to turning over in a somersault upon itself. The
most curious and admirably simple contrivance is that of splitting the
air by means of a wooden erection, which meets and cuts the current in
two, and sends one part on the one hand and another on the other hand.
In fact, what is commonly practised in minutely irrigating a meadow is
also effected in thoroughly airing a mine. We may form some idea of the
underground travels which the air is thus obliged to perform, by being
forced along from split to split, when we hear that at Hetton Colliery
the ventilating current in the total equals no less than 196,000 cubic
feet of air per minute circulating through the mine at a velocity of 18
feet 3 inches per second.
The foul gases or damps evolved in mines are either heavy or light. The
most remarkable of the former is the _choke-damp_, or _black-damp_, the
name given by the miners to carbonic acid gas. From its great specific
gravity (1·527), this gas rests on the floor of the mine and gradually
accumulates, having no tendency to escape beyond a slow mixture which
takes place with atmospheric air; while the light _fire-damp_, or
carburetted hydrogen, which, though not immediately fatal when breathed,
explodes on the slightest contact with flame, tends to rise to the
surface. The quantity of fire-damp which is poured out into the workings
of some mines is very considerable, and constantly varying. Some seams
of coal are much more full of it than others, and in working these,
which are technically called _fiery seams_, it is not uncommon for a jet
of inflammable air to issue out at every hole made for the reception of
the gunpowder before blasting.
In the celebrated Wallsend Colliery, in an attempt made to work the
Bensham Seam (an attempt which ended in a fearful accident), Mr. Buddle
said, in evidence before a committee of the House of Commons:—‘I simply
drilled a hole into the solid coal, stuck a tin pipe into the aperture,
surrounded it with clay, and lighted it. I had immediately a gas light.
The quantity evolved from the coal was such that in every one of those
places I had nothing to do but to apply a candle, and then could set a
thousand pipes on fire. The whole face of the working was a gas-pipe
from every pore of coal.’
The force with which the gas escapes on some occasions from clefts or
joints is so great as to prove much previous compression. These sudden
outbursts are locally termed _blowers_. Their issues and effects are
surprising. In one minute they have been known to foul the air to a
distance of 300 yards, and their noise is described as like that of
rushing waters, or the roar of a blast furnace. They are not merely
dangerous from their inflammable vapours, but also from the pieces of
coal which their tension not seldom forces from the roof, and whose fall
maims or kills the unfortunate workmen beneath.
The fire-damp is very liable to accumulate in old workings, or _goaves_,
which thus, unless completely isolated by stone and mortar, become a
highly dangerous neighbourhood to the other parts of the mine. The
immense quantity of gas evolved from a goaf of about five acres in
Wallsend old pit affords a striking example of the danger of all such
accumulations. A four-inch metallic pipe was conducted from the bottom
of the pit to the surface of the ground and a few feet above it, when, a
light being applied, a hissing streamer of flame flashed forth and
burned night and day. The amount of gas thus drawn off from the mine was
at first computed at about 15,000 hogsheads in twenty-four hours. Long
did the little pipe continue to pour out in streaming flame thousands
upon thousands of hogsheads of escaping fire-damp. The total issue might
have illuminated a little town.
The explosion of inflammable gas is the most fearful enemy the collier
has to encounter. Three or four cubic inches of carburetted hydrogen,
when ignited, produce a detonation like that of a pistol-shot; half a
cubic foot, enclosed in a bottle and set fire to, shivers the bottle
into fragments; hence we may judge how terrific the effects must be when
a blower pours forth its thousands of cubic feet into the galleries of a
mine, and the careless approach of a light lets loose the demons of
destruction. The explosion of a large subterranean powder magazine would
not be more terrific. Often without a moment’s warning the unfortunate
pitman is scorched and shrivelled to a blackened mass, or is literally
shattered to pieces against the rugged sides of the mine.
[Illustration: SAFETY LAMP.]
It may easily be imagined that many efforts have been made, and many
contrivances suggested, to disarm the fire-damp of its terrors; but Sir
Humphry Davy’s safety-lamp was the first invention which successfully
coped with it. The power of the safety-lamp lies in the _non-
communication of explosions through small apertures_, and the discovery
of this natural law, as well as its practical application, is one of the
greatest exploits of Sir Humphry Davy. A cylinder an inch and a half in
diameter and seven inches long, formed of wire gauze, with 784 apertures
to the square inch, surrounds the light of the lamp. When the miner,
armed with this apparatus, enters an atmosphere tainted with fire-damp,
a light blue flame fills the cylinder; but, as if chained by some magic
power, it is unable to transgress its bounds; and as in our Zoological
Gardens we quietly view the beasts of the forest behind their iron
grating, so the miner looks calmly upon his powerless foe.
Unfortunately, the negligence or the obstinate and blind perversity of
the miner too often renders even this splendid invention ineffectual.
The safety-lamp requires to be kept in perfect order, and unless certain
precautions are taken while using it, it loses its protecting power.
Thus, although perfectly secure when at rest, it seems certain that the
rapid motion communicated by the swing of the arm during a hurried
transit through the mine has in many cases produced an explosion.
Blowing out the lamp is likewise attended with danger, as the flame is
then easily driven through the gauze, and, like a tiger escaping from
his den, may spread terror and havoc around; but the chief cause of
accidents consists in the small quantity of light diffused by the
safety-lamp, and the consequent dislike acquired by the miners to its
use.
Though in all well-regulated coal-pits one or several workmen are
exclusively employed in keeping the lamps in the most perfect order,
though they are handed to the miners burning and well closed, and fines
are imposed upon any attempt to remove the gauze, yet the best
regulations cannot possibly exclude the chance of accident resulting
from the almost inconceivable carelessness of men whose daily tasks lead
them into imminent danger. Thus it is a melancholy but unquestionable
fact that the number of accidents from fire-damp since the introduction
of the Davy lamp has been many more in a given number of years than
before that invention. This has, no doubt, partly arisen from the larger
number of persons employed on the whole; but it is to be feared that it
has chiefly happened from dangerous portions of a mine being taken into
work which without the _Davy_ could not have been attempted, and partly
also from the extreme carelessness of the workmen in removing the wire
gauze.[40]
Footnote 40:
Recent improvements have done much to render the Davy lamp a more
perfect instrument of safety. These more or less insure increased
illumination, prevention of bad usage by locking, and more perfect
combustion. By an ingenious contrivance, one of these improved lamps
cannot be opened without previous extinguishment.
Unfortunately, the fatal effects of this rashness are not confined to
the foolhardy miner who thus casts away the shield that preserves him
from danger, but generally extend to many of his innocent comrades. In
the year 1856 an explosion which took place in the Cymmer coal-pit
killed 110 persons, and in the year 1857 170 workmen in the Lundshill
colliery were swept from life to death with the rapidity of lightning.
In the year 1858 the fire-damp levied a contribution of 215 victims in
the coal-pits of England, while in 1859 it was satisfied with 95. But in
1860, as if to make up for this deficiency, it raged with double
violence; for, after having already claimed a tribute of 80 lives, the
dreadful explosion which took place in the Risca Colliery on December 1
destroyed no less than 142 men and boys. The fire-damp explosion which
occurred at the Oaks Colliery in 1866 swept away the unprecedented
number of 361 victims, and in the same year 91 workmen perished from the
same cause at Talk-o’-th’-Hill Colliery.
In these dreadful catastrophes the most terrible agent of destruction is
not always the burning and concussion of the actual blast of fire-damp,
but the choke-damp which succeeds the explosion. For the carbon of the
inflammable gas, uniting with the oxygen of the air, produces that
deadly poison, carbonic acid gas, which, from the disturbed ventilation
of the pit, soon spreads far and wide through the galleries; so that the
poor colliers who are caught in an exploded pit have two chances of
death against them—one from burning, and the other from suffocation. The
effect of death by the one gas or the other is very distinctly seen in
the countenances of the dead. The men killed by the fire-damp are marked
with burns and scorching, and their features are more or less distorted
or disfigured. On the other hand, where men have been suffocated by
choke-damp, their features are placid and simply inanimate. The fragile
and faulty separations (whether doors or stoppings of any kind) having
been broken down, there is an end to a hope of safe retreat even for men
totally unharmed by the flames, for at once the air takes the shortest
course between the entrance and exit, and leaves the shattered parts
unventilated. Whatever after-damp is then and there generated exerts its
effects in full, and those who cannot rush to the shaft are suffocated.
In the explosion at Risca it was declared by the surgeon to the pit that
of those who were killed no less than seventy persons died from the
effects of after-damp who had not been near the fire. In the great
Haswell explosion, several years since, seventy-one deaths out of
ninety-five were occasioned by choke-damp; and at the explosion in the
Middle Dyffryn Pit in 1852 no less than seven-eighths of the deaths
proceeded from this cause. Persons of great experience attribute at
least seventy per cent. of the deaths in fiery mines to after-damp,
while some advance them even to ninety per cent.
After relating so many frightful disasters, too frequently caused by
imprudence and rashness, it is a more pleasing task to mention a few
instances of warnings taken in time. At Walker Colliery on the Tyne, in
the year 1846, a huge mass of coal weighing about eleven tons was forced
from its bed, and a great discharge of gas succeeded. Two men who were
furnished with Davy lamps were working where this discharge took place;
one of them had his lamp covered with the falling coal, and the other
had his extinguished. They groped their way to warn the other miners,
and then all, extinguishing their lamps as they went, safely escaped to
the bottom of the shaft, and were drawn up.
A few months after a second discharge from another part of the same
colliery took place. A bore-hole having been made, a violent noise like
the blowing off of steam was heard, and a heavy discharge of gas filled
the air courses for a distance of 641 yards and over an area of 86,306
cubic feet. At 400 yards from the point of efflux a mining officer met
the foul air, felt it blowing against him, saw the safety-lamp in his
hand enlarge its flame, and drew down the wick. Still the gas continued
to burn in his lamp for ten minutes, making the wires red hot, and then
the light went out—a hint not lost on the owner, who quickly followed
its example. At a distance of 641 yards from the efflux of the gas he
met four men and boys whose lamps were rapidly reddening. At once they
had the self-possession to immerse them in water, and thus escaped all
danger of explosion.
The disastrous effects of the fire-damp are not confined to the loss of
human life; they are also extremely injurious to the workings, tearing
up galleries, shattering machinery, or even setting fire to the mine—an
accident which may also be caused by spontaneous combustion[41] or by
the negligence of the workmen. These fires are often subdued by
isolating the burning coal seam, by means of dams or clay walls, or by
filling the mine with water; but not seldom they last for years, and
assume dimensions which mock all human efforts to extinguish them.
Footnote 41:
Experience has proved that when sulphuret of iron undergoes a chemical
change into vitriol it disengages a sufficient quantity of heat to set
fire to the coal with which it is often found mixed.
At Brûlé, near St. Etienne, a coal mine has been on fire for ages. The
soil on the surface is barren and calcined, and the dense sulphurous
fumes, escaping from innumerable crevices, give the country a complete
volcanic aspect.
In the carboniferous basins of Staffordshire and of Saarbrück and
Silesia there are likewise coal mines which have been on fire for a long
period. At Zwickau in Saxony the first accounts of one of these
subterranean conflagrations date as far back as the fifteenth century,
and the fire still burns on. The hot vapours which rise from the surface
have since 1837 been put to an ingenious use. Conducted through pipes
into conservatories, they ripen the choicest fruits of the south, and
produce a tropical climate under a northern sky.
In a Staffordshire colliery which had been on fire for many years, and
which was called by the inhabitants Burning Hill, it was noticed that
the snow melted on reaching the ground, and that the grass in the
meadows was always green. Some speculators conceived the idea of
establishing a school of horticulture on the spot, and imported colonial
plants at a heavy expense. These flourished for a time, but one day the
subterranean fire went out, and as the heat it had imparted to the soil
gradually diminished and departed, the exotic vegetation likewise
drooped and died.
CHAPTER XXIV.
GOLD.
The Golden Fleece—Golden Statues in ancient Temples—A Free-thinking
Soldier—Treasures of ancient Monarchs—First Gold Coins—Ophir—Spanish
Gold Mines—Bohemian Gold Mines—Discovery of America—Siberian Gold
Mines—California—Marshall—Rush to the Placers—Discovery of Gold in
Australia—The Chinaman’s Hole—New Eldorados—Alluvial Gold Deposits in
California and Australia—Washing—Quartz-crushing.
Gold is probably the metal which has been longest known to man. For as
it is found only in the metallic state, its weight and brilliancy most
naturally have attracted attention or awakened greed at a very early
age. Thus we read in the Bible that one of the rivers flowing from
Paradise ‘compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, and
the gold of that land is good.’ Gold is also mentioned among the riches
of Abraham, and when the patriarch’s servant met Rebekah at the fountain
of Nahor, he presented the damsel with a ‘golden earring of half a
shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight of
gold,’ undoubtedly the first trinkets on record.
The mythical history of Greece has likewise been thought to point to a
very ancient knowledge of gold, and the story of the search for the
‘Golden Fleece’ has by some been explained as an expedition undertaken
in quest of the metal; for the use of sheepskins or woollen coverings,
to collect and retain the minutest particles of gold during the
operation of washing, is common in many auriferous countries. From the
great value which the ancient nations attached to its possession, gold
was largely used for the decoration of their temples, and many of their
idols were made of gold. Such, among others, was the image of Belus,
seated on a golden throne in the great temple of Babylon; that of Apollo
at Delphi, and the magnificent statue of the Olympian Zeus, composed, by
the hand of Phidias, of ivory and gold, and still less remarkable for
its costly materials than for the consummate beauty of its workmanship.
Pliny relates that a massive golden statue of the goddess Anaitis was
taken by Marc Antony in his war against the Parthians. The Emperor
Augustus, dining one day at Bononia with an old veteran who had taken
part in the campaign, asked him whether it was true that the
sacrilegious soldier who had first laid hands on the goddess had been
suddenly deprived of the use of his eyes and limbs, and had thus
miserably perished. ‘I myself am the man,’ answered the smiling host;
‘you are dining from off her thigh, and to her am I indebted for all the
plate in my possession.’
The wealth of monarchs was estimated less by the extent of their domains
than by the gold which they possessed, and as each successive conqueror
added to the spoils of vanquished nations, the treasures accumulated by
single despots grew to an almost fabulous amount. Every schoolboy knows
that the vast treasures of Crœsus fell into the hands of Cyrus, who,
according to the rather questionable authority of Pliny, acquired in
Asia Minor no less than 24,000 pounds weight of gold, without reckoning
the vases and the wrought metal. To this treasure his son Cambyses added
the gold of Egypt, and Darius Hystaspis the tribute of the frontier
nations of India. Thus the gold of almost the whole known world was
accumulated in one single hoard, which, after the taking of Persepolis,
fell into the hands of Alexander the Great. Plutarch relates that 10,000
teams of mules and 500 camels were needed for the transport of this
wealth to Susa, where Alexander was cheated out of a great part of it by
his treasurer. Rome, the subsequent mistress of the world, naturally
absorbed the greater part of the riches of Tyre and Carthage, of Asia
and Egypt. Sixty-six years after the third Punic war the public treasury
contained 1,620,831 pounds weight of gold, and still greater wealth was
accumulated under the Cæsars. As the empire declined, the hoards amassed
in the times of its increasing power were once more dispersed. A
considerable part, however, found its way to Constantinople, and after
many a loss, caused by the repeated disasters of a thousand years, the
remnant fell at length into the hands of the victorious Turks.
The time when gold was first coined is unknown. The oldest specimen in
the Imperial Cabinet at Vienna is from Cyzicus, a town of Mysia, and
bears the date of the seventh century before Christ; the next coin in
point of antiquity is Persian, and was probably struck under the reign
of Cyrus. According to Pliny, gold was first coined by the Romans in the
year 547 after the foundation of the city. During the empire of the
Chalifes Abuschafar-al-Monsur established a mint at Bagdad, in which
silver coins (dirhems) and gold coins (dinars)[42] were struck. The
Visigoths in Spain likewise had golden coins; but in the other western
mediæval States they first appear, after a long interval, under Lewis
the Pious, son of Charlemagne, in Venice, in 1290; and in Bohemia, under
John of Luxembourg. The gold of the Carolingian monarch probably
proceeded from the spoils of the old west Roman Empire; that of the
Venetians (zecchins or ducats) was, no doubt, obtained, like that of the
Phœnicians of old, by trading with the gold countries of Africa and of
the distant East. The Florentines, the rivals of Venice, likewise
obtained wealth by trade, and struck gold coins, which, from their being
stamped with a flower, the arms of Florence, were called fiorini, or
florins.
Footnote 42:
These names were borrowed from the Greek Drachma and the Latin
Denarius.
The coins of the kings of Bohemia were made from indigenous gold. It is
hardly necessary to remark that since those times the use of gold coins
has been constantly increasing with the progress of trade and
civilisation; but even now, in many African and Asiatic countries which
possess large quantities of gold, no coins are struck, but the metal is
weighed, and thus serves as a medium of exchange, in the same manner as
in the times of Abraham or Jacob.
The countries from which the ancients obtained their chief supply of
gold were the Indian Highlands, Colchis, and Africa. The seat of Ophir,
which furnished this precious metal to the Phœnician and Jewish traders,
is unknown. While some authorities place it on the east coast of Africa,
others fix its situation somewhere on the west coast of the Indian
peninsula; and Humboldt is even of opinion that the name had only a
general signification, and that a voyage to Ophir meant no more than a
commercial expedition to any of the coasts or isles of the Indian Ocean,
just as at present we speak of a voyage to the Levant or the West
Indies. The golden sands over which the Pactolus, a small river of
Lydia, rolled, gave rise, it has been said, to the wealth of Crœsus.
The richest auriferous land in Europe was the Iberian peninsula, which
for centuries yielded a golden harvest, first to the Carthaginians, then
to the Romans, and at a still later period to the Visigoths and the
Moors. During the middle ages Bohemia was renowned for its gold, and the
accounts that have reached us of the times when her auriferous deposits
first began to be extensively worked remind us of the scenes which our
own age has witnessed in California or Australia. Bloody conflicts
frequently arose between gold-diggers and peasants because the former
devastated the fields and meadows and left them permanently sterile.
Even now in many parts of the country long ranges of sand hillocks and
rubbish mounds remain as memorials of the mediæval gold-diggers.
Frequent famines arose in the land, as many of the inhabitants gave up
agriculture for mining.
A new epoch in the history of gold began with the discovery of America.
We all know by what prodigies of valour the Spaniards obtained
possession of the treasures of Montezuma and of the Peruvian Incas, and
how frequently acts of a fiendish cruelty, inspired by the love of gold,
and aggravated by a bloodthirsty fanaticism, tarnished the lustre of
their arms.
More recently, about the year 1836, rich deposits of auriferous sand
were discovered in Siberia, and soon raised the frozen regions of the
Jenisei to the rank of the first gold-producing country in the
world.[43] But the fame of the Russian mines was soon eclipsed by the
eventful discovery of the Californian placers.
Footnote 43:
‘The Polar World,’ p. 231.
It was in January 1848, a short time after the incorporation of the
province with the United States, that one James Marshall, who had
contracted to build a saw-mill on the land of Captain Sutter, about
sixty miles east of Sacramento, discovered the glittering particles in
the mud of the brook on which he was at work. Trembling with excitement,
he hurried to his employer, and told his story. Captain Sutter at first
thought it was a fiction, or the wild dream of a maniac; but his doubts
were soon at an end when Marshall laid on the table before him a few
ounces of the shining dust. The two agreed to keep the matter secret,
and quietly to share the golden harvest between them. But, as they
afterwards searched more narrowly, their eager gestures and looks
happened to be closely watched by a Mormon labourer employed about the
neighbourhood. He followed their movements, and the secret was speedily
divulged.
It appears that Marshall did not escape the ordinary lot of discoverers,
for a few years later he was wandering, poor and homeless, over the land
which was first indebted to him for its enormous development.
The intelligence of the Californian gold treasures soon spread over the
world, and a wonderful flood of immigration began into the newly-
proclaimed Eldorado. An innumerable crowd of adventurers from every part
of the New World, from the Sandwich Islands, from Europe, from
Australia, came pouring in over the Rocky Mountains, through Mexico,
round Cape Horn, or across the Pacific, all eager to seize fortune in a
bound or to perish in the attempt. Every week dispatched its thousands
to the diggings, and saw its hundreds of successful adventurers return
to dissipate their earnings in the gambling saloons of the infant
metropolis. In less than ten years California numbered more than half a
million of inhabitants, and San Francisco, from an obscure hamlet, had
risen to the rank of one of the great commercial emporiums of the world.
Science had little to do with the discovery of gold in California; but
the case was different in Australia. As early as 1844 Sir Roderick
Murchison directed attention to the remarkable resemblance between the
Australian cordillera and the auriferous Uralian chain. Two years later,
his surmises about the hidden treasures of that distant colony were
confirmed by some samples of auriferous quartz sent to him from
Australia. Relying upon this fact, he advised some Cornish emigrants to
choose Australia for their new home, and to seek for gold among the
_débris_ of the primitive rocks. His opinion having become known at
Sydney, through the newspapers, researches were made, which proved so
far successful that in 1848 gold was found in several places in South
Australia.
The first important discovery was, however, not made before the year
1851, when Mr. Hargraves made known to Government that rich gold
deposits were situated to the north-west of Bathurst, on the Summerhill
and Lewis rivulets, which flow into the Macquarie. When the geological
Government inspector arrived at Summerhill Creek, on May 19, he found
that about four hundred persons had already assembled there, who,
without any other mining apparatus than a shovel and a simple tin pot,
gained, on an average, from one to two ounces of gold daily.
Soon after, still richer deposits were found near the Turon and the
Meroo, two other branches of the Macquarie. Here a native shepherd, in
the service of Dr. Kerr, found three quartz blocks, of which the largest
contained sixty pounds weight of pure gold. It may easily be supposed
that the whole neighbourhood became at once the scene of active
researches, which at first proved fruitless, until at length a fourth
quartz block was discovered, and publicly sold for a thousand pounds.
Other discoveries were made within the bounds of New South Wales; but
even the richest of them were soon to be obscured by the treasures of
the neighbouring colony.
As late as 1836 Port Philip had remained an unknown land, for it was not
until then that its first settlers, attracted by the richness of the
pastures, arrived from Tasmania. Soon a small town arose on the Yarra-
Yarra, and, though badly chosen as a port, Melbourne soon rose to
importance. In 1850 the district was made an independent colony, which
received the name of Victoria. Here the traders and sheep-drivers now
mourned over the news from Sydney. The best workmen had already left for
the gold-fields, and if the exodus went on increasing, nothing remained
for them but to follow the example, or quietly to await the ruin of
their hopes—a patience which agrees but little with the Anglo-Saxon
character.
To prevent the impending evil, a reward of 200 guineas was immediately
set upon the discovery of a gold-field within 120 miles from Melbourne,
and soon after the world was astonished by the intelligence of the
fabulous riches of Ballarat, at the source of the River Lea. The first
consequence of this discovery was that the towns of Geelong and
Melbourne, both not above sixty miles from Ballarat, were immediately
deserted by their inhabitants, and that, within a few weeks, more than
3,000 gold-diggers had collected on the spot, who were gaining, on an
average, their ten or twenty pounds a day. But here also there was no
definite resting-place, for new prospects of dazzling wealth constantly
allured the crowd to new and still more distant fields of enterprise.
Twenty thousand people, meeting with fair success, would migrate in a
day, abandon their claims, and rush upon the new tract. The passions of
human nature were roused by one of the strongest of its instincts; and
madness and suicide, arising from excess of joy and wild despair, were
far from uncommon occurrences. The whole order of society was inverted,
and the labourer became of more importance than the employer of labour.
The scum of the adjoining colonies boiled over and deluged the land with
vice and crime. Bush-ranging extended over every portion of the country,
and even the streets of Melbourne became the scenes of robbery and
murder. The diggers were of all nations: Germans, French, Italians,
American-Irish, Californians, and Chinese—these last being the best
conducted of this motley population, who as early as 1860 numbered
50,000. To this strange people one of the most remarkable of the
Australian gold discoveries is due. The immigration-tax, which had been
vainly devised to check their influx (for they are objects of the
greatest antipathy to the white gold-diggers), drove them to a
surreptitious mode of entering the colony; and, landing at Gurchen Bay
in South Australia, and taking a course thence over the frontier across
the Grampian ranges, they came upon a deposit of marvellous richness, in
the neighbourhood of Mount Ararat. In one of their first encampments,
while picking up the roots of grass and prying for gold, they found the
celebrated ‘Chinaman’s Hole,’ which yielded 3,000 ounces in a few hours.
This led to the greatest rush which had ever been known in the gold-
fields, for 60,000 people congregated there in a few weeks, and before a
month had elapsed an immense town was systematically laid out. Shops,
taverns and hotels, theatres and billiard-rooms, sprang up in the
desert, like the mystic trees of Indian jugglers, and were quickly
followed by a daily mail and a daily newspaper. Thus, within the space
of two months, the magical power of gold converted a wild mountain gorge
into a teeming city, where frontages were nearly as valuable as in the
heart of London.
[Illustration: GOLD-WASHING IN AUSTRALIA.]
The great social disorganisation which distinguished the first few years
of the Australian gold discoveries has long since passed away, together
with much of the excitement natural to a transition state. Order now
universally prevails, and the occupations of life are pursued with as
much regularity as in the oldest States. The growth of the colony, which
scarcely thirty years since was a mere unknown waste, is not the least
marvellous of the many marvels that have been worked by gold. In the
year 1851 the population of the province was 77,345 persons, of whom
28,143 were located in Melbourne. In 1860, it had already increased to
462,000, and probably the next few years will find it augmented to a
million, while Melbourne already rivals our larger cities in size and
wealth.
The wonderful discoveries in California and Australia having made gold
the all-absorbing topic of the day, it is not surprising that new
Eldorados were now eagerly sought for wherever the geological formation
of a country held out the hope of similar treasures.
Fresh and highly-productive gold-fields have, within the last few years,
been opened in British Columbia, and, still further to the north, in the
Arctic wilds of the infant colony of Stikeen. Numerous diggers are at
work in New Zealand, and in the deserts to the north of the Cape. A
system of auriferous veins has been discovered in North Wales; the
county of Sutherland, the Ultima Thule of our isle, claims to be ranked
among the gold-producing regions; and numerous adventurers are on their
way to the frozen deserts of Lapland, where the glittering metal is said
to abound in the basin of the Ivalo.
At no former period of the world’s history has gold been so eagerly
sought for over such extensive areas in all parts of the globe; never
have larger quantities of the precious metal been added to the
accumulated hoards of ages. No doubt this vast influx of wealth has in
many cases been productive of evil consequences; but its beneficial
influence upon the progress and happiness of mankind far outweighs the
injury it may too frequently have caused by rousing the worst passions
of our nature. An astonishing impetus has already been given to commerce
and industry; competence and wealth have been diffused over many lands;
deserts have been transformed into growing empires; and a vast
continent, long despised as the convict’s prison, has been raised in the
social scale to a height almost commensurate with its geographical
importance.
The mineral formations in which gold originally occurs are the
crystalline primitive rocks, the compact transition rocks, and the
trachytic and trap rocks, which, by their disintegration have, in the
course of ages, enriched large alluvial tracts with particles of the
precious metal. Torrents and rivers washed them down from the heights,
along with the worthless rubbish of their original matrix, and finally
deposited them in the gulleys and ravines of the lower grounds. Hence
the alluvial territories have always been the chief sources of
auriferous wealth, and this circumstance explains how countries which at
one time abounded in gold have long since ceased to be of importance.
For the comparative ease with which the metal could generally be
obtained by digging and washing, and the greed which stimulated the
researches of thousands, could not fail to exhaust even the richest
placers. No one now dreams of searching for gold in the sands of the
Pactolus or of the Golden Tagus; no modern Argonaut sails to Colchis in
quest of the golden fleece; the fields of Bohemia are no longer
ransacked by gold-seekers; and a like fate probably awaits many of our
modern Eldorados.
A marked difference between the gold deposits of Australia and
California deserves to be noticed. The gold of California is found in
the midst of, or contiguous to, the existing great mountain ranges,
amidst regions of peaked, jagged, irregular crests, and upheaved and
distorted strata, the undoubted effects of internal convulsions. It has
not, however, selected as its resting-place the smooth levels and
hanging slopes of the contiguous hills. The metal, ground finer and
finer as it is carried forward by the torrents that year after year tear
up the river-beds, finally settles in the form of fine flakes or dust
along the banks and at the bottoms of the great streams of the country.
Hence the Californian diggers generally find the drifts of the precious
metal in the strata immediately under the surface, either associated
with the subsoil, or in the holes or ‘pockets’ of water-worn rocks.
In Victoria the most prolific gold-fields are in regions where the old
formations are pierced by igneous rocks which have flowed from extinct
volcanoes; and some of the richest alluvial deposits have been found on
the pipe-clay bottom of flat, wide-spread plains, or settled in great
subterranean gutters, under broad, elongated slopes, which the miner can
reach only by sinking his shaft through stratum after stratum, from
fifty to three hundred feet down, before he reaches the buried treasure.
The inference necessarily is that much of the gold-drift of Australia is
of an earlier origin than the deposits of California, which are the
products of the existing mountain ranges, and therefore will be
exhausted in a comparatively brief period.
In Victoria, not seldom three distinct auriferous deposits, the result
of successive upheavals and depressions, occur in the same locality; and
the miner finds, in the course of his working, a first, second, and
third bottom, the last being always on the solid and unmoved palæozoic
rock, from which all the gold has been derived.
Rich as the auriferous drifts of the deep alluvial deposits are
frequently found to be, they must be within definite limits, having been
deposited by currents and the continuous action of waves not far from
the localities where the gold was originally formed. But the alluvial
gold of Victoria and New South Wales is not confined to drifts and
gutters. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of square miles, where
the clay, earth, and sand are impregnated with gold in sufficient
quantities to pay well for washing. Besides these deposits of
incalculable wealth, there are vast reserves of gold locked up in the
great mountain ranges both of Victoria and New South Wales, the hidden
wealth of which will eventually be brought to light by systematic
mining.
As even the richest auriferous drift would be comparatively worthless
without the assistance of water, the diversion of a running stream
through a ‘placer’ is often one of the most laborious undertakings of
the gold-digger.
Pliny speaks of ‘the bringing of the rivers from the mountains, in many
instances for a hundred miles, for the purpose of washing the _débris_,’
and this method of hydraulic mining is now carried on in California on a
stupendous scale. Thus, north of Mariposa County, the thick deposits,
often semi-indurated, are now washed down by vast streams of water
(thrown by the pressure of a column of water of 150 feet), that do the
work of running off the earth and gravel and gathering the gold in an
incredibly short time.
The ores of auriferous quartz are treated in a different way from the
alluvial _débris_. After having been crushed and pulverised by powerful
machinery, the finely powdered quartz is then treated with mercury, a
method well known to the ancients. This metal dissolves out the gold,
producing an amalgam, which, by straining and distillation, yields the
gold.
CHAPTER XXV.
SILVER.
Its ancient Discovery—Its uses among the luxurious Romans—The Mines of
Laurium—Silver Mines of Bohemia, Saxony, and Hungary—Colossal Nuggets—
Silver Ores—Silver Production of Europe—Mexican Silver Mines—The Veta
Madre of Guanaxuato—The Conde de la Valenciana—Zacatecas and Catorce—
Adventures of a Steam-engine—La Bolsa de Dios Padre—The Conde de la
Regla—Ill-fated English Companies—Indian Carriers—The Dressing of
Silver Ores—Amalgamating Process—Enormous Production of Mexican Mines—
Potosi—Cerro de Pasco—Gualgayoc—The Mine of Salcedo—Hostility of the
Indians—The Monk’s Rosary—Chilian Mines—The Comstock Lode.
Like that of gold, the first discovery of silver precedes the historic
times, and must no doubt be sought for in the remotest antiquity; for as
it is not seldom found in a native state, its brilliancy could not fail
to attract attention at a very early age. Veins of silver ore, moreover,
not seldom crop out on the surface, a circumstance which likewise
greatly facilitated the accidental discovery of the metal. Thus Diodorus
relates that streams of melted silver flowed out of the calcined soil
where some shepherds had set fire to a forest in the Pyrenees. The
cunning Phœnician merchants, who were trading in the neighbourhood,
bought the metal for a trifle from the natives, who, ignorant of its
value, gladly exchanged it for some worthless trinkets.
Our earliest annals show us silver in common use among the more polished
nations of antiquity, both for ornamental purposes and as a means of
exchange. When we read in the Bible that Abraham weighed to Ephron the
Hittite ‘four hundred shekels of silver, _current money_ with the
merchant’ for the purchase of the field of Machpelah, where Sarah was
buried, we cannot possibly doubt that, long before the patriarch’s time,
great quantities of silver must have circulated among the traders of the
East, and that even then it belonged to the discoveries of ancient days.
Homer describes the shields and helmets of his heroes as inlaid with
silver, and in Northern Asia silver ornaments have been found in the
tumuli of the Tschudi, a mysterious people who have left no vestiges of
their existence save their tombs.
The Babylonian, Assyrian, and Persian monarchs imposed large tributes of
silver on the conquered nations of Asia, and at a later period the
treasures thus amassed by a long line of despots came into the
possession of Alexander the Great, and finally of the Romans, who
absorbed all the riches of Carthage and the East. In the reign of
Augustus, the tables of the wealthy senators groaned under silver dishes
weighing from one hundred to five hundred pounds; silver statues of
their ancestors decorated their apartments, and they not seldom
performed their luxurious ablutions in baths of silver. Mirrors of this
metal were in frequent use among a people to whom the art of applying a
lustrous amalgam to the back of a plate of glass was unknown.
The skill of the artist not seldom added an inestimable value to the
intrinsic worth of an embossed or chiselled silver vase, and Pliny
mentions several works of this kind which enjoyed a world-wide
celebrity.
The most ancient silver mines of which we have any historical account
were situated in the mountainous parts of Chaldæa and in Spain. With the
development of the Grecian States, Eastern Europe also began to furnish
its contingent. Silver mines were discovered and worked in the Pangæan
Mountains, between Macedonia and Thrace, in the islands of Siphnos and
Cyprus. Athens derived a considerable part of its revenue from the mines
of Laurium in Attica. At first the profits derived from this source were
distributed among the citizens, until Themistocles persuaded the general
assembly of the people to devote them to the construction of ships of
war. The battle of Salamis was won by the galleys built with the money
thus obtained, so that the silver mines of Laurium have been the means
of adding some of its brightest pages to the history of Ancient Greece.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the exhausted or neglected mines of
the East, and of the Iberian peninsula, ceased to be the sources from
which silver flowed over the world.
The riches amassed during ages of civilisation were now scattered among
barbarous hordes, or buried in the ruins of cities destroyed by fire;
and as no new influx replaced the losses caused by accident or the slow
wear of time, the precious metals gradually became more rare and of
increasing value, until Germany began to open a new era in mining
history, and for a time to take the lead among the silver-producing
countries of the globe. The first discovery of this metal in Bohemia
dates back as far as the seventh century; and in the tenth the
Rammelsberg in the Hartz Mountains began to yield its still unexhausted
treasures. In the twelfth century the silver mines of Saxony and Hungary
were discovered, and at a much later period those of Kongsberg in
Norway.
Many of these deposits are remarkable for the richness of their ores,
and for the large masses of native or crystallised silver which they
have sometimes yielded. From the mine of Himmelsfürst, near Freiberg in
Saxony, lumps or nuggets weighing above a hundred pounds have more than
once been extracted. The largest single block ever known was discovered
at Schneeberg, in the Saxon Erzgebirge, in the year 1477. It consisted
of silver-glance and native silver, and measured no less than seven
yards in length and three and a half in width. On hearing of this
magnificent prize, Duke Albrecht of Saxony visited the mine, where he
eat his dinner from the block. Agricola Bermannus relates that, during
the repast, he exclaimed, ‘Frederick is a wealthy and powerful emperor,
but he has never dined from a table such as this.’ The subsequent
smelting of this wonderful mass produced 40,000 pounds of solid silver.
Large nuggets of solid silver have likewise been found at Kongsberg. A
block weighing 560 pounds, which was discovered in 1666, is still
preserved as a curiosity in the Copenhagen Museum; and as a convincing
proof that the ancient riches of these northern mines are not yet
exhausted, a still larger block, weighing 750 pounds, was disinterred as
late as the year 1834.
Though native silver is found in many localities, our chief supply of
the precious metal is derived from the ores in which it is found
combined with other substances, such as silver-glance (sulphuret of
silver); antimonial silver; red-silver (sulphuret of silver and
antimony); horn silver (chloride of silver), &c. A considerable quantity
is likewise obtained as an accessory product from the lead mines, by
separating it from the galena or lead-glance, which usually contains a
small percentage of silver.
At present the mines of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which in the year
1851 produced 122,950 marks of silver, are the richest in Europe. In
Bohemia the mines of Birkenberg, near Przibram, yield on an average
40,000 marks a year, considerably more than the celebrated mine of
Schemnitz in Hungary, which in the year 1854 produced 26,064 marks.
Prussia obtains from her mines in the Hartz Mountains in Nassau and the
county of Mansfeld about 100,000 marks; and the kingdom of Saxony,
which, in proportion to its small extent, holds the first rank among the
silver-producing countries of Europe, produces annually about 53,000
marks. In Great Britain, silver is accessorily obtained from the lead
mines, to an amount of about 80,000 marks per annum. France produces
26,800 marks, Sweden and Norway 6,000 marks, and Italy 4,500; while
Spain, which in ancient times enriched Tyre and Carthage with the rich
produce of her silver mines, yields at present but an insignificant
quantity.
On adding together the various sums above mentioned, we find that,
exclusively of the Russian Empire, which obtains the greater part of its
silver (about 65,000 marks a year) from the Altai Mountains in Siberia,
the whole annual production of Europe may be estimated at about 400,000
marks.
This quantity, large as it is, sinks into comparative insignificance
when compared with the enormous masses of silver with which, ever since
their discovery and conquest by Cortez and Pizarro, Mexico and Peru have
enriched the world.
The Mexican silver mines, which deserve a particular notice from the
immensity of their produce and the interesting details with which their
history abounds, are mostly situated on the back or on the western
slopes of the Cordillera of Anahuac at elevations which sometimes
approach the line of perpetual snow. But little is known of their first
history. The lodes of Tasco and Pachuca appear to have been worked soon
after the conquest, and in 1548, twenty-eight years after the death of
Montezuma, the mines of Zacatecas were opened, though situated above 400
miles from the capital. Muleteers travelling from Mexico to Zacatecas
are said to have discovered the silver mines of Guanaxuato.
Many of my readers will no doubt be surprised to hear that the Mexican
silver ores are generally poor. On an average they contain only from
three to four ounces of silver per cwt., much less than the ores of
Annaberg, Marienberg, and other districts of Saxony. Their comparative
poverty is, however, amply redeemed by their abundance and the facility
with which they are worked.
After these preliminary remarks I will now briefly describe the chief
Mexican silver mines. The Sierra de Santa Rosa, a group of porphyritic
hills, rises in the centre of the province of Guanaxuato. Partly arid
and partly covered with the evergreen oak, it attains an absolute height
of from 8,000 to 9,000 feet; but, as the neighbouring plain is nearly
6,000 feet above the sea, it hardly attracts the notice of the traveller
accustomed to the vast proportions of the Andes.
The southern slope of this porphyritic range is crossed by the famous
Veta Madre of Guanaxuato, the richest silver lode as yet discovered in
Mexico. This enormous vein, which traverses the country for upwards of
eight miles, with an average width of from 120 to 135 feet, is, however,
not productive throughout its whole extent, but the ore occurs in
branches and bunches, leaving intermediate spaces of dead and
unproductive ground. Among the numerous mines that have been opened
along its course, the Valenciana exhibited, at the beginning of the
present century, the almost unparalleled example of a mine which, during
a period of more than forty years, never yielded its proprietors less
than an annual income of from 80,000_l._ to 120,000_l._ The part of the
Veta in which it is situated had remained unexplored till 1760, when
Obregon, a young Spaniard, began to work it, with the assistance of some
friends who advanced him the necessary capital. In the year 1766 the
diggings had reached a depth of 240 feet, and the expenses were far
greater than the proceeds. But Obregon clung with the passionate ardour
of a gambler to the hazardous enterprise on which he had staked all his
hopes of fortune. In 1767 he entered into partnership with a small
shopkeeper, Otero, who was destined soon to share the fabulous riches
that were about to reward his perseverance. Already in the following
year the produce of the mine considerably increased, and in 1771 it
began to yield enormous masses of sulphuret of silver. From that time
till 1804, when Humboldt left Mexico, it never produced less than
560,000_l._ worth of silver annually, and the net profits of the
partners amounted in some years to 240,000_l._
Under the title of Conde de la Valenciana, Obregon maintained the simple
habits and the urbanity of character which had distinguished him in
poverty. When he began to work his mine, the goats were feeding on the
spot where ten years later a thriving town of 8,000 souls had started
into existence. Guanaxuato, the capital of the State of the same name,
is indebted to the neighbourhood of the richest silver mines in the
world for its origin and prosperity. Inclosed in a narrow valley, its
houses rise in terraces one above the other; and the contrast of the
magnificent abodes of the rich mining proprietors with the miserable
huts of their dependants adds to the singular appearance of the place.
The Mexican miner is, however, not so poor as his wretched dwelling
might lead us to suppose. In some measure he shares the fortunes of the
proprietors of the mines, as he is entitled to part of the ore; so that
when the vein is more than usually productive his weekly profits may
amount to as much as a hundred dollars. Yet he never thinks of
purchasing a piece of land, or of repairing his hut, when favoured by
fortune; but foolishly squanders his money in drinking and gambling, and
seldom returns to his work before his last farthing has been spent.
The population of Guanaxuato naturally fluctuates with the prosperity of
the mines. In 1806 and 1807, when they were in the highest state of
activity, it amounted to 90,000 souls; during the wars of independence
it sank to 20,000, but since then it has again risen to 60,000.
Next to the mines of Guanaxuato those of Zacatecas are distinguished by
their richness. They are likewise situated on the great central plateau
of the Cordillera in a wild mountain region whose forbidding aspect
forms a strange contrast to the riches concealed under its surface. In
1826 the United Mexican and the Bolaños Company undertook the working of
these mines; and two years after, the latter had the good fortune to
find an exceedingly rich vein, which up to the year 1834 produced no
less than 1,680,316 marks of silver.
Before 1770 the populous district of Alamos de Catorce in the State of
San Luis de Potosi, was still a complete desert. About this time a free
negro, named Milagros, who made a scant livelihood as an itinerant
musician, having lost his way, was obliged to pass the night in the
forest. On the following morning he found a few drops of silver on the
spot where he had made a fire, and, on a closer examination, discovered
the rich cropping out of a bed of argentiferous ores. He lost no time in
establishing the right of property which he derived from his discovery,
and opened the shaft Milagros, which, in a few years, made him a wealthy
man.
Soon after Don Barnabé de Zepeda discovered the chief vein of Catorce—
the Veta Madre—which continued to be worked with great success until the
revolution. This event having proved as destructive to the draining
machines of Catorce as to those of Guanaxuato and Zacatecas, a contract
was made with an English house for the furnishing of a steam-engine, the
first ever seen in Mexico. It was landed at Tampico in May 1822, but
arrived at Alamos six months later, as the carts which dragged the heavy
piece of machinery broke down every moment on the wretched roads which
lead to the central plateau on which the mines are situated. This,
however, was but the prelude of new difficulties; for as the
neighbouring forests could not furnish wood fit for the purpose, it was
necessary to order iron pump-tubes in England, which did not arrive
before 1826, so that the engine could not be set to work until four
years had passed after its arrival in Mexico. The history of Catorce
affords many remarkable examples of good fortune; but as most of the
rich _mineros_ (mine-proprietors) were men of low birth and without
education, they squandered their treasures as fast as they acquired
them. Medellin, the proprietor of the mine Dolores, once spent 36,000
dollars on a christening party; and at times, when the share of the
hewers amounted to one-third of the extracted ores, a common miner would
stake two or three thousand dollars on the issue of a cock-fight.
Among the first settlers at Catorce was an ecclesiastic named Flores,
who bought for 700 dollars a newly-opened mine, which received the
significant name of ‘La Bolsa de Dios Padre,’ or ‘God the Father’s
Money-Bag.’
Never was a small capital more profitably invested, for, at a depth of
about twenty yards, a deposit of such enormous richness was discovered
that in less than three years the profits of Padre Flores amounted to
three millions and a half of dollars.
The mines of Pachuca, Real del Monte, and Moran began to be worked soon
after the conquest. The Veta de la Biscayna, the chief vein of the
district, yielded immense profits from the sixteenth to the beginning of
the eighteenth century, when, in consequence of insufficient drainage,
the mines were drowned. An enterprising hidalgo, Don José Bustamente,
then began to drive a draining gallery, 7,000 feet long, which, however,
was only finished after his death by his partner, Don Pedro Terreros, a
merchant of Queretaro. Its immense cost was amply repaid, for Terreros
extracted no less than fifteen millions of dollars from the mine, and
was ennobled under the title of Conde de la Regla. His liberality was
worthy of his wealth, for besides a gift of two ships of the line—one of
them of 112 guns—to King Charles III. of Spain, he lent the court of
Madrid a million of dollars, which, it is almost superfluous to remark,
were never repaid. He built the enormous factories of La Regla at a cost
of more than 400,000_l_., and left his children a property rivalling
that of the Conde de la Valenciana. Since 1774, however, the profits of
the Biscayna, which was now worked 300 feet below the adit, began to
diminish; for though it still continued to yield enormous quantities of
ore, the water flowed in so abundantly that twenty-eight baritels,[44]
each requiring forty horses, and worked at an expense of 2,000_l._ per
week, was incapable of mastering it. At the death of the old Conde the
works were abandoned, until 1791, when his heirs once more set all the
baritels in motion; but the proceeds not covering the expenses, the
works were again abandoned.
Footnote 44:
A very primitive contrivance for raising the water in skin bags.
In the year 1824, when the frenzy of mining speculations was at its
height, a company was formed in London, with a capital of 400,000_l._,
for the purpose of working the mine of Tlalpujahua, in the State of
Mejoacan, which had long since been abandoned. Without any accurate
information, a number of supervisors and workmen were sent to the spot
in 1825, when they found all the mines under water. Yet, in spite of
this rather unpromising state of affairs, the company, not satisfied
with its first acquisitions, entered into new engagements, so that at
the end of 1825 it had contracted for no less than eighty mines, for
which it bound itself to pay the proprietors annuities amounting to more
than 50,000 dollars during the first three years. Operations were now
begun in many places at once, but every one of them ended in
disappointment; and in 1828 the company, after spending every farthing
of its capital, vanished into ‘airy nothing,’ abandoning the mines to
their original proprietors, and leaving the ill-fated shareholders to
mourn over their credulity and folly.
Subsequently another English company undertook the working of the mines
of Real del Monte, and after spending no less than 15,381,633 dollars,
against a produce of 10,481,475 dollars, was dissolved in 1848. Mr.
Buchan now undertook the management for a Mexican company, and almost
immediately struck the great Rosario vein, which opened a long career of
prosperity, and yielded a profit of a million of dollars in 1867. Every
fortnight a conducta, or escort, of one hundred and fifty armed men[45]
conveys the silver, in bars of seventy pounds, inclosed in an iron safe,
to the capital.
Footnote 45:
_Illustrated London News_, No. 1477, Saturday, April 11, 1868.
It would be vain to seek in the Mexican mines for the scientific
arrangement which is to be found in most of the English or German
subterranean workings. One of their chief faults consists in a want of
communication between their various parts, so that they resemble those
ill-arranged houses where, to go from one room to another, one is
obliged to traverse long and crooked passages. Hence the impossibility
of introducing in most of the mines an economical transport by means of
tramroads and waggons, and hence also the necessity of conveying the ore
to the surface by human labour. The native Indians, however, are
admirable carriers, for they will climb steep ladders, with 240 to 380
pounds, and perform this hard work for six hours consecutively. Their
muscular strength seemed truly astonishing to Humboldt, who, though
having no weight to carry but his own, felt himself utterly exhausted
after ascending from a deep mine.
Most of the Mexican silver is extracted from the ores by the process of
amalgamation. For this purpose the ore is first crushed either by
rollers, or, more generally, by stamps, called in Mexico _molinos_,
which in principle resemble those used in the tin mines of Cornwall, but
are not so powerful, and are worked either by water-power or by mules.
[Illustration: STAMPING MILL.]
The crushed ores are then conveyed to the _arrastres_, or grinding-
mills, which are usually arranged in rows in a large gallery or shed.
The ore, having been brought into a finely divided state, is next
allowed to run out of the arrastre into shallow tanks or reservoirs,
where it remains exposed to the sun until it has the appearance of thick
mud, and in this state the process is proceeded with. The _lama_, as it
is called, or slime, is now laid out on the _patio_, or amalgamation
floor (which is in some places boarded, and in others paved with flat
stones), in large masses called _tortas_, from forty to fifty feet in
diameter, and about a foot thick; and so extensive are the floors that a
large number of these tortas are seen in progress at the same time. When
the ore has been laid out in masses on the patio, the operations
necessary to produce the chemical changes commence. The first ingredient
introduced is salt, in the proportion of fifty pounds to every ton of
ore, and a number of mules are made to tread it, so that it may be
dissolved in the water and intimately blended with the mass. On the
following day another ingredient is introduced, called in Mexico
_magistral_. It is common copper-pyrites, or sulphide of copper and
iron, pulverised and calcined, which converts it into a sulphate. About
twenty-five pounds of this magistral are added for every ton of ore in
the torta, and the mules are again put in, and tread the mass for
several hours. Chemical action now commences, and new combinations
between the decomposed mineral substances are in progress. Quicksilver
is then introduced, being spread over the torta in very small particles,
which is effected by passing it through a coarse cloth. The quantity
required is six times the estimated weight of the silver contained in
the ore.
[Illustration: GRINDING MILL.]
The quicksilver being spread over the surface, the mules are once more
put in, and tread the whole until it is well mixed. Great skill is now
required to watch the progress of the amalgamation, and to decide
whether any one of the ingredients that have been added to the ore is in
deficiency or excess.
The amalgamating process being at length ended, the mass is washed in
large vats, through which streams of water are made to pass, so as to
drive away the lighter particles of the mud and to leave the heavy
amalgam at the bottom of the tub. After being strained through the
strong canvas bottom of a leathern bag, in order to separate the
superfluous mercury, the amalgam is finally heated in large retorts,
when the quicksilver is volatilised and the pure silver remains behind.
As a considerable quantity of mercury is thus lost, this metal has
always had a great influence on the working of the Mexican mines. When,
in times of war, the importation of quicksilver from Europe was stopped,
thus causing a considerable increase in its price, the ores accumulated
in the magazines, as their poverty made it impossible to meet the
additional expense; and then it not unfrequently happened that
proprietors, possessing ores to the amount of several millions of
dollars, were unable to pay their current expenses. In the last century,
the Mexican mines annually required sixteen thousand hundredweight of
mercury, which was furnished chiefly by the mines of Almaden,
Huancavelica, and Idria. The sale of mercury to the various mining
proprietors was a Government monopoly.
The quantity of silver produced by the Mexican mines in 110 years,
ending with the first year of the present century, amounted to about
ninety-eight millions of pounds troy, and the total value of the gold
and silver produced from 1689 to 1803 to about 285 millions of pounds
sterling.
The production was most abundant in the years 1805, 1806, and 1809, when
it reached the sum of twenty-six and twenty-seven millions of dollars.
It then fell enormously during the revolutionary wars; but the English
mining mania of 1824 having furnished the necessary capital for the re-
opening of a large number of mines, it again gradually rose, and even
reached during some years the rate of its most flourishing period. But
it never amounted to one-third of the value which is now annually
extracted from our coal mines; and while the latter open new and
unbounded sources of wealth by the activity they communicate to
numberless branches of industry, Mexico—a prey to bigotry, ignorance,
anarchy, and sloth—remains, in spite of her silver mines, as poor and as
barbarous as ever.
In South America, the mines of Potosi, Cerro di Pasco, and Gualgayoc,
are the most renowned for their richness. In 1545, an Indian, while
pursuing some deer along the declivity of a steep mountain, took hold of
a shrub, the roots of which, giving way, brought to view a mass of
silver, the first discovery of the riches which have rendered Potosi the
proverbial symbol of wealth. The Indian, wisely concealing his good
fortune, repeatedly visited the mine, but his improved circumstances
having been remarked by one of his countrymen, he was obliged to take
him into the secret. Unfortunately a quarrel ensued, and the faithless
confidant betrayed it to his master, Don José Villaroel, a Spaniard,
whose extraordinary success in working the mines soon drew the attention
of all America to the wild Cerro di Potosi. A town of 100,000
inhabitants soon rose in the desert, in spite of the wintry inclemency
of the climate (12,842 feet above the level of the sea) and of the
fabulous prices of provisions, as all the necessaries of life had to be
conveyed from a vast distance over the pathless mountains.
But if living in Potosi was extravagantly dear, Mammon took care to
provide his votaries with the necessary means; for the treasures which
were here extracted from the bosom of the earth seem rather to belong to
the world of Oriental romance than to that of sober reality. According
to Humboldt, the mountain of Potosi, whose topmost mine is situated
15,384 feet above the level of the sea—considerably higher than the
eternal snows of the summit of Mont Blanc—produced from 1545 to 1803 no
less than 230,000,000l., besides the silver which was not registered, or
had been carried off by fraud, and which may probably have amounted to
as much again. During the period of their greatest prosperity—from 1585
to 1606—when they annually yielded 882,000 marks of silver, 15,000
Indians were occupied in the mines of Potosi. At present, however, their
produce, though still considerable, has diminished to one-eighth, and
the population of the town has shrunk in the same proportion.
The ores were at first reduced in a very imperfect manner, according to
the old Indian method. On the mountains surrounding the town of Potosi,
wherever the wind blew with sufficient force, portable smelting ovens of
clay, in which numerous holes kept up a strong current of air, received
alternate layers of ore and charcoal, and the lively blast soon
separated the metal from the dross. The first travellers in the
Cordillera describe with enthusiasm the magnificent aspect of more than
6,000 fires, which every evening blazed on the mountain crests of
Potosi. Amalgamation was first introduced about the year 1571.
On the bleak Puna, or high table-land between the parallel chains of the
Cordillera and the Andes, is situated the famous mining town of Pasco.
Surrounded by a crescent of steep and naked rocks, its straggling
buildings extend over an uneven ground, bordered by small marshes and
lagunes. The shivering traveller, descending from the windy heights, is
at first agreeably surprised by the sight of a large town in the midst
of these dreary solitudes; but a nearer inspection of its narrow crooked
streets, and of its miserable huts, with here and there a stately
mansion, soon dissipates the fancies he may have formed at a distance.
The wild, forbidding aspect of the neighbourhood, and the rigorous
climate, only a short day’s journey from the loveliest valleys, prove
the greatness of the subterranean treasures which could induce so large
a population to settle in so harsh a region.
The mines of Pasco, like those of Potosi, were discovered, it is said,
by an Indian shepherd, who, accidentally lighting a fire where the ores
cropped out, found silver among the ashes. There are two chief lodes,
with numerous branches, so that the whole neighbourhood may be
considered as resting on a subterranean network of silver. The entrances
to most of the mines are situated in the town itself; and, as every
proprietor thinks only of his present profits, they are worked in so
slovenly a manner that they frequently fall in. Tschudi, who visited
some of the deepest of them, always thought himself extremely fortunate
when, after descending on half-rotten steps or by mouldering ropes and
rusty chains, he returned again to daylight without accident, and
mentions an instance where three hundred workmen were buried in the
ruins of a mine, in which the necessary props had been shamefully
neglected.
When a mine is very productive, it is said to be in ‘boya;’ and when
such periods of affluence take place in several of the mines at once,
the population of Pasco sometimes increases to double or treble the
usual number. The Peruvian miners are no less dishonest than their
fellow-workmen in Mexico, and equally cunning in robbing their
employers. On the other hand their patience and perseverance are
unrivalled. Satisfied with the coarsest food, and with a still more
miserable hut, they undergo an amount of bodily toil which no European
could endure. Their only solace is the chewing of Coca, the mysterious
plant to which they ascribe such wonderfully stimulating powers, and
which has at length begun to awaken the curiosity of European chemists
and naturalists.[46] When a ‘boya’ raises their earnings to a
considerable sum, they spend it in drunkenness, and never think of
returning to their work until their last farthing or their last credit
is exhausted. The mineros, or proprietors of the mines, are almost
equally uncivilised. Passionately devoted to gambling and mining
speculations, they are commonly deeply in debt to the capitalists of
Lima, who advance them money at the rate of 100 and 120 per cent.; and
when a ‘boya’ favours them, this sudden increase of wealth is merely the
prelude of new embarrassment.
Footnote 46:
The seventeenth chapter of ‘The Tropical World’ is devoted to the
Erythroxylon Coca.
According to law, all the produce of the silver mines should be sent to
the Callana or Government smelting-house; but in order to avoid the
heavy duties levied by the State, vast quantities are smuggled to the
coast. The annual produce registered at the Callana amounts to about
300,000 marks, but perhaps as much again is exported in a clandestine
manner. Besides the mines of Pasco, Peru possesses many others of
considerable value, situated chiefly in the provinces of Pataz,
Huamanchuco, Caxamarca, and Gualgayoc.
The famous Cerro de San Fernando de Gualgayoc, fourteen leagues from the
town of Caxamarca, is an isolated mountain traversed by numberless veins
of silver. Its summit is sharply serrated by a multitude of tower-like
or pyramidal pinnacles, and its steep sides are not only pierced by
several hundred galleries for the extraction of the ores, but also by
many natural openings or caverns, through which the dark blue sky is
visible to the spectator standing at the foot of the mountain. The
singularity of aspect is increased by the numberless huts, sticking like
nests to the slopes of the fortress-like mountain wherever a ledge
allowed them to be constructed. During the first thirty years after the
discovery of the mines from 1771 to 1802, they yielded considerably more
than thirty-two millions of dollars, and are still very productive.
One of the most celebrated silver mines of Peru was that of Salcedo,
renowned alike for its richness and for the tragical end of its
possessor. Don José Salcedo, a poor Spaniard who had settled in Puno,
fell in love with an Indian girl, whose mother, on condition of his
marrying her daughter, revealed to him the existence of a rich silver
lode. The fame of Salcedo’s wealth spread far and wide, and excited the
envy of Count Lemos, the viceroy, who sought to obtain possession of the
mine. As the good-natured and liberal Salcedo had become very popular
among the Indians, this circumstance was made use of by the rapacious
viceroy to accuse him of fomenting among the natives a spirit of
rebellion against the Spanish yoke. He was cast into a dungeon, and the
obsequious judges condemned him to death.
While in prison Salcedo begged the viceroy to submit the case to the
high court of justice at Madrid, and to allow him to appeal to the mercy
of the king. At the same time he offered, as an acknowledgment for this
favour, to give the viceroy daily a bar of silver, from the day the ship
left the port of Callao to its return from Europe. If we consider that
in those times a journey from Peru to Spain and back required at least
from twelve to sixteen months, we may form some idea of Salcedo’s
wealth. The viceroy, however, would not listen to the proposal, the very
brilliancy of which probably inflamed still more his cupidity, and he
ordered Salcedo to be hung. But his cruelty met with the disappointment
it deserved; for when it became known that nothing could save Salcedo,
his Indian friends destroyed the works of the mine, and so carefully
concealed the entrance that it has remained undiscovered to the present
day. After performing this work of retribution, the Indians dispersed,
and neither promises nor tortures could wring the secret from those that
were caught.
Though the mines of Peru have yielded and still yield vast quantities of
silver, yet probably only a few of the richest lodes are worked; for the
Indians, to whom other lodes are well known, will never reveal their
existence to the white men. They know by experience how small a benefit
they derive from the mines, which are to them but a source of severe
labour. Thus they prefer leaving the treasures of the earth undisturbed,
or use them only in cases of extreme necessity. In many provinces
undoubted proofs exist that the richest silver mines are secretly worked
by the Indians, but all efforts to discover them have proved fruitless.
A Franciscan monk at Huancayo, a desperate gambler and almost always in
want of money, had by his friendly manners gained the goodwill of the
Indians. One day, after a severe loss, he bitterly complained of his
distress to one of his Indian friends. After some hesitation the man
promised to assist him, and brought him on the following evening a bag
full of rich silver ores. This gift he repeated several times. But the
monk, greedy after more, begged the Indian to show him the mine—a
request which, after repeated refusals, was at length reluctantly
granted. On the appointed night, the Indian, with two of his comrades,
came to the Franciscan’s dwelling, took him on his shoulders, after
first carefully blindfolding him, and carried him, alternately with his
friends, a distance of several leagues into the mountains. Here they
halted, and the Franciscan’s bandage having been removed, he found
himself in a subterranean gallery, where the richest silver ores
sparkled from the walls. After feasting on the grateful sight and
filling his pockets, he was carried back again in the same way. On his
return he secretly loosened the string of his rosary, and let a bead
drop from time to time, hoping by this means to be able to find the
mine. But, on the following morning, as he was about to reconnoitre, his
Indian friend knocked at the door, and saying, ‘Father, thou hast lost
thy rosary!’ brought him a whole handful of the loose beads.
In 1850 the mines in the province of Copiapo in Chili yielded 335,000
marks of silver, nearly as much as the entire production of Europe, and
the State of Nevada in North America bids fair to rival the riches of
Peru. The ores are found on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada, in
the region of the Carson River, and have since 1859 attracted a stream
of emigrants to the Washoe Mine. At the present time they annually
produce about 16,000,000 dollars of silver, chiefly from the Comstock
Lode, which may be ranked among the richest mineral deposits ever
encountered in the history of mining enterprise.
Thus we find veins and deposits of silver ore scattered throughout
almost the entire length of America; and no doubt many an unknown Potosi
still lies concealed in the lonely ravines or on the bleak sides of the
Andes, awaiting but some fortunate discoverer to astonish the world with
its treasures.
CHAPTER XXVI.
COPPER.
Its valuable Qualities—English Copper Mines—Their comparatively recent
Importance—Dreary Aspect of the Cornwall Copper Country—Botallack—
Submarine Copper Mines—A Blind Miner—Swansea—Smelting Process—The
Mines of Fahlun—Their Ancient Records—Alten Fjord—Drontheim—The Mines
of Rivaas—The Mines of Mansfeldt—Lake Superior—Mysterious Discoveries—
Burra Burra—Remarkable Instances of Good Fortune in Copper Mining.
Copper derives its name from the island of Cyprus, where it was
extensively mined and smelted by the Greeks; but its first discovery is
of much more ancient date, and loses itself in the darkness of the
prehistoric ages. Weapons and tools of bronze—its alloy with tin—have
been found both in the tumuli of extinct nations and in the lacustrine
dwellings of the Swiss lakes, erected by an unknown people in unknown
times. Among the Egyptians, the Greeks, and Etrurians, copper was in
immemorial use, and the ancient Celtic nations fought their battles with
copper or brazen swords, and felled the trees for the construction of
their rude hovels with axes of the same metal.
As in many parts of the world native copper is found scattered over the
surface of the earth in large lumps or masses, it naturally attracted
the attention of barbarous tribes much sooner than iron, which very
rarely occurs in the native state; and some fortunate chance or lucky
experiment having shown that, when rendered malleable by heat, it could
easily be hammered into any convenient shape, it soon became, and has
ever since remained, one of the most valuable metals. Forming important
compounds with tin (bronze) and zinc (brass), remarkably incorrodible as
compared with iron, and nearly as tenacious in structure, but not so
hard, it is recommended by its qualities for a variety of uses, and its
consumption everywhere increases with the progress of civilization and
the extension of commerce. Fortunately copper is of such common
occurrence that a mere enumeration of the localities where it is found
would swell into a long and tedious list; it is enough to state that
rich copper mines exist both in the Old World and the New, and promise
an inexhaustible supply to the most distant generations.
In Europe England is the chief copper-producing country. Rich mines have
been discovered and worked in Anglesey, Shropshire, Cheshire, and
Staffordshire, in the counties of Wicklow, Cork, and Waterford; but by
far the largest quantity is supplied by Cornwall and Devon.
‘The history of Cornish copper,’ says Mr. Warner, ‘is as a mushroom of
last night compared with that of tin. Lying deep below the surface of
the earth, it would be concealed from the inquiries of human industry
till such time as natural philosophy had made considerable progress, and
the mechanical arts had reached their present state of perfection; for
notwithstanding tin in Cornwall seldom runs deeper than fifty fathoms
below the surface, good copper is seldom found at a less depth than
that. Accordingly we do not find that any regular researches were made
for copper ores in Cornwall till the latter end of the fifteenth
century, when a few adventurers worked in an imperfect manner some
insignificant mines. Half a century afterwards, in the reign of
Elizabeth, though the product of the mines would naturally be greater
than before, yet little advantage seems to have been derived to the
country at large from the working of its copper. Writers hint at the
mystery made of its uses by the merchants. In the next reign, however,
all mystery was dispersed, the mines were inspected, their value
determined, and a system was introduced of working them to greater
advantage.’
Yet so wretched was the knowledge of mineralogy before 1712 that the
yellow copper ore, at present so highly valued, was considered of no
importance and cast aside as worthless rubbish. Since the reign of
George I. there has been so much improvement that, next to iron and
coal, copper is now the most important of our mineral products.
The chief Cornish copper mines are situated in the districts of
Camborne, Redruth, and Gwennap, which are about the dreariest of all
British wildernesses. Few trees are to be seen, few fields; furze and
wild berries form the chief vegetation of the niggard soil. Blocks upon
blocks of stone are scattered over these desolate moorlands, that have
been excavated, dug into hillocks, disturbed and turned over and over
again, sometimes by the primeval stream-works of the _old men_ or
ancient miners, sometimes by more modern labour in search of metallic
wealth. Off the roads these districts are utterly impervious on wheels
or on horseback, and the traveller can only walk, or rather flounder,
over them by jumping from patch to patch of firmer land. Yet this scene
of apparent poverty is in reality one of the very richest portions of
the kingdom, and conceals more wealth beneath its sterile surface than
has ever been produced by a similar extent of the fairest fields and
pastures.
[Illustration: THE BOTALLACK MINE, CORNWALL.]
The bluff promontory of Botallack, not far from Cape Cornwall, conceals
in its rocky entrails a copper mine, the most singularly placed,
probably, of any mine in the world, for nowhere do the triumphs of
industry appear in more picturesque connection with the magnificent
scenery of the ocean. The metalliferous veins running along the cliffs
into the sea vainly concealed themselves beneath the swelling surge; in
vain a huge barrier of rocks seemed to render them inaccessible to the
miner, as soon as it became known that here, buried under the ocean, lay
treasures that would amply repay the cost and labour expended, and the
danger encountered in seeking for them.
To those who stand below the cliff and look up from the sea, the view is
fearfully grand, and remarkable for the combination of the wonders of
art with the wonders of nature. The separate parts of an enormous steam-
engine had to be lowered 200 feet down the almost perpendicular
precipice, and a tram-road runs right up the face of the cliff. Lofty
chimneys, pouring out dense volumes of black smoke, are seen perched on
the verge and even on the ledges of a tremendous precipice, and the
miner has built his hut over the sea-bird’s roost. All these
constructions seem at the mercy of every storm, and to the beholder from
beneath they almost appear suspended in the air and tottering to their
fall.
On one side of the cliff tall ladders scale the rock; but he must have
strong nerves who can tread them fearlessly, the sea roaring under him
and flinging its raging spray after him as he ascends, while in other
parts mules and their riders may be seen trotting up and down the rocky
tracks which the pedestrian visitor would scarcely dare to pass. A
strange and restless life pervades a scene which nature seemed to have
for ever removed far from the busy haunts of man.
A visit to this remarkable mine leaves an ineradicable impression on the
mind. Descending ladder after ladder, and passing on from gallery to
gallery, stepping over rough stones and awkward holes, now stooping down
under masses of overhanging rock, and now climbing over stony
projections beneath your feet, you are at length informed that you are
vertically 120 feet below the sea-level, and horizontally 480 feet under
the bottom of the ocean or beyond low-water mark, while still deeper
down human beings are hewing the hard rock. The brine oozes through the
metallic ceiling, and the sound of distant waters falls faintly upon the
ear.
There are other submarine mines in the neighbourhood of Botallack. In
Little Bounds and Wheal Cock the hardihood of the miners tempted them to
follow the ore upwards, even to the sea; but the openings made were very
small, and, the rock being extremely hard, a covering of wood and cement
in the former, and a small plug in the latter mine, sufficed to exclude
the water, and protected the workmen from the fatal consequences of
their rashness. ‘In all these, and in Wheal Edward and Levant,’ says Mr.
Henwood,[47] ‘I have heard the dashing of the billows and the grating of
the shingle overhead even in calm weather. I was once, however,
underground in Wheal Cock during a storm. At the extremity of the
_level_ seaward, some eighty or one hundred fathoms from the shore,
little could be heard of its effects, except at intervals, when the
reflux of some unusually large wave projected a pebble outward, bounding
and rolling over the rocky bottom. But when standing beneath the base of
the cliff, and in that part of the mine where but nine feet of the rock
stood between us and the ocean, the heavy roll of the large boulders,
the ceaseless grinding of the pebbles, the fierce thundering of the
billows, with the crackling and boiling as they rebounded, placed a
tempest in its most appalling form too vividly before me ever to be
forgotten. More than once, doubting the protection of our working
shield, we retreated in affright, and it was only after repeated trials
that we had confidence to pursue our investigations.’
Footnote 47:
‘Transactions of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall,’ vol. v. p.
11.
It seems that at times of great storms, even the miners, accustomed for
years to these submarine caverns, have been terrified by the roaring of
the sea. They have heard, as it were, mountain dashing against mountain,
or as if all the artillery of England was booming over their heads. Yet
their roof of rock, thin as it is in some parts, has hitherto shielded
them against the sea, and will no doubt continue to defend them against
it. On leaving these wonderful submarine excavations, the scenery of the
upper world appears doubly beautiful.
The ‘Traveller Underground’[48] tells us a remarkable story of a blind
man who once worked in Botallack, and continued his perilous toils
underground for a long period, from the dread of being compelled to
accept parish relief. By the fruits of his labour he supported a family
of nine children, and such was his marvellous recollection of every
turning and winding of the mine that he became a guide to his fellow-
labourers if by any accident their lights were extinguished. On being
discharged from this employment (and they must truly have had rocky
hearts who did discharge him), this poor blind man soon afterwards met
his death in a melancholy manner. Being engaged as attendant on some
brick-layers, who were building a house at St. Ives, he had to carry the
hods of mortar up to the scaffolding. Stepping too far back from a
platform, he fell, and died almost immediately.
Footnote 48:
‘Cornwall, its Mines and Miners.’ London, 1860.
The chief copper ores of Cornwall are the bisulphuret (containing nearly
equal parts of copper, sulphur, and iron), the sulphuret, or grey ore of
the miners (containing more than 79 per cent. of copper), and the black
ore, an almost pure oxide; but when extracted from the mine, these ores
are generally so mixed up with impurities that their average contents do
not amount to more than 2½ or 3½ per cent. They have consequently to
undergo various processes of picking, crushing, sorting, and washing,
before they are rendered saleable and fit for export to the smelting
works of Swansea, the grand emporium for copper. The reason why they are
not smelted on the spot is that the fuel needed is more bulky than the
ore, and it is cheaper to bring the copper of Cornwall to the coal of
South Wales than to take the coal to the copper. In Swansea—but half a
century ago a mere hamlet, and now a flourishing town of 36,000
inhabitants—we find all the conditions needed for the development of a
vast industry. Coal and water-power in inexhaustible abundance,
excellent roads and railroads, the nearness of the sea, canals which
allow vessels of considerable burden to load and unload close to the
smelting huts, so that their high masts rise alongside of the towering
chimneys—these are the natural and artificial advantages to which
Swansea owes its rank as the first copper manufacturing town in the
world.
For, not satisfied with the abundant ores of Great Britain, its smelting
works seek their materials in almost every copper-producing country of
the globe. The rich ores of Chili and Australia, of Cuba and North
America, of Norway and Tuscany, all find their way to Swansea, which re-
exports the metal to every part of the world.
Vivian’s works, the most important of the establishments of Swansea, are
situated in a vale a couple of miles from the town. A maritime canal
enables brigs to sail at high tide up to the smelting furnaces, whence a
second canal leads to the coal-pits, ascending the hill by a succession
of locks. Although in the building of this huge factory not a thought
was given to grace or beauty of form, utility being the sole aim in
view, still its vast extent leaves on the mind a certain impression of
grandeur.
The whole smelting process is carried on in reverberatory furnaces.[49]
In order to disengage the sulphur and other volatile impurities, the ore
is first roasted in at least sixteen of these powerful ovens, each of
which holds forty hundredweight, and performs its office in six hours.
The smoke of all these furnaces collects in a huge chimney, which, after
climbing the hill for about six hundred feet, ends in a mighty column
two hundred feet high. The roasted ores are then mixed with a certain
proportion of fluor spar, and smelted in twenty smaller reverberatory
furnaces. A ton is introduced at a time, and in each oven seven tons can
be smelted in twenty-four hours. It would lead me too far were I to
enter into more minute details. I will therefore briefly state that the
copper is still obliged to pass four times through differently
constructed furnaces before it is sufficiently pure to be rolled into
sheets or to be granulated, a condition in which it is used for the
fabrication of brass, as it then presents more surface to the action of
the zinc, and combines with it more readily. To produce this
granulation, the metal is poured into a large ladle pierced with holes,
and placed above a cistern filled with water, which must be hot or cold
according to the form of the grains required. When it is hot, round
grains are obtained, analogous to lead shot, and the copper in this
state is called _bean shot_. When the melted copper falls into cold
water perpetually renewed, the granulations are irregular, thin, and
ramified, constituting _feathered_ shot.
Footnote 49:
A reverberatory furnace is a furnace in which intense heat is produced
by a flame which, while passing through a furnace, _reverberates_ from
the roof over the substance to be fused, the draught being created by
means of a lofty chimney.
The process of preparing the copper does not present the bustle and
activity nor the glare and brilliancy of an ironwork. The smoke and
vapour disengaged from the ore are of the most noxious and disagreeable
kind, and impart to the whole neighbourhood a singularly gloomy
character. The stunted vegetation is so kept down by it that there are
no trees, and, instead of grass, a dry, yellow, sickly growth of
chamomile barely covers the ground. When viewed from a neighbouring
eminence at night, the livid glare from the chimneys, the rolling white
clouds of smoke which fill up the valley beneath, the desolate-looking
heaps of slag, and the pungent sulphurous vapours remind the spectator
of
‘The dismal situation, waste and wild,
The dungeon horrible on all sides round,’
where Satan lay weltering after his fall from heaven.
After England, Sweden, Germany, and Russia take the lead among the
copper-producing countries of Europe.
The mines of Fahlun in Dalecarlia are no less remarkable for their
picturesque appearance than the celebrated iron mines of Dannemora in
the same province. A vast pit, 1,200 feet long, 600 feet broad, and
above 180 feet deep, with precipitous, sometimes vertical, and
occasionally even overhanging walls, opens before the spectator, who
might fancy himself standing on the brink of an enormous crater. ‘The
aspect of this deep chasm,’ says Professor Haussmann,[50] ‘affords a
desolate picture of ruin caused by improvidence and waste, as it owes
its origin to the successive fallings in of subterranean excavations
carelessly widened and left without sufficient supports. From the vast
mounds of rubbish accumulated at the bottom of the pit, remnants of
ancient shafts, formed of thick beams of wood, are seen protruding, but
these show only a part of the devastation produced by the great falling
in which took place in the year 1678. On the northern side of the pit is
a broad and convenient wooden staircase, by which not only the miners,
but also the horses used for working the subterranean machinery, descend
to the bottom. Thence it gradually winds underground to a depth of 177
fathoms.’
Footnote 50:
‘Geological Travels through Sweden.’
As is generally the case in Sweden, the ore of Fahlun forms considerable
masses, the chief being a vast reniform lump 1,200 feet long and 600
broad at its upper surface, and gradually narrowing as it descends. Near
this gigantic _stock_ are situated similar deposits, which though of
smaller dimensions are still very considerable. From the copper pyrites
being deposited chiefly on the circumference or the outer shell of these
reniform masses, which are themselves of extremely irregular outline,
the mining operations are carried on with great difficulty, and exhibit
a perfect labyrinth of crooked and winding galleries, situated at
various depths, and supported by pillars or sometimes by walls—a
peculiarity which explains the successive fallings in that have formed
the enormous pit of Fahlun. The mine has been worked from time
immemorial, and is said to have been known even before the Christian
era. The oldest document extant bears the date of the year 1347, and
contains the privileges granted to the proprietors of the mine by King
Olaus Smek; but still more ancient documents are mentioned, among others
a purchase-deed of the year 1200. As the ores are poor, their abundance
alone renders the working of the mine profitable; but Fahlun has seen
its best days and is doomed to a gradual decline. During its greatest
prosperity it is said to have yielded 5,000 tons of copper annually, but
in 1866 it furnished no more that 600 tons, or about one-third of the
entire production of Sweden.
In 1719 a body, preserved from corruption by the vitriolic water with
which it had been saturated, was found in an abandoned part of the
Fahlun mines. When it had been brought up to the surface, the whole
neighbourhood flocked together to see it; but nobody could recognise a
lost friend or kinsman in its young and handsome features. At length an
old woman, more than 80 years of age, approached with tottering steps,
and casting a glance on the corpse, uttered a piercing shriek and fell
senseless on the ground. She had instantly recognised her affianced
lover, who had mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years
previously, but whose image she still bore in her faithful memory. As he
was not employed in the mines, no search had been made for him
underground at the time. Most probably he had fallen, by some accident,
into one of the numerous crevices by which the surface of the mines is
traversed. Thus the tottering woman, weighed down with the double burden
of infirmity and age, saw once more the face of her lover as she had
looked upon it in the days of her youth.
In the sister kingdom of Norway, which produces annually about 480 tons
of copper, the mines of the Alten Fjord are remarkable for their high
northern situation (in 70° N. Lat., beyond the Arctic Circle). A piece
of copper ore found by a Lap woman in 1825 fell accidentally into the
hands of Mr. Crowe, an English merchant in Hammerfest, who immediately
took measures for obtaining a privilege from Government for the working
of a mine. All preliminaries being arranged, he set off for London,
where he founded a company with a capital of 75,000_l._ When Marmier
visited the Alten Fjord in 1842, more than 1,100 workmen were employed
in these most northerly mining works of the world; but probably the
number has since decreased.
Although Drontheim or Tronyem is renowned in Norse history as the seat
of many kings, yet the town seems as if built but yesterday. Repeated
conflagrations have often reduced its wooden houses to ashes. The choir
of the ancient cathedral, the finest edifice ever built in so high a
latitude, is the only remaining memorial of old Tronyem; but the modern
city is remarkably clean and well built, and gives evidence, by its
outward appearance, of the prosperity of its citizens, which is partly
owing to the fish-trade and partly to the neighbouring copper-mines of
Röraas. The tall chimneys of the smelting huts and other manufactories
founded on the mineral riches of the country show that the spirit of
trade is perfectly awake in the old capital of Saint Olaus, and that the
abode of the ancient sea-kings is none the worse for having abandoned
piracy for the more homely pursuits of modern commerce. The copper ores,
which were first discovered in 1644, occur in the Röraas Mountains in
extensive veins. The entrance, which resembles the mouth of a cave and
leads into the mine by a gradual descent, is so broad that carts laden
with ore and drawn by horses can freely pass in and out. When Professor
Haussmann, of Göttingen, visited the mine, long stalactites of ice hung
from the roof of the entrance and covered its rugged walls with crystal
drapery. The lights of the numerous workmen who opened the march made
the ice glitter with all the colours of the rainbow, and then, as they
went onward, illuminated the broad galleries, propped by mighty pillars,
and branching into gloomy recesses. At length they halted, and all at
once, on a given signal, the brilliant illumination was changed into the
deepest darkness. A deathlike stillness now reigned in the vault, when
suddenly a flash of lightning blazed through the gloom, a loud clap of
thunder instantly followed, and, with crash on crash, the explosions of
many charges of blasting powder shook the walls of the neighbouring
galleries. After the last shot was fired, the torches were relit, and
joyously exchanging the usual salutation of German miners: ‘Glück
auf!’[51] the company moved on. ‘I cannot find words,’ says the
Professor, in whose honour the impressive scene had been arranged, ‘to
express the pleasure I felt at this cordial reception given me in the
high north by men unknown to me a few days since. It confirmed the
experience I had already so often made before, that probably no
profession so soon produces a friendly and intimate connexion between
strangers as that of the miner.’
Footnote 51:
‘Good luck upwards!’ or ‘A happy return to daylight.’
The copper production of Germany is about equal in amount to that of the
Scandinavian kingdoms. The Rammelsberg,[B] near Goslar in the Hartz,
which has been worked ever since the year 968, is probably the oldest
mine in Europe. The famous copper mines of the county of Mansfeldt in
Prussia afford a striking example of the success obtainable in mining
operations by perseverance and a wise economy. The whole thickness of
the cupriferous bed of bituminous shale is no more than from eight to
sixteen inches; but as the ore, though poor, contains a small quantity
of silver, this circumstance, assisted by good management and the
application of science, has not only rendered it possible to work the
mines for many centuries, but to render them so flourishing that in 1852
they produced 1,350 tons of copper and 31,800 marks of silver, leaving a
net profit of more than 20,000_l._ The hewers are obliged to perform
their labour in galleries not more than twenty-two or twenty-eight
inches high, the narrowest limits within which a man can possibly move
and work. The boys who transport the ore slide or creep with a truly
wonderful rapidity along the floor, dragging after them, by means of a
sling attached to their foot, a waggon loaded with as much as five
hundredweight of ore. The hewer’s wages for seven hours of this hard
work are no more than two shillings; yet the miners look very healthy
and cheerful, a remarkable proof of the wonderful effects of habit.
The vast empire of Russia produces about 5,000 tons of copper annually,
chiefly from the mines of the Ural, belonging to Prince Demidoff; but a
large proportion is furnished by the Asiatic mines of the Altaï and of
Nertschinsk in Transbaikalia. New deposits have lately been discovered
in the land of the Kirghise, near the Irtysch; and, as the ores are
exceedingly rich, and coal is found near them, they will, no doubt,
become valuable in time.
During the last twenty years America has far exceeded Europe in the
production of copper. The inexhaustible mines of Chili extend along the
whole coast of the republic, and are generally situated within a
convenient distance from the sea and near the best ports of the Pacific,
such as Caldera, Coquimbo, and Valparaiso. Originally the ores were all
sent to Europe to be smelted; but since 1865 the discovery of coal near
various parts of the coast has encouraged the establishment of numerous
smelting furnaces, so that Chili now exports no less than from 40,000 to
45,000 tons of metallic copper, besides furnishing large quantities of
ore to the smelting works of Swansea.
After Chili no country has made such rapid strides in copper-mining as
the United States. The primeval forests of Northern Michigan and
Wisconsin would probably still be the undisputed domain of the Indian
hunter if the mineral treasures of the soil had not been a prize too
valuable to escape the notice of our wealth-seeking age. Soon after the
first settlement of the French in Canada some bold adventurers had
indeed penetrated as far as the distant shores of Lake Superior, and
given wonderful accounts of the large masses of copper which they had
seen scattered over the country; but the want of all means of
communication hindered for a long time the advance of the miner.
The Chippeways, who for centuries had occupied the banks of the lake,
where, like all other Indian tribes, they spent their time in hunting
and fishing, never thought of availing themselves of the mineral riches
of their territory. They indeed picked up now and then some pieces of
copper, and sold them as curiosities to the fur-dealers with whom they
traded; but they were still far too uncivilized to seek in the
neighbouring hills for deposits of the valuable metal. Their traditions
give no account of their first settlement in the country; they believed
themselves to be aboriginals. Thus, when at length the land came to be
geologically surveyed, the discovery of extensive prehistoric mining
works created no small astonishment. These relics of an unknown people,
whose existence and disappearance is one of the most interesting enigmas
of ancient American history, are chiefly situated on the hill-crests of
Isle Royale and in the Ontanagon district, where they may be traced for
miles. Trees, many hundred years old, now grow in the hollows
laboriously excavated by that extinct race in the hard rock with tools
of stone or copper. Shafts, twenty or thirty feet deep, sunk in the
hardest greenstone, have been discovered after felling the trees and
removing the rubbish which, in the course of time, had been accumulated
in the cavities. In many the old tools were found which served to
excavate them—stone hammers of various sizes, or chisels of artificially
hardened copper. On the hill behind the Minnesota Pit a mass of copper
several tons in weight was found placed on wooden rollers, which proved
that those unknown miners must have possessed a considerable mechanical
knowledge, without which it would have been impossible to remove such
heavy masses. In some galleries copper blocks were discovered from which
pieces had been chiselled off, and the whole of the works gave proofs of
a skill and persevering industry quite foreign to the unsettled habits
of the wild and indolent race of hunters which, as far as memory
reached, had occupied these distant regions.
Although the expeditions of General Cass in 1819 and of Major Long in
1823 had drawn public attention to the copper of Lake Superior, still
twenty years more passed before they became the object of mining
speculations, which at once rose to a feverish height. Numerous
companies were started in 1843, and mines were opened in many hundred
places at once. The natural consequence of this copper mania was
disappointment in most cases, and in 1847 the greater number of the
mines, which had been opened with the most extravagant expectations,
were abandoned. A few companies only withstood the crisis, and
ultimately proved so remarkably successful as fully to retrieve the lost
credit of the copper country, the annual yield of which at the present
time is about 10,000 tons, and consequently nearly equals that of
Cornwall.
The copper occurs in the native state in veins intersecting the trap and
sandstone, but also in scattered superficial masses along the chain of
hills which extends from the western to the north-eastern extremity of
Lake Superior. In no known locality have such large masses of copper
been found. An enormous block was discovered in February 1857 in the
Minnesota mine. It was forty-five feet in length, twenty-two feet at the
greatest width, and the thickest part was more than eight feet. It
contained over ninety per cent. of copper, and weighed about 420 tons. A
still more prodigious mass, sixty-five feet long, thirty-two feet broad,
and four feet thick, was found in 1869. This king of copper nuggets
weighed no less than 1,000 tons, and was worth 80,000_l._, or more than
the greatest lump of gold that ever came to light in Australia or
California.
Rich copper mines have likewise been discovered in the States of
Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York, but chiefly in
California, where since 1861 the small town of Copperopolis[52] has
risen into importance. More than 30,000 tons of Californian copper ores
(chiefly sulphurets) are now annually exported to the smelting-houses of
the bay of Boston, which are likewise supplied by the ores of Chili and
Canada, and form a new Swansea on the opposite shore of the Atlantic.
The whole annual production of the United States at present exceeds
20,000 tons of metallic copper, mostly consumed in the country.
Footnote 52:
This hybrid name, a vile compound of English and Greek, is enough to
excite the wrath of a philologist.
The mines of Cuba, which were very important, have latterly fallen off;
but in 1866 the exportation to Swansea still amounted to 11,254 tons of
ore.
Among the rich copper countries of the world I have finally to mention
South Australia, New South Wales, and Victoria. The most extraordinary
copper mine of modern times for produce is that of Burra-Burra in South
Australia. It was started in September 1845, with a capital of
12,000_l._, subscribed by a few merchants and traders of Adelaide, and
in the following five years yielded no less than 56,428 tons of ore,
worth 738,108_l._ The gold discoveries momentarily put a stop to its
prosperity; but of late years the works have been resumed, and other
rich mines have been opened, so that copper will long remain one of the
staple productions of Australia.
The history of some of our copper mines affords examples of good fortune
no less remarkable than those which we find mentioned in the annals of
the Mexican silver-mining.
Tresavean Copper Mine, within a walk of Redruth, had once or twice been
abandoned as a failure. At length it was taken up by parties who
persevered in exploring it, and succeeded in discovering its wealth by
an outlay of little more than 1,000_l._ From 1838 to 1843 the profits
averaged 30,693_l._ per annum, and in 1833 630_l._ were divided per
share, or in all 60,480_l._ upon ninety-nine shares, each share having
about 20_l._ paid up, so that in one year the profits surpassed more
than thirty times the capital invested.
Old Crinnis Copper Mine, near St. Austell, was in 1808 abandoned, after
repeated failures, and declared by the best miners of the day to be not
worth ‘a pipe of tobacco.’ In 1809 Mr. Joshua Rowe, of Torpoint, and
some co-adventurers, notwithstanding the general contempt for the mine,
began working it again. As it still remained poor, the adventurers
dropped off one by one, leaving the entire cost of working upon Mr.
Rowe, who, after laying out a few additional hundreds, was rewarded by
the discovery of a rich mass of ore at about ten fathoms from the
surface. Upon this becoming known, the old adventurers again claimed
their shares; but Mr. Rowe resisted their unjust pretentions and won his
lawsuit. In the short space of four years and a half, this mine made a
clear profit of 168,000_l._, besides paying 20,000_l._ for law expenses.
Another instance of remarkable success is afforded by the Devon Great
Consols Mines, which were opened in the year 1844. The capital of the
company which undertook their working was parted into 1,024 shares, with
1_l._ paid on each share. In the same year by November a rich copper
lode was cut, and the profits paid working expenses without call. The
lodes soon began to turn out so rich that in the six years between the
dates of 1844 and of 1850 the company extracted and sold copper ores to
the amount of 600,000_l._ After paying all expenses, the shareholders
received about 207,000_l._, or more than 200_l._ per share on 1_l._
paid. No more was called, and thus an average annual dividend of 35_l._,
equivalent to 3,500 per cent., fell to the lot of each share.
Such instances, however, of good fortune are very rare, for mining in
Cornwall, as elsewhere, is much more frequently attended with
disappointment and loss. Sometimes an apparently rich produce is
absorbed by still greater expenses, or veins very promising when first
opened fall off below, and occasion immense loss to the adventurers. A
sudden fall in the price of the metal is alone sufficient to render many
of the poorer mines perfectly worthless for a long time.[53] Hence
nothing can be more hazardous than to invest capital in a mining
concern; and if Shakespeare had foreseen the delusions of modern
speculations in concerns of this kind, he could not more truly have
characterised them than by saying—
‘The earth hath bubbles as the water hath,
And these are of them.’
Footnote 53:
Since the discovery of the rich North American and Chilian mines the
price of copper has fallen about 30 per cent. The consequence has been
a great diminution of our copper production. Thus Cornwall and
Devonshire, which in 1856 yielded 206,177 tons of copper ore, worth
1,241,835_l._, saw their produce gradually diminish from that time,
and in 1865 furnished no more than 159,409 tons, worth only
753,427_l._ In 1856 the mean average price of copper was 123_l._ per
ton; in 1865 it was no more than 94_l._ 7_s._
Yet the hope of suddenly getting rich, and the very risks and daring
attending all mining undertakings, have an almost magical attraction;
and, in spite of numberless instances of loss or ruin, there will
probably never be a want of speculators willing to embark their fortunes
on this unstable foundation.
CHAPTER XXVII.
TIN.
Tin known from the most remote antiquity—Phœnician Traders—The
Cassiterides—Diodorus Siculus—His Account of the Cornish Tin Trade—The
Age of Bronze—Valuable Qualities of Tin—Tin Countries—Cornish Tin
Lodes—Tin Streams—Wheal Vor—A Subterranean Blacksmith—Huel Wherry, a
Tin Mine under the Sea—Carclaze Tin Mine—Dressing of Tin Ores—
Smelting—The Cornish Miner.
Tin is one of the metals most anciently known to man. Its first
discovery is hidden, like that of silver, gold, copper, and iron, in
complete obscurity, for even the names of the nations which first made
use of it are not known. Axes and lances, sickles and fishhooks of
bronze—the well-known alloy of copper and tin—occur among the ruins of
the ancient lacustrine habitations of Switzerland, and the tin of these
bronze utensils could only be obtained by commerce from countries far
remote, where it must, doubtless, have been known for many ages, before
it found its way into the heart of Central Europe. Thus a few bronze
implements picked up among other rubbish in the muddy bed of an
Helvetian lake open a long vista into the obscure history of primitive
man.
On turning from Europe to the East we find other proofs that tin has
been known from the most remote antiquity. It is mentioned in the Book
of Numbers (xxxi. 22) among the spoil which the children of Israel
gained by their victory over the Midianites; and Ezekiel, in his
prophetic warning to the Tyrians, enumerates tin as forming part of
their riches.
[Illustration: ST. MICHAEL’S MOUNT, CORNWALL.]
It is frequently noticed by Homer as a substance used for architectural
ornaments or for the embellishment of the armour of his heroes, and its
Greek name ‘Kassiteros,’ which evidently represents the Sanscrit
‘Kastira,’ leaves no doubt as to the part of the world from which it was
first obtained. The tin which, in times unrecorded by chronology, served
for the consumption of Western Asia, Egypt, and Greece, was supplied by
the mines of India to the Phœnician traders, who conveyed it, either by
land to Babylon, or by water to the ports of the Red Sea. At a much
later period that great merchant people extended their maritime
expeditions to the West, and sailing along the Atlantic coast of Gaul,
ultimately discovered Cornwall, which afforded them a new and
inexhaustible supply of tin. With the jealous spirit of trade, they long
made a profound secret of its position; but about 450 years before
Christ, Herodotus speaks of the Cassiterides, or tin islands, which some
have supposed to be Britain. Four centuries later Diodorus Siculus, who
lived in the times of Julius Cæsar and Augustus, gives us an interesting
account of the ancient tin trade of Britain. ‘The inhabitants of that
extremity of Britain which is called Bolerion’ (probably Land’s End),
says the historian whose narrative is the more deserving of attention as
we are told that he visited all the places he mentions: ‘both excel in
hospitality and also, by reason of their intercourse with foreign
merchants, they are civilized in their mode of life. These prepare the
tin, working very skilfully the earth which produces it. The ground is
rocky, but it has in it earthy veins, the produce of which is brought
down and melted and purified. Then, when they have cast it into the form
of cubes, they carry it to a certain island adjoining to Britain and
called Iktis (probably St. Michael’s Mount). During the recess of the
tide the intervening space is left dry, and they carry over abundance of
tin to this place on their carts; and it is something peculiar that
happens to the islands in these parts lying between Europe and Britain,
for at full tide, the intervening passage being overflowed, they appear
islands, but when the sea returns a large space is left dry and they are
seen as peninsulas. From hence, then, the traders purchase the tin of
the natives and transport it into Gaul, and finally, travelling through
Gaul on foot, in about thirty days they bring their burdens on horseback
to the river Rhone.’ Thus we learn from an authentic source how the tin
of Cornwall found its way to Italy in the times of the first Roman
Emperors; but long before that period the wild inhabitants of Cornwall
must have discovered the use of the metallic treasures of their barren
soil and the way to barter them for the commodities of the rude tribes
of their own island or of the neighbouring nations of Gaul.
When we consider the various and important uses to which tin may be
applied, we cannot wonder at its importance in the commerce of the
ancient world. The discovery of bronze marks one of the great epochs in
the progress of human civilization, and the nations that could command
its use became at once superior, in peace and war, to the tribes who had
only flint spear-heads for their defence or flint hatchets for the
construction of their huts. At a later period, when iron gradually
supplanted the use of bronze for many purposes, tin still continued to
be highly esteemed for its many excellent qualities. Possessing a lustre
but little inferior to that of silver, it is not soon tarnished, and not
only retains its metallic brilliancy a long time, but when lost easily
recovers it. Under the hammer it is extended into leaves called tin-
foil, which are about one-thousandth of an inch thick, and might easily
be beaten into one-half that thickness if the purposes of trade required
it. The application of tin to the coating of other metals has been
carried to great perfection, and it forms the chief ingredient in
various kinds of pewter and other white metallic alloys, such as
Britannia metal, which are manufactured into domestic utensils by
casting, stamping, and other ingenious processes. Tin is the substance
which, coated with quicksilver, makes the reflecting surface of glass
mirrors. It is also very important in dyeing processes, as its solutions
in nitric, muriatic, and other acids gives a degree of permanency and
brilliancy to several colours not to be obtained by the use of other
mordants. A compound of tin with gold gives the fine crimson and purple
colours to stained glass and artificial gems, and enamel is produced by
the fusion of oxide of tin with the materials of plate glass.
There are only two ores of tin—the peroxide, or tinstone, and the
pyrites, or stannine. The former alone occurs in sufficient abundance
for metallurgic purposes, and has been found in few countries in a
workable quantity. In Asia its richest deposits occur in Sumatra, the
peninsula of Malacca, and some smaller islands, particularly Banca and
Billiton. The stanniferous region in this part of Asia extends from 20°
N. Lat. to 5° S. Lat., and in many places the ore is found in such
quantities in the alluvial grounds as to be separated in the easiest
manner, by washing or ‘streaming,’ from the gravel or sand with which it
is mixed. The facility with which it is obtained renders its cost of
extraction so small that large quantities find their way to the European
markets. In 1866 the mines of Banca furnished 5,362 tons of tin, and
those of the Sound 5,254 tons of the same metal. The port of London
alone received 4,400 tons of tin from these two sources. In consequence
of the constantly increasing importation from the Malay countries, the
price of the metal has been constantly decreasing since 1856, so that
the ton of ore, which at that time was worth 70_l._, now fetches no more
than 48_l._ Unfortunately these low prices have materially injured the
prosperity of our Cornish mines, which from year to year find it more
difficult to compete with Banca and Billiton. Their production, however,
still continues to be immense, for in 1866 they yielded 15,080 tons of
ore, from which 9,990 tons of metal were extracted. This quantity is
greater than that of any preceding year; and as many of the deep mines
of Cornwall are changing from copper into tin ore, increased supplies
will be obtained to meet any demand.
Compared with this vast production, that of Saxony (seventy-six tons),
Bohemia (twenty-one tons), Spain, and France is so insignificant as to
be hardly worth mentioning; but our Australian possessions have lately
increased the small number of tin-producing countries, and give promise
of future importance.
Both Cornwall and Devon possess tin mines, which, however, are most
important in the county
‘Where England, stretched towards the setting sun,
Narrow and long, o’erlooks the western wave.’—COWPER.
The undulating surface of this arid peninsula, which, being remarkable
neither for agricultural nor foreign commerce, has been celebrated since
the remotest ages for the mineral riches concealed beneath its barren
soil, consists almost exclusively of slaty transition rocks or _killas_,
traversed or intersected by a central granitic range and by dykes of
porphyry or _elvan_ which cut the slate and granite, occasionally
traversing both in one continuous body of rock, somewhat in the manner
of trap-dykes, and evidently of a later formation. The lodes or mineral
veins traverse the granite, the slate, and the elvan indiscriminately,
but they occur more especially at the junction of granite and slate.
They have commonly one prevailing direction, but they invariably throw
off into the containing rock ‘shoots, strings, and branches,’ often in
such abundance that, instead of one main lode, called a champion lode,
the whole is an irregular network of veins. It is not at all certain
that the same lode has ever been traced for more than a mile in length.
Very often the lode first discovered dwindles to a mere line, whilst
some of its offshoots swell out, enlarge, and rival, or even surpass,
both in size and richness, the veins from which they have separated.
The metalliferous or valuable contents of a lode generally bear but a
small proportion to its unprofitable parts. Instead of forming uniform
lines of metal or pure ore, running throughout the whole extent of the
vein, they generally occur in what the miners term _bunches_, or in
patches of various sizes and shapes. These very rarely occupy the whole
space between the walls or containing sides of the lode, but they are
mixed up with a variety of other substances, the chief of which is
quartz.
Sometimes a lode is filled with a compact and perfectly solid mass; at
other times it abounds in cavities which may occur in any one of the
ingredients and also of any size, from those of the hollows of a
honeycomb to hollows of several fathoms in length and depth.
In many lodes tin is found associated with copper, and frequently above
the latter, so that the upper part of many a copper lode has been worked
as a tin lode.
The veins of Cornwall have no determinate size, being sometimes very
narrow, and at others exceeding several fathoms in width; sometimes they
extend to a great length and depth, at others they end after a short
course. They vary so in breadth that in the same lode one part may
consist of a mere line between the opposing walls, while another swells
to a width of from thirty to forty feet. These great changes, however,
seldom happen within several fathoms of each other. Lodes which yield
both tin and copper in mixture are considerably larger than those which
yield each metal singly. It is also a general fact that the lodes
diminish in breadth in proportion to their depth. The richest tin ores
are more commonly found between forty and sixty fathoms deep; but in
some instances, as in Dolcoath mine, the depth of 200 fathoms has been
attained without exhausting the supply, and Tresavean mine has been
worked to great profit at more than 320 fathoms from the surface. Tin
veins are considered to be good working when only three inches wide,
provided the ore be good for its width.
Besides being contained in lodes, tin is also found in alluvial beds,
probably resulting from the disintegration of the former during a long
series of ages. This stream-tin, as it is called, is met with either in
a pulverized sandy state in separate stones, called _shodes_, or in a
continued course of stones, which are sometimes found together in large
numbers, and occur at depths varying from one to fifty feet. This course
is called a stream, and when rich in ore was formerly called Beauheyl,
which is a Cornish word signifying a ‘living stream.’ In the same
figurative style, when the stone was but lightly impregnated with tin,
it was said to be ‘just alive,’ and dead when it contained no metal.
Tin streams of irregular breadth, though seldom less than a fathom, are
often scattered in different quantities over the whole breadths of the
moor bottoms or valleys in which they are found. As the confluence of
rivers makes a flood, so the meeting of tin-streams makes what is called
a rich ‘floor of tin.’ The ore, being thus disseminated both in the
alluvium which covers the gentle slopes of the hills, and in that which
fills the valleys winding round their base, is easily obtained by
conveying over its bed a stream of water, which, by washing away the
lighter matter, leaves the heavy ore to be picked up where the operation
has been performed.
There can be no doubt that this was the oldest method of tin-getting,
and the abundant traces of ancient stream-works which are to be seen
from Dartmoor to the Land’s End give proof of the great accumulation
which must have been formerly worked out by this method. In the course
of ages most of these alluvial deposits have been exhausted, and where,
thirty or forty centuries ago, large quantities of tin ore were
superficially gathered with little ingenuity and labour, the miner is
now obliged to descend many a fathom deep into the bowels of the earth
and work his slow way through the hard rock.
Yet, after so many centuries of research and extraction, tin-streaming
is still carried on in several places, as, for instance, at Carnon,
north of Falmouth, where a long line of stream-works extends down the
valley. The ore, mixed with rounded pieces of slate, granite, and
quartz, lies buried about fifty feet from the surface, beneath the
bottom of an estuary, where trees are discovered in their place of
growth, together with human skulls and the remains of deer, amidst the
vegetable accumulation which immediately covers the stanniferous beds.
Thus ruins are here piled up above ruins.
In 1866 the number of tin mines in activity amounted to 139 in Cornwall
and to 26 in Devonshire. In 1852 the most important works were
Balleswidden, Great Polgarth, Pollberro, and Drake Wall; but, as nothing
is more fluctuating than the fortunes of mines, others have probably
taken the lead since that period.
Wheal Vor, in the parish of Breage, three miles from Helston, may be
cited as a conspicuous example of the changes of fortune so frequent in
the annals of Cornish mining. Twenty-five years ago it was considered
the richest tin mine in Cornwall. More than 200,000_l._ profit had been
divided among the shareholders. In 1843 there were fifteen engines at
work on this extensive sett, which had the appearance of a town, and the
machinery was valued at 100,000_l._ Here was put up the first steam-
engine ever erected in Cornwall, between the years 1710 and 1714. The
lode from which the chief part of the ore was raised was still
productive in 1843, when the mine employed 1,200 persons, and the
monthly cost of working had been, some years before 1843, about
12,000_l._ per month. The mine, however, became less profitable, and,
wearing out by degrees, finally stopped.
There was formerly a blacksmith’s forge at the bottom of this mine, in
full operation at 1,470 feet below the surface of the earth. All the
miners’ tools were steeled, sharpened, and repaired, and bucket-rods cut
and welded in this subterranean smithy, which was clear and free from
dust, smoke, and sulphur, and did not in the least annoy the miners.
Within the last few years the mine has been resuscitated with a capital
of 200,000_l._; but, as the shares have fallen from 40_l._ to 8_l._, the
attempt seems to have been far from profitable.
The history of the rise and fall of Huel Wherry,[54] a tin mine which
was opened, more than a century ago, in the midst of the sea, near the
town of Penzance, is too interesting to be passed over in silence. In
this place a gravelly bottom was left bare at low water. Here a
multitude of small veins of tin ore crossed each other in every
direction through elvan rocks, and were worked whenever the sea, the
tide, and the season would permit, until the depth became unmanageable.
About the year 1778 Thomas Curtis, a poor miner, was bold enough to
renew the attempt. The distance of the shoal from the neighbouring beach
at high water is about 120 fathoms, and this distance, in consequence of
the shallowness of the beach, is not materially lessened at low water.
It is calculated that the surface of the rock is covered about ten
months in the year, and that the depth of the water upon it at spring
tide is nineteen feet. A very great surf is caused, even in the summer,
by the prevailing winds, while in winter the sea bursts over the rock in
such a manner as to render useless all attempts to carry on mining
operations. Yet all these difficulties had to be overcome by a poor
uneducated man. As the work could be prosecuted only during the short
time the rock appeared above water—a time still further abridged by the
necessity of previously emptying the excavation already made—three
summers were spent in sinking the pump-shaft, which was a work of mere
bodily labour. A frame of boards, made watertight by pitch and oakum,
and carried up to a sufficient height above the spring tide, was then
applied to the mouth of the shaft. To support this boarded turret—which
was twenty feet high above the rock, and two feet one inch square—
against the violence of the surge, eight stout bars were applied, in an
inclined direction, to its sides, four of them below, and four, of an
extraordinary length and thickness, above. A platform of boards was then
lashed round the top of the turret, supported by four poles, which were
firmly connected with these rods. Lastly, upon this platform was fixed a
windlass for four men.
Footnote 54:
‘Cornwall, its Mines and Miners.’
By such an erection it was expected that the miners would be enabled to
pursue their operations at all times, even during the winter months,
whenever the weather was not particularly unfavourable. But as soon as
the excavation was carried, to some extent, in a lateral direction, the
hope was disappointed, for the sea water penetrated through the fissures
of the rock, and, in proportion as the workings became enlarged, the
labour of raising the ore to the mouth of the shaft increased. To add to
all this, it was found impossible to prevent the water from forcing its
way through the shaft during the winter months, or, on account of the
swell and surf, to remove the tin-stone from the rock to the beach
opposite. Hence the whole winter was a period of inaction, and the
regular working of the mine could not be resumed before April.
Nevertheless, the short interval which was still allowed for labour
below ground was sufficient to reward the bold and persevering
projector.
The close of this wonderful mine, from which many thousand pounds worth
of tin was raised, was as romantic as its commencement. An American
vessel broke from its anchorage in Gwavus Lake, and, striking against
the stage, demolished the machinery, and thus put an end to an adventure
which, both in ingenuity and success, was in all probability unequalled
in any country.
This wonderful mine was worked again a few years since; but, although a
very large sum of money was expended, and it had all the advantage of
improved machinery, yet it failed to be a profitable adventure, and was
eventually abandoned.
The Carclaze tin-mine, near the town of St. Austell, though unimportant
with regard to its produce, deserves to be noticed for its picturesque
appearance and the manner in which it is worked. It consists of a large
open excavation, of a mile in circuit and from twenty to thirty fathoms
in depth, looking more like a vast natural crater than a hollow made by
human hands; and for hours the visitor might traverse the dreary and
barren hilly common in which it is situated without suspecting that a
mine is close at hand. No engine-house and chimney towering aloft
announces it from afar; the whole business is confined to the interior
of the punch-bowl hollow. Every detail of the works is here exposed to
view, and it would seem as if a complete mine had been turned inside out
for the benefit of timid travellers, who would wish to see the various
operations of mining without the risk of a descent below the surface.
The walls of this vast hollow or crater are almost perpendicular, and
the view from the ridge of the precipice, into which but few footpaths
descend, is rendered interesting by the fantastic shape of the rocks,
worn or hewn into a thousand grotesque forms by the action of the waters
or the pickaxe of the miner; by the enormous number of holes and hollows
resulting from ancient excavations; by the white colour of the granite,
veined with the darker metalliferous streaks; by the water-wheels at the
bottom, which, worked by streams from the neighbouring commons, propel
the machinery for crushing the stones, loosened by the water as it flows
down the sides of the cavity; and by the men, women, and children,
scattered over the works. The ore is obtained without much difficulty,
and is easily separated from the friable and decomposed granite, in
which it is embedded, by repeated washings in the streams that are made
to flow out at the bottom of the mine through a channel or tunnel, and
which carry away the soft _growan_ or granite by their rapid current,
while the heavier metalliferous substances are precipitated.
As the ores are very poor, not even containing one per cent. of tin,
Carclaze, which has been already worked for many centuries, would long
since have been abandoned but for the abundance of the ores and the
comparatively small expense of their extraction.
The dressing of the tin ores, or the process by which they are separated
as far as possible from the earthy impurities which are mixed up with
them, and are generally much lighter, begins with cleaning and sorting,
and then goes on to washing and stamping, and finally to calcination in
the burning-house and to smelting.
The tin ores of Cornwall and Devonshire are all reduced within the
counties where they are mined, as the law prohibits their exportation—a
most absurd and antiquated regulation, which, however, in this case is
not injurious to private interests, as the vessels which bring the fuel
from Wales for the smelting furnaces return to Swansea and Neath laden
with copper ores. The smelting works, not exceeding seven or eight in
number, belong generally not to the proprietors of the mines, but to
other parties, who purchase the ore from the proprietors.
The smelting is effected by two different methods, which may be briefly
described by stating that, by the first and most common, the ore, mixed
with culm, is exposed to heat upon the hearth of a reverberating
furnace, in which pit coal is used as fuel; while by the second method,
which is applied merely to stream-tin, and which is followed in order to
obtain tin of the finest quality, the ore is fused in a blast-furnace
called a blowing-house, in which wood fuel or charcoal is used. The
melted tin runs off from the furnace into an open basin, whence it flows
into a large vessel, where it is allowed to settle. The scoriæ are
skimmed off, and the subsequent operations consist of refining by
allowing the mass of the metal to rest, then submitting the upper and
pure portion to the refining basin, and remelting the lower part. In
order to convert the blocks into _grain-tin_, they are heated until they
become brittle, and made to fall from a considerable height in a semi-
fluid state, thus producing an agglomerated mass of elongated grains.
The number of persons that find occupation in and about the Cornish and
Devonian tin mines may amount to about 20,000. The wages are, on an
average, much inferior to those of the pitmen and pitlads in the
northern coal-fields; but, on the other hand, the Cornish miner is
exempt from many evils to which the northern miners are subject. He has
not to fear the fatal fire-damp, and can sit at ease and hear or read of
explosions that have destroyed hundreds in a few minutes.
His intellectual superiority to the agricultural labourer may be at once
inferred from the nature of his pursuits. The latter plods on through
life like a mere human machine, and, as he is never thrown on his own
resources in the progress of his monotonous occupations, his stock of
ideas remains scanty and confined. But the Cornish miner is the reverse
of all this. He is engaged mostly in work requiring the exercise of the
mind. He is constantly taking a new ‘pitch’[55] in a new situation,
where his judgment is called into action. His wages are not the stinted
recompense of half-emancipated serfdom; but they arise from contract,
and depend upon some degree of skill and knowledge. In fact the chances
of the lode keep expectation constantly awake, and thus:—
‘Hope reigns triumphant in the _miner’s_ breast,
Who never is, but always to be blest.’
Footnote 55:
The lodes in the Cornish tin and copper mines are divided by shafts
and galleries into rectangular compartments, called ‘pitches.’ These
are open to the inspection of all the labouring miners in the county,
and, by an admirable system, each ‘pitch’ is let by public
competition, for two months, to two or four or more miners, who may
work it as they choose. These men agree to break the ores, wheel them,
raise them to the surface, and bring them (if desired) into a fit
condition for the market. The ores so raised are sold every week, and
the miner immediately receives his _tribute_, or percentage for which
he agreed to work. The sinking of shafts and the driving of levels is
paid by tut-work, or task work, at so much per fathom.
If he is at all imaginative, golden dreams enliven the darkness of his
underground labour. He is in fact a kind of subterranean stock-jobber,
and ‘settling day’ is as anxious a time for the humble tributer at the
Land’s End as for the bold speculator of the Stock Exchange.
When not exhausted after his hard day’s labour, the miner frequently
cultivates a small patch of land. Many have tolerable gardens, and some
are able to perform their own carpentry, while, if near the coast,
others are expert fishermen.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
IRON.
Iron the most valuable of Metals—Its wide Diffusion over the Earth—
Meteoric Iron—Iron very anciently known—Extension of its Uses in
Modern Times—British Iron Production—Causes of its Rise—Hot Blast—
Puddling—Coal-smelting—The Cleveland District—Rapid Rise of
Middlesborough—British Iron Ores—Production of Foreign Countries—The
Magnetic Mountain in Russia—The Eisenerz Mountain in Styria—Dannemora—
Elba—The United States—The Pilot Knob—The Cerro del Mercado.
As an instrument of civilisation iron is the most valuable and the most
indispensable of all mineral substances. Even coal is of inferior
importance to the welfare of mankind, for iron may be obtained without
its aid, while coal could not possibly be extracted from the bowels of
the earth without the assistance of iron. Hard and malleable, tenacious
and ductile, endowed with the singular property of welding, which is
found in no other metal except platinum, and acquiring new qualities by
its conversion into steel, it accommodates itself to all our wants and
even to our caprices, so that no other metal has such various and
extensive uses. It clothes our war ships with a case of impenetrable
armour, and sets the finest watch in motion; it provides the sempstress
with her needle, and guides the mariner over the ocean; it furnishes the
husbandman with his ploughshare, and the soldier with his sword; it
concentrates in the steam-engine the sinews of a thousand horses, and
mocks on the railroad the fleetness of the swiftest courser. It is, in
one word, the embodiment of power, the chief agent of all social
progress.
‘Were the use of iron lost among us,’ says the illustrious Locke, ‘we
should, in a few ages, be unavoidably reduced to the wants and ignorance
of the ancient savage Americans;’ nor will this view be deemed
extravagant if we reflect that, but for iron, man would be _virtually
without_ tools, since it is almost the only metal capable of taking a
sharp edge and keeping it.
The bounty of the Creator, which bestowed on man this inestimable gift,
has also provided for its wider diffusion over the earth than is the
case with any other of the useful metals. Few mineral substances or
stones are without an admixture of it. Sands, clays, the waters of
rivers or springs, are scarcely ever perfectly free from iron, while
animal and vegetable substances likewise afford it in the residues which
they leave after incineration. Its mines may truly be said to be
inexhaustible; in some its ores occur in compact masses of extraordinary
magnitude, in others they spread in vast strata or extend in veins of a
prodigious length.
Yet, in spite of its wide diffusion, the extraction of iron from its
ores generally requires so much metallurgic skill that its use would
probably have remained undiscovered by the ancients if Providence had
not in a wonderful manner revealed, as it were, its existence to
mankind.
All iron of a _terrestrial_ origin is combined with other substances,
which conceal its true nature from the uninitiated eye, and from which
it is with difficulty separated; but here and there, scattered over the
surface of the earth, are found solitary masses of metallic iron, which,
having fallen from the skies, may truly be called erratic boulders from
another world. The idea of their having dropped from the clouds was long
ridiculed by the learned; but their fall has been so often observed, and
so circumstantially recorded in the annals of almost every age, that
scepticism has been obliged to yield to the weight of accumulated
evidence, and science no longer doubts their meteoric origin. Nothing
can be more interesting than these mysterious heralds from the distant
fields of ether, which, after wandering through space for countless
ages, have at length been brought within the sphere of attraction of our
planet, and, alighting on its surface, afford us tangible proofs that
many of the substances of which our earth is composed—iron, nickel,
silex, &c., &c.—exist beyond its limits, and that most probably our
whole solar system is constructed of the same materials as our globe.
But meteoric iron—which sometimes occurs in enormous masses[56]—is more
than a mere object of curiosity, for it has had a most important
influence on the progress of the human race. On such a mass undoubtedly
the _first smith_ exercised his skill, and it was this which first made
mankind acquainted with a metal more valuable than copper or gold.
Footnote 56:
The weight of the mass found at Otumpa, in the Gran Chaco Gualamba, in
South America, by Don Rubin de Celis (1783) was estimated at about
fifteen tons. A piece from this mass, weighing 1,400 pounds, is now in
the British Museum.
As we see from the example of the Esquimaux, whom Captain Ross (1819)
found in possession of knives and harpoons which they had made from
masses of meteoric iron, the discovery was probably made at a very
remote period, while man was still in the savage state; but iron having
once become known, the desire to obtain it in larger quantities from
other sources naturally grew with the progress of civilisation, and
gradually led to the knowledge of its ores and of the art of utilising
them. Thus there can hardly be a doubt that iron-smelting was practised
long before historic times. In India and China the origin of its use
loses itself in the remotest antiquity; and the imposing monuments of
ancient Egypt, many of which are at least five thousand years old, could
not possibly have been erected without the aid of iron. In the Book of
Deuteronomy (iv. 20) the land of Egypt is compared to an iron-furnace—a
figurative expression which shows that even at that early period iron-
smelting must have been a well-known branch of industry.
The iron weapons found in the lacustrine dwellings of Switzerland
likewise point to a very ancient use of iron in Central Europe, no less
than the fact mentioned by Cæsar, that during the siege of Avaricum
(Bourges) the works erected by the Romans for taking the town were
repeatedly destroyed by the subterranean galleries of the besieged, who,
as the conqueror relates, were accustomed to such underground labour
from their habitually working in iron-mines, an industry which, to judge
from this passage, must even then have been of ancient date in Gaul.
For many ages the uses of iron remained chiefly confined to the
instruments of agriculture and of war—to the ploughshare and the sword.
With the progress of civilisation its employment extended to many
purposes unknown before; and in our times the construction of ships and
buildings, of railroads and bridges, absorbs quantities which would have
appeared incredible almost within the memory of living man. Hence the
manufacture of iron has made more rapid progress since the beginning of
the present century than in any former period of the world’s history,
and even the present immense production scarcely keeps pace with a
demand to which it is not easy to assign a limit.
Among the iron-_producing_ countries of the globe Great Britain occupies
by far the first rank, and there is every reason to believe that it will
long continue to maintain it. The British ores, indeed, are generally
poor, as clay, silica, phosphorus, and a variety of impurities which are
with difficulty separated from the metal, enter into the composition of
those which supply the greatest part of our iron; but this deficiency is
more than counterbalanced by many advantages. Most of the British iron
mines are situated in those districts where coal is cheapest, the ore
being often even raised from the same pit as that from which the coal is
extracted. Limestone, the necessary flux, is at hand, while fire-clay,
no unimportant article in the building of the furnaces, on whose long-
continued working so much depends, is found in the same ground as the
ore itself. The largest and most complete manufactories have long been
established in the most convenient places. With an almost unlimited
amount of capital, the most perfect and the cheapest communication by
water is open to all parts of the world; and the further processes which
the metal has to undergo are performed at once on the spot in the best
manner and at the smallest possible expense. No other land can boast of
equal or greater facilities for the production of an unlimited quantity
of cheap iron, so that, even with the assistance of heavy protective
duties, most of the iron-producing countries of Europe find it difficult
to compete in their own markets with the produce of Great Britain.
The art of making iron in this country is of very ancient though of
unascertained date. It was probably found by the Romans in a far
advanced state. It certainly was carried on by them subsequently to a
great extent—a fact proved by the immense beds of iron cinders
discovered in the Forest of Dean; nor has it ever been discontinued by
the other races who in succession have held sway in the island. But,
though of such ancient origin, and enjoying so many natural advantages,
our iron manufacture remained confined within very narrow limits so long
as the ore was exclusively smelted by means of charcoal made from wood.
The manufacture was even for some time partially prohibited in England,
the consumption of wood-charcoal in the process of smelting being so
great as to create apprehensions that, if care were not taken of the
remaining forests, enough timber would not be left to supply the wants
of the navy. It seems almost incredible in our days that Acts were
passed in the reigns of Elizabeth and James forbidding the felling of
timber for the smelting of iron, except in certain districts of Kent,
Sussex, and Surrey, then the principal seats of the manufacture, and
even there the erection of new works was expressly forbidden.
Attention was then directed to the smelting of ironstone by means of pit
coal. Amongst others, Lord Dudley gallantly struggled to establish a
manufactory in the neighbourhood of Stourbridge, and partially
succeeded; but what with riots among the ironworkers, who destroyed his
works, and the wars of the Great Rebellion, which ruined his fortune, he
reaped no advantage from his enterprise. Nothing contributed to arrest
the decline in this branch of trade, and towards the middle of last
century the number of furnaces, which in the reign of James I. had
amounted to 300, fell off to 59, the total make of which amounted to not
more than 17,350 tons, being an average of 294 tons per annum for each
furnace, a quantity very little exceeding that sometimes made in a
single week in some of the huge furnaces in Wales in the present day.
The partial use of pit coal in the process of smelting was revived in
Coalbrookdale, in Shropshire, about 1713. The chief difficulty was to
keep the coal in a state of combustion sufficiently intense for the
purpose of smelting the ore; the hand-worked bellows, or the more
powerful water movement, which produced blast enough for charcoal,
having comparatively little effect upon coal.
This obstacle was finally overcome through the perseverance and
enterprise of Dr. John Roebuck (a physician in Birmingham, and
grandfather of the late distinguished member for Sheffield), who,
seeking for more economical methods of smelting iron ore than those then
in use, founded in 1759 the now celebrated Carron Works, where John
Smeaton, the illustrious architect of the Eddystone lighthouse, first
introduced (1760) a new contrivance for throwing a powerful and constant
blast into the furnace. By means of a forcing pump, a large column of
air, of triple or quadruple density to that which had been previously
obtained, could now be poured into the furnace; and effects equivalent
to this great improvement followed. The same smelting oven that formerly
yielded ten or twelve tons weekly now sometimes produced forty tons in
the same period; and such was the impulse given to the trade by this
unexpected success of a powerful blast with pit coal that in 1788 the
manufacture of pig-iron in England, Wales, and Scotland amounted to
68,300 tons, being an increase of 50,950 tons on the quantity
manufactured previous to the introduction of pit coal.
In 1782 Mr. Cort, after many years of experiments, discovered the means
of converting cast or pig-iron into malleable iron by a process which
was at once sure, rapid, and economical. The iron is remelted in a
puddling furnace, as it is called, which is heated with raw coal, and
there, by a series of operations, the object of which is to give the
iron malleability and toughness by expelling the carbon, it is
manipulated until it acquires the consistency of a solid white-hot ball.
In this shape it is subjected to the action of an enormous hammer, by
which the coarser parts are beaten from it, and it is formed into the
shape of thick short bars, called blooms or slabs. While still red-hot
it is passed through a series of grooved rollers, till it is drawn out
into a long bar, the exact dimensions of which are regulated by the
requirements of the manufacture for which it is destined. The bars thus
made are technically called puddled bars, and considered as _half-
manufactured_ iron. To refine them into _merchant_-iron, they are again
submitted to the action of fire, and, when hot enough, are welded
together and formed into the various denominations of bars, rods, hoops,
sheets, or plates. Mr. Cort’s discovery, though of immense importance,
would yet have proved of comparatively small value without the aid of
the double-power steam-engine, which was about the same time invented by
James Watt, and supplied the power which was needed to give our iron-
works their full development.
Hitherto the ‘top measures’ only of the mineral had been worked, and
generally on ‘the rise of the mine,’ where the water would not lie, or
those strata favourably situated on the side of a hill where levels
could be driven in and the water released. Water was the great enemy in
the pits, and even in shallow workings it often accumulated faster than
a gin turned by horse-power could bring it to the surface. By the new
agency of steam the deepest pits were drained, and materials were drawn
up from the bowels of the earth in a quantity and with a rapidity and
security hitherto unknown. By the same means that prodigious blast was
obtained for the furnaces to which all subsequent improvements of the
manufacture owe their origin. Instead of the rude machinery of
waterwheels and bellows, huge engines of enormous power forced an
immense volume of air through several small _tuyeres_ or tubes so
disposed at the lower part of the furnaces that in each portion of the
ignited mass an equally diffused blast might raise an equal intensity of
heat. Furnaces of greater height and much larger capacity than any
hitherto known were erected, and in its general aspect the iron
manufacture assumed very much the appearance which it maintains at the
present day.
[Illustration:
BLAST FURNACE.
_a._ Tuyeres.
]
Most readers are aware[57] that the flaming towers which give such an
unearthly effect at night to what is called the Black Country, round
Wolverhampton, are iron furnaces, and that the projecting circular
galleries which surround their tops are contrived for pouring down their
capacious throats, by apertures placed at equal distances, an equable
and regular supply of the materials with which they are fed. Besides the
iron-stone and the fuel, there is needed a third substance, which is
called ‘a flux,’ because it forms a fusible compound with the earthy
matter of the mineral. When we are acquainted with the foreign matter in
combination with the ore, chemistry tells us what substance we ought to
add for the purpose of eliminating the metal. Among the wonderful
provisions of nature for the convenience of man, none is more remarkable
than that by which many substances are fusible in conjunction at a
temperature which either could resist separately. The British ores are
for the most part argillaceous, that is to say, they are combined with
what, in its general character and appearance, resembles clay. To all
such limestone in due proportion must be added; but if the earthy matter
consists of lime, clay is the proper flux. In either case the foreign
matter and the flux are fused into one substance. The liberated iron
sinks downwards, and having now itself become fusible by the combination
of carbon, with which it has been impregnated by the fuel, it melts as
it reaches the point of fusion, and settles down in the lowest part of
the furnace, otherwise called the hearth. It is followed by the scoria,
slag, or ‘cinder’ (as it is always called in the trade), composed of the
flux, the foreign matter of the ores, and the ashes of the fuel, which
are now in a vitrified state; and this artificial lava, being of much
less specific gravity, rests on the surface of the iron and protects it
from the action of the blast. The furnace is ‘continued in blast,’ that
is to say, in full operation, and must be fed equably and constantly
night and day, till the manufacturer thinks fit to blow it out, either
for the purpose of repairing it, or of reducing his make of iron. At
certain intervals, generally twice in the twenty-four hours, the furnace
is tapped; that is to say, the stoppage of sand which closes an orifice
at the bottom is knocked away, the liquefied metal rushes out, and is
guided successively into moulds of sand in the form of short thick bars,
which, by a rude metaphor, as old as the invention of casting, are
called ‘pigs,’ while the main channel down which the red-hot torrent
flows is called the ‘sow.’
Footnote 57:
‘Quarterly Review,’ vol. cix. p. 114.
The invention of the hot blast gave a new and mighty impulse to the
production of iron. Though Mr. Scrivenor[58] mentions the remarkable
fact that in the furnaces of Peru a contrivance has been noticed for
letting the air pass over hot coals, and thus become heated in its
passage to the fire, yet it was personal observation, and not
archæological research, that, in 1829, suggested to Mr. Neilson, of the
Clyde Iron Works, the possibility of economising fuel by substituting
hot for cold air in blowing his furnaces. Before this important
discovery more than eight tons of coke had been required to produce one
ton of pig-iron; but on heating the blast, previously to its entering
the smelting-oven, to a temperature of 300° F., it was found that a
saving of two and a half tons of coal could be made on every ton of
iron, and on raising it to the temperature of 600° F.—a heat somewhat
more than sufficient to melt lead—a still more considerable saving of
fuel was effected, while at the same time the important discovery was
made that at this high temperature bituminous and even anthracitic coal
might be used instead of coke. Another advantage was that the same steam
power now sufficed for applying the blast to four furnaces which had
formerly been required for three; and the total result of the
improvement was a saving of 72 per cent. of fuel. Thus we have here
another instance of the important results that may be gained from a
single good idea when worked out by clever practical men, for the hot
blast has most assuredly increased the wealth of England by many
millions a year!
Footnote 58:
‘History of the Iron Trade.’
Another circumstance likewise tended considerably to increase the
production of pig-iron. It was found that the hot blast not only had
power sufficient to produce in the raw coal the requisite intensity of
heat, but also to expel from it, to a certain extent, the sulphur, which
injured the quality of the iron, and thus a great economy in labour as
well as in the quantity of fuel was effected. Since then the black-band,
an iron-stone found in great quantities in Scotland, and also, to a less
extent, in Wales, but not readily convertible into iron by the old
methods, and also the Northamptonshire and the Cleveland ores,
discoveries of a later date and of an incalculable extent, have been
made by the hot blast to yield their iron in great abundance.
The power of using the black-band alone in the furnace, and not, as
before the introduction of the hot blast, in small quantities only, and
combined with other ores, constituted a new era in the manufacture of
iron, and gave to Scotland, till then an iron-making district of little
importance,[59] the pre-eminence over all others for the production of
soft fluid iron, best suited to ordinary founding purposes.
Footnote 59:
The metal was formerly so scarce in their country that in the times of
the Edwards the Scotch were accustomed to make predatory incursions
into England for the sake of the iron they could carry off. Now they
not only manufacture sufficient for their own use, but actually export
above half-a-million tons.
The Cleveland district, formerly unknown in metallurgy, is now the seat
of a vast industry, keeping more than a hundred furnaces in blast.
The head-quarters of this new iron-country are established at
Middlesborough, on whose site there existed but one house in 1829, but
which in 1861 had grown into a town of 24,000 inhabitants, and still
increases at the rate of 1,000 a year. Branch railways bring the stone
here for smelting from all the neighbouring quarries, and the dense
cloud of smoke that hangs over the place serves as a land-mark, not only
from the high ground of Yorkshire, but even from some parts of
Westmoreland.
But Middlesborough, ‘the youngest child of England’s enterprise’ as it
has been called by Mr. Gladstone, is by no means one of the loveliest of
her offspring. Scarcely a blade of grass and not a single tree relieves
the dull monotony of its dreary streets of small houses, darkened by
perpetual smoke, which, as the wind sways it, affords, at rare
intervals, glimpses of distant hills or of the Tees, serving only to
make the prison of a town more gloomy. Mines and furnaces have also been
established in other parts of the district—in Rhosdale, at Grosmont near
Whitby, and elsewhere—and not a year passes without the opening of new
veins and the rising of new smoke-clouds amid the lovely dales of north-
western Yorkshire. The iron which eventually finds its way to
Middlesborough is sent thence to every part of the world. Its quality is
essentially inferior to that derived from the coal-measures; but for
ordinary purposes, and for mixing with the finer classes, it is of great
value. Looking to the future, we cannot doubt that the Middlesborough
district is destined to have no rival in any part of the world, for even
now its works compete in magnitude with those of our old iron fields.
A material which had hitherto been thrown away was also, by the agency
of the hot blast, made available for the purposes of the iron master.
The ‘tap cinder,’ or refuse of the puddling furnace, which is not to be
confounded with the cinder of the blast furnace, contains a considerable
percentage of metal, and when thrown again into the furnace greatly
increases the yield, though it proportionally deteriorates the quality
of the iron. The results of all these successive discoveries and
innovations, aided by the facilities of transport afforded by canals and
railroads, are truly astonishing.
The make of iron which, on the introduction of steam, had suddenly risen
to nearly 50,000 tons per annum, reached 125,000 in 1796, and in 1806
had advanced to nearly 260,000. In 1825 the make was nearly 600,000
tons; in 1840 it amounted to 1,300,000 tons; and in 1854 to 2,700,000
tons. In 1865 it reached the enormous figure of 4,819,254 tons—as much
as the combined production of Continental Europe and the United States;
and there is little doubt that the present yield does not fall much
short of 6,000,000 tons! A similar colossal expansion is without a
parallel in the annals of metallurgic industry.
The chief districts which furnish this incredible quantity of iron are
situated in Yorkshire, South Wales, Staffordshire, Durham, Lancashire,
Cumberland, Shropshire, Derbyshire, and the West of Scotland.
The number of furnaces in blast in 1865 were, in England 376,
distributed over 176 iron-works; in Wales 135, distributed over 49
works; and in Scotland 141, over 32. To supply these furnaces there were
raised 9,910,045 tons of ore, the estimated value of which at the place
of production was 3,324,804_l._, that of the pig-iron, at the mean
average cost at the place of production, being 12,048,133_l._
Of the iron-stone, 1,384,500 tons were argillaceous carbonate from the
coal-measures of Staffordshire and Worcestershire; 3,166,000 tons from
the Yorkshire mines; nearly 1,500,000 tons from the coal-measures of
North and South Wales, and 1,500,000 tons argillaceous carbonate from
Scotland.
Of the red hematites of Whitehaven and Ulverstone, which consist almost
entirely of peroxide of iron, and are reckoned among our best ores,
214,433 tons were smelted at the spot, and 937,386 tons exported for the
supply of Staffordshire, South Wales, and other districts.
The brown hematite (brown oxide of iron) of the Forest of Dean, where
the ore exists in almost unlimited quantity, is raised exclusively for
shipment to the iron-works of South Wales. Though not rich, yet, from
the great masses in which it is found, its cost of production is very
low.
The finest iron ores, such as the black oxide or magnetite, specular
iron, and spathose iron, or sphærosiderite, which furnish the best kinds
of iron, are unfortunately but of rare occurrence in Great Britain.
As we see by the following table[60] of the production of cast iron in
the chief European mining States—
┌───────────────┬──────┬──────────┬──────┬──────────┐
│Countries │ Years│ Tons │ Years│ Tons │
├───────────────┼──────┼──────────┼──────┼──────────┤
│Great Britain │ 1840│ 1,400,000│ 1865│ 4,527,000│
│France │ 1845│ 271,000│ 1864│ 1,213,000│
│Prussia │ 1835│ 32,800│ 1865│ 772,000│
│Belgium │ 1845│ 134,500│ 1864│ 450,000│
│Russia │ 1838│ 171,000│ 1865│ 278,000│
│Austria │ 1835│ 200,000│ 1865│ 259,000│
│Sweden │ 1835│ 97,500│ 1865│ 227,000│
│Spain │ 1850│ 26,000│ 1865│ 48,000│
│Italy │ 1838│ 20,000│ 1865│ 27,000│
└───────────────┴──────┴──────────┴──────┴──────────┘
France occupied the next rank to Great Britain in 1864; but since 1866
Prussia, besides the rapid development of the iron industry in
Westphalia and the Rhenish provinces, has acquired new and valuable
mines by the annexation of Hanover and Nassau. Her production had
consequently risen to 1,000,000 tons in 1868, and probably the time is
not far distant when she will have outstripped France. Nassau possesses
inexhaustible supplies of specular iron ore of a remarkable purity,
which not only feed the blast furnaces of Westphalia, but are also
largely exported to England.
Footnote 60:
From the official reports of the International Jury of the Universal
Exhibition of 1867 in Paris.
In proportion to the smallness of her territory Belgium rivals Great
Britain in the production of iron, supplied exclusively by the brown
oxide (brown hematite), and surpasses the vast empire of the Czar.
But Russia has the advantage over all the countries previously mentioned
of possessing inexhaustible deposits of magnetic iron ore (magnetic
loadstone—magnetite) which affords bar-iron of the very best quality;
and though hitherto the immense distances which separate the mines from
the larger centres of consumption have retarded the progress of the iron
manufacture, the construction of railroads is gradually overcoming these
obstacles, and possibly even the now unworked Siberian mines of the
Altaï and of Transbaikalia, where coal is found along with iron, may
acquire importance at a not far distant time. At present the chain of
the Oural (Permia and Orenburg) furnishes nine-tenths of all the iron
produced in the empire. The most remarkable of the Ouralian mines is the
famous magnetic mountain Wissokaja Gora, in the neighbourhood of Nishne-
Tagilsk, which Peter the Great bestowed in 1702 on the armourer Nikita
Demidoff of Tula, along with a vast extent of forests and arable land.
This magnetic mountain or hill, which is 300 fathoms long, 250 broad,
and 240 feet high, rises from the midst of a plain, in the form of a
broad, flat eminence. It consists almost entirely of _pure magnetic iron
ore_, and is worked like an open quarry; but, on account of its
hardness, the ore requires to be blasted with powder. Although many
millions of tons have been extracted from it since it first came into
the possession of the Demidoff family, it may easily be imagined that a
mass of at least 600,000,000 cubic feet of iron-ore is not easily
removed, and will outlast the labours of many generations. The quantity
of cast-iron annually produced amounts to 25,500 tons, which is
converted, partly at Nishne-Tagilsk and partly in the neighbouring
forges, into bar-iron, anchors, kettles, scythes, nails, wire, &c. The
excellent quality of the iron allows it to be rolled into very thin
plates, which are frequently made use of in Russia for the roofing of
houses, and are also manufactured at Nishne-Tagilsk into lacquered
wares, which find a ready sale throughout the whole of European and
Asiatic Russia.
The iron-working industry of Austria has its chief seats in Styria,
Carinthia, Transylvania, and Bohemia, and, though out of proportion with
the vast natural resources of the empire, has of late made rapid
progress. The ores, which are of an excellent quality, are mostly
smelted with charcoal, as they are generally situated at a great
distance from the coal mines. The Noric or Styrian iron has enjoyed an
excellent reputation ever since the time of the Romans, when the
imperial manufactory of Laureacum on the Danube supplied the legions
with swords and javelins.
In a pass of the Styrian Alps, between the valleys of the Mur and the
Enns, lies one of the most remarkable iron mines in the world, the
famous Erzberg or iron-mountain, which rises to a height of 3,000 feet,
and whose summit and sides are almost everywhere coated with a thick
mantle of the richest ore. Authentic records show that it has been
worked ever since the year 712; and probably the Romans derived a part
of their Noric iron from this source, as the ore is not here concealed
in the bowels of the earth, but crops out on the surface, near a
mountain pass which was undoubtedly known to them. As at Nishne-Tagilsk,
the ore thus conveniently situated is quarried from the mountain, and
thus in course of time extensive excavations or grottoes have been
formed all over its surface, affording a most interesting spectacle. The
bottom of these iron-stone pits is irregularly strewn with large blocks
of ore through which wind narrow footpaths. Roads lead from one pit to
the other, and close by are situated the small huts in each of which ten
or twenty of the miners sleep as long as the working season lasts, for
their families generally live lower down in the deeper valleys. On the
top of the mountain stands a colossal crucifix of iron, near which an
annual thanksgiving feast is celebrated. Though the mines are easily
worked, the conveyance of their produce to the smelting-ovens of
Eisenerz and Vordernberg is a matter of much greater difficulty, and
requires numerous tram-roads, galleries, and shafts, through which the
ore is precipitated from a higher to a lower level. At the foot of the
mountain they all unite in one main shaft, which leads into a gallery
ornamented with a monumental gate. Thus the whole of the Erzberg is
covered with various machines, pits, horizontal and vertical galleries,
tunnels, and roads, and represents as it were a _mine turned inside
out_, where all the operations which are elsewhere performed underground
are, as at the Carclaze tin-mine in Cornwall, exposed to the open day.
Here, instead of dirty and dangerous ladders, convenient footpaths,
bordered with trees and illumined by the sun, lead from gallery to
gallery and from pit to pit, and instead of being confined in dismal
passages, the miner enjoys magnificent views of the grandest Alpine
scenery. The annual produce of the Erzberg amounts to 25,000 tons of
excellent iron, as the ore (sparry iron, carbonate of iron,
sphærosiderite) is nearly as pure as the magnetic iron-stone of Russia,
and affords natural steel with the greatest facility. The railroad now
being built in Styria will no doubt greatly increase this production,
which might be continued for many thousand years without exhausting the
vast mineral wealth which Nature has here deposited.
Though Sweden furnishes but an insignificant quantity of iron when
measured by an English scale, yet, in point of quality, its produce is
unrivalled in the world. The purest iron-ores (magnetic iron-stone)
abound in the mountain chains which traverse the kingdom, and immense
forests afford almost inexhaustible supplies of charcoal for their
smelting, so that hitherto the want of roads has alone prevented the
production of iron from attaining dimensions equal to the natural
resources of the country. Many of the richest mines, particularly in the
more northern provinces, have never yet been worked, as for instance the
enormous mounds of magnetic iron-ore at Gellivara (67° N. lat.) in
Swedish Lapland, beyond the Arctic circle, which, from their situation
in a polar desert, have hitherto been totally useless. In 1865 an
attempt was made to utilize them by means of a railroad and the
canalization of the river Luleo, but after a heavy expense the works
were finally abandoned.
Thus the manufacture of iron, which, under more favourable
circumstances, would reach as far as its ores extend, is confined to
Dalecarlia, the more central provinces of Kopperberg, Wermland, and
Upsala, where the celebrated mines of Dannemora, which furnish the fine
Oeregrund iron, largely imported into England for the manufacture of
steel, deserve our particular notice, both for their ancient renown and
their wild and colossal grandeur. An excellent road leads from the
famous university town of Upsala to Old Upsala, old and hoary in the
fullest sense of the word, for its church dates from the Pagan times,
and close by rise three tumuli which, according to popular tradition,
contain the remains of no less important personages than Odin, Thor, and
the divine Freya.
Further on towards the north-east, six geographical miles from Upsala,
lie the iron-works of Oesterby, remarkable for their beautiful situation
in a natural park of forests and lakes, and thence half an hour’s walk
over the plain brings one to the far-famed pit of Dannemora.
The country around is perfectly level, a succession of pine-woods and
open grounds, and no sign announces the vicinity of the mine, until at
length the traveller sees a few huts and some machines for lifting the
ore, and then suddenly stands on the brink of an enormous pit, or rather
of a vast crater, whose black and precipitous walls inclose an area of
at least a mile in circumference. On looking down into the abyss, which
descends to a depth of 450 feet, and is here and there enlivened with
patches of perennial snow, he perceives along its black walls the still
blacker entrances to labyrinthine caves fringed in some parts with long
stalactites of ice of aquamarine transparency and colour. From some of
these hollows the flames of piles of fir-wood are seen to creep along
the hard rock which they are to soften, and the deep gulf is animated by
troops of miners, the distant clang of whose hammers, closely resembling
the clicking of a number of clocks, forms a strange concert with the
creaking noise of the machinery. Attracted by the novelty of the
interesting sight, the eye wanders from one object to another, and time
steals on rapidly and unperceived—when suddenly a bell tolls, and the
scene as suddenly changes.
It is noon, and the tuns, which before were hauled up from the deep
laden with ore, are now seen ascending with a living freight—men, women,
and children—standing quite unconcernedly on the narrow edge of the tub,
and holding with one hand the chain to which it is attached.
Soon a deathlike silence reigns in the pit—a striking contrast with the
noise and life it erewhile displayed—and now loud shouts are heard,
warning all those who may have remained behind that the battery prepared
during the previous working hours is about to explode. Again a profound
silence—and then loud thunder bursts forth, with many an echo, from the
depth of the abyss.
For several minutes the whole neighbourhood trembles as if shaken by an
earthquake. Through the black clouds of smoke which ascend from the
gulf, pieces of stone or ore are hurled upwards, frequently far beyond
the brink of the pit, and most of the detonations are followed by the
crash of the falling fragments rent by the explosion from the mother-
rock.
For many centuries this remarkable mine has afforded employment to many
hundreds of workmen, without showing any signs of exhaustion, for its
mighty mass of magnetic iron-ore descends to an unknown depth and seems
to be practically inexhaustible.
Though the mineral resources of Spain are immense, yet its iron-industry
is so little developed that more than two-thirds of the excellent ores
of Biscay, instead of being smelted in the country, are exported to
France and England.
In Italy the red oxide and magnetic iron-stone mines of Elba have been
celebrated since the remotest antiquity, but, from the want of fuel on
the island, their entire produce, which amounts to about 100,000 tons,
is exported to the coast of Italy, to France, and to England. The
principal mines are situated on the slope of a steep mountain fronting
the sea, and are divided by horizontal terraces into five stories or
huge steps communicating with each other by means of oblique roads, on
which carts convey the ores to the shore. Though worked for more than
2,000 years, the mines, which occupy about 700 workmen, are apparently
able to supply the wants of the remotest posterity.
On turning to America we find the United States making gigantic strides
in the extension of their iron manufacture, which has risen from 347,000
tons in 1840 to 1,200,000 tons in 1864; and as here none of the elements
of progress are wanting—a boundless mineral wealth, liberal
institutions, which allow the freest scope to individual energy, and an
unrivalled spirit of enterprise—there can hardly be a doubt that finally
the United States must become the first iron-country in the world. The
masses of magnetic iron-stone and red oxide which extend along Lake
Superior, over a length of 120 miles and a breadth of from five to
thirty, would alone suffice to provide for the wants of the whole of the
human race for many thousands of years. They only began to be worked in
1849; and in 1866 the railroad which leads from the mines transported
204,454 tons of ore.
The thriving town of Marquette, the central point of this new seat of
industry, was, scarcely twenty years ago, a complete wilderness, where
the Red Indian pursued the beasts of the forest, unconscious that the
treasures concealed beneath his natal soil would one day be the cause of
his expulsion from the hunting-grounds of his fathers.
The State of Missouri possesses two ‘iron-mountains’ similar to the
magnetic mountain of the Demidoff: one of them called Pilot Knob is 600
feet high, the other 220. An immense mass of magnetic oxide has also
been discovered in California, near the northern extremity of the Sierra
Nevada. But though iron is found in abundance in many parts of the
Union, (Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Georgia, &c.), the States
of New York and Pennsylvania produce by far the greatest quantity.
Brazil and the island of Cuba likewise contain vast deposits of the
richest iron-ores; and in Mexico we find the famous Cerro del Mercado,
an iron-mountain 633 feet high, which rises in grotesque form from the
valley of Durango. This wonderful mound has been calculated to contain
3,244,000,000 cubic feet, or 454,000,000 tons, of magnetic iron ore,
capable of yielding 290,000,000 tons of cast iron, or more than fifty
times the annual production of Great Britain! A more industrious and
civilised race would here find a boundless field for profitable
employment; but the indolent Mexican, steeped in ignorance and falling
from one revolution into another, still leaves these treasures almost
untouched, and, neglecting the vast resources of his country, draws
nearly his whole supply of iron from the distant forges of Great
Britain.
CHAPTER XXIX.
LEAD.
Its Properties and extensive Uses—Alston Moor—Belgian Lead Mines—Galena
in America—Extraction of Silver from Lead Ores—Pattinson’s Process—A
great part of our wealth is due to the laboratory.
Lead was but little prized by the ancients, who, unacquainted with
gunpowder, needed no bullets for war or for the chase. The history of
its first discovery is lost in obscurity, but it probably became known
much later than copper or tin, as less metallurgic skill is required for
the smelting of the cupreous or stanniferous ores than for the reduction
of galena or sulphide of lead, which is the most abundant of the
plumbiferous ores, and may indeed be regarded as the only commercial ore
of any value, if we except the carbonates, which are probably formed by
its decomposition.
Lead, however, is mentioned both in the Book of Job and in the fourth
book of Moses, ‘Oh! that my words were graven with an iron pen on
tablets of lead,’ exclaims the long-suffering patriarch, and the
legislator of the Jews commands his people to ‘make go through the fire,
gold, silver, brass, tin, and lead, and everything that may abide it.’
The Phœnicians, who provided Greece and Egypt with Spanish lead,
frequently made use of this metal to increase the weight of their
anchors; and Herodotus, describing a bridge in Babylon, mentions that
its stones were fastened with clasps of iron soldered with lead. The
physical properties of this metal qualify it for a great variety of
uses. As it is but little altered by exposure to air or water, it makes
excellent pump-tubes and rain-gutters; while its considerable weight,
its softness, its flexibility, and the facility with which it melts at a
comparatively low temperature render it an invaluable material for the
soldier’s bullet or the huntsman’s shot. Combined with oxygen it forms
the pigment called red-lead, or minium, and united with carbonic acid
white-lead, or ceruse, which is still more frequently used in painting.
In the manufacture of glass and crystal it plays an important part, as
it forms one of the chief ingredients of flint-glass and crown-glass, of
which, as is well known, the achromatic lenses are made which have so
wonderfully improved the distinctness of our telescopes. United with tin
it forms an alloy which is more fusible than either metal alone, and
which is consequently used as a solder by the plumbers, while with
antimony it combines into a hard mass which serves to make letters for
the printing-press. All these various uses absorb immense quantities of
lead, and render it one of the most valuable products of the
subterranean world.
Among the lead mines of Europe we find the first rank occupied by those
of Spain, which in 1863 furnished the enormous mass of 309,940 tons of
galena. The principal mines are situated in Guipuzcoa, Catalonia,
Arragon, the Sierra Morena, and, above all, in the mountain chain of the
Alpujarras, where the rocks of the Sierra Gador are everywhere traversed
by veins of galena. The production of North Germany is also very
considerable. In 1865 Prussia furnished 57,808 tons of galena, and the
Hanoverian Hartz Mountains, which produced 101,411 tons in 1864, and now
belong to the same monarchy, have raised its previous production to a
threefold amount.
The chief lead mines of England are situated near Alston Moor, where the
three counties of Northumberland, Durham, and Cumberland meet together.
The lofty hills of the district, bare of wood and almost wholly covered
with marshy heaths, are intersected by the valleys through which run the
Tyne, the Wear, and the Tees, with their numerous branches. The country,
though little frequented by tourists, is wild and picturesque; but the
deep gorges with which it is furrowed have more than a mere romantic
interest, for they lay open to view numerous veins of ore, and direct
the operations of the miner to the places where it is sufficiently
abundant to reward his toil. The town of Alston, the mining centre of
the district, is beautifully situated close to the river Tyne, which,
about five miles above it, ascends, between lofty hills, to the foot of
Cross Fell, this picturesque mountain giving a character of considerable
grandeur to the surrounding scenery. The mines of the Alston Moor
district produce annually about 25,000 tons of lead. The waters are
drawn off by long adit levels, and the ores are dragged out by horses to
the day. This region extends southward to the Yorkshire valleys of
Swaledale, Arkendale, and to Grassington, where numerous lead mines are
worked under very similar circumstances. The Yorkshire mines yielded in
1856 8,986 tons of lead.
Another important lead district lies in the northern part of Derbyshire,
in the hilly country of the neighbourhood of the Peak, so well known and
so often visited for its picturesque beauty. The mines of Derbyshire,
which yield annually 5,000 tons of lead, are getting exhausted; they are
very numerous, but in general inconsiderable.
Next to Alston Moor the lead mines of Flintshire and Denbighshire are
the most productive, furnishing annually nearly 6,000 tons of lead. An
important group of veins of lead occurs in the slaty rocks of
Cardiganshire and Montgomeryshire, all of which have an E.W. direction;
although so far from parallel that they often meet, and frequently form
at such points of intersection ‘courses’ of ore. Some of these mines
were very profitably worked in the seventeenth century, and during the
last thirty years several of them have been highly productive.
There are considerable lead mines in the south of Scotland, at
Wanlockhead and Leadhills in Lanarkshire; and those of Strontian, in
Argyleshire, likewise deserve to be noticed. The Isle of Man has two
important lead mines, the Foxdale and Laxey, the former remarkable for
the great size of its main lode. The elevated tracts of Wicklow likewise
contain some valuable lead mines, at Luganure and Glenmalure. In 1866
the total produce of our lead mines amounted to 91,047 tons of galena,
which yielded 67,390 tons of metal.
The island of Sardinia, already renowned among the ancients for its rich
lead mines, produces about 15,000 tons, or nearly as much as France,
where however the extraction of galena has of late years made
considerable progress.
Belgium, which in 1841 produced no more than 34 tons, raised in 1864 no
less than 16,780 tons, chiefly from the mines of Bleyberg-à-Montzen,
situated in the carboniferous limestone near Verviers. To render these
rich deposits available, vast difficulties had to be surmounted by the
united powers of enterprise, capital, and engineering skill. Rivers and
brooks, diverted from their ancient course, were made to flow through
new water-tight channels, and such is the amount of drainage required in
that aquiferous region that engines of two thousand horse-power have to
raise from a depth of 360 feet a daily quantity of 800,000 cubic feet of
water.
In Greece the immense mounds of scoriæ accumulated near the ancient
silver mines of Laurium, have been found to contain about ten per cent.
of lead. Their total mass is estimated at no less than 3,000,000 tons,
and they afford a convincing proof both of the importance of the ancient
silver production of Attica, and of the imperfection of the old Athenian
mining operations. A French company has lately been formed for smelting
this prodigious accumulation of scoriæ, once cast aside as rubbish.
In Siberia the famous lead mines of Nertschinsk, where many an
unfortunate exile is doomed to end his days, are worked merely for the
silver contained in them.
In South America, the Chilian lead mine of Mina Grande, near Coquimbo,
is renowned for its extreme richness, and Brazil has considerable veins
of galena, in the province of Minas Geraes; but probably the United
States of North America (Wisconsin, Arkansas, Iowa, Illinois), possess
the largest galena deposits in the world. In Wisconsin, they extend all
over a vast territory of more than 4,000 square miles. As yet the works
are conducted in the most negligent manner, by a crowd of adventurers.
In winter, when the air in the pits is more salubrious, and agricultural
labour ceases, needy farmers, bankrupt traders, and thriftless artisans
flock from all parts to the lead country for the purpose of repairing
their broken fortunes. In summer when malaria renders the pits extremely
unhealthy, this nomadic population melts away like chaff before the
wind. Yet, in spite of the rough mode of extraction which prevails in
the American lead country, the mines of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois
yielded about 20,000 tons of lead in 1866, and their produce is
constantly increasing.
In all lead mines, the galena often occurs in pieces so large that they
do not require to be separated from the veinstone by the processes of
stamping and washing. They are then called _pure ores_, and the most
simple preparation is sufficient to prepare them for the smelting
furnace. When the ore has been picked and so far prepared, it is first
roasted or heated in a reverberatory furnace, an operation which causes
the oxygen of the air to combine with the two elementary bodies of which
galena is composed. After undergoing this chemical change, the ore is
now mixed with coke, charcoal, or peat, and reduced by smelting in a
small blast furnace of a peculiar kind. Under the influence of heat, the
carbon of the coal, uniting with the oxygen of the ore, flies off in the
form of carbonic acid gas, while the metallic lead, which in the finer
ores amounts to 70 or 80 per cent., sinks to the bottom of the furnace.
Almost all the varieties of galena contain a greater or less proportion
of silver, which it is often found worth while to separate from them.
This process is at present effected according to a most ingenious
method, founded on the circumstance first noticed in the year 1829, by
the late H. L. Pattinson, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, that when lead
containing silver is melted in a suitable vessel, afterwards slowly
allowed to cool, and at the same time kept constantly stirred at a
certain temperature near the melting point of lead, crystals begin to
form. These, as rapidly as they are produced, sink to the bottom, and on
being removed are found to contain much less silver than the lead
originally melted. The still fluid portion, from which the crystals have
been removed, will at the same time be proportionally enriched. By
repeated meltings and crystallisations in a series of cast-iron pots
with fire-places beneath, the workman is thus able to deprive almost
entirely of its silver by far the largest portion of the lead operated
upon, while the remainder becomes an exceedingly rich alloy of both
metals, so as to contain fifty times its original proportion of silver.
This rich lead is subsequently exposed in a refining furnace to a strong
blast of air at a high temperature, fresh supplies of lead being
constantly introduced as the operation proceeds. By this means the lead
becomes rapidly oxidized and converted into litharge, which partly runs
off in the fluid state, and is partly (about 10 per cent.) lost by
sublimation, while the silver forms a cake at the bottom of the cupel.
The brightening of the silver, which lustrously shines forth at the
moment of the separation of the last traces of lead, indicates the
precise period at which the operation should be ended, and the blast is
then turned off and the fire removed from the grate. Before the
introduction of Pattinson’s ingenious process, the separation of the
silver from the lead was attended with a much greater loss of the latter
metal, as greater quantities had to be cupelled to effect the same
result. The economy obtained amounts to no less than 98 per cent.; for
where formerly 100 cwt. of lead were lost by sublimation, the same
quantity of silver is now obtained with a loss of no more than 2 cwt.,
and at the same time with a considerable saving of fuel.
Ores very poor in silver, as for instance those of Alston Moor or
Derbyshire, which formerly could not be profitably cupelled, are now
advantageously treated by the Pattinson process. This is but one example
of the valuable practical results which may be obtained from a single
scientific discovery. But chemistry has introduced thousands of similar
technical improvements in almost all branches of manufacturing industry,
and were we to add together the profits thus obtained, we should find
that a great part of our wealth is due to the laboratory.
CHAPTER XXX.
MERCURY.
Not considered as a true Metal by the Ancients—Its Properties and Uses—
Almaden—Formerly worked by Convicts—Diseases of the Miners—Idria—Its
Discovery—Conflagration of the Mine—Its Produce—Huancavelica—New
Almaden.
Among the metals known to antiquity mercury was the last discovered. It
is mentioned neither in the Bible nor in Homer, who accurately, though
briefly, describes the characters and uses of all the other ancient
metals; but we learn from the works of Aristotle that its discovery must
have preceded the times of Alexander the Great.
From its always remaining fluid in the temperate climates of the earth,
it was, however, not considered as a true metal; for the ancients had no
means of ascertaining that at the low temperature of -39° Fahr., it
becomes malleable and assumes the solid form. The Greeks called it
Hydrargyros or _water-silver_, from its fluidity and argentine colour;
the Romans, ‘argentum vivum,’ or live silver, from which our
‘quicksilver’ has been derived, and in the Middle Ages the alchemists
gave it the planetary name of Mercury, which has been generally adopted
in modern scientific language.
At a very early age cinnabar (sulphide of mercury), the beautiful
scarlet ore from which it is chiefly obtained, was employed by the
ancients as a colouring material for imparting a florid complexion to
triumphant generals or to guests at the festive board. The extent to
which this cosmetic was used may be inferred from the facts mentioned by
Pliny, that the Greeks imported red cinnabar from Almaden 700 years
before the Christian era, and that Rome in his time received 700,000
pounds from the same mines.
As the alchemists considered quicksilver as the fittest substance for
transmutation into gold, it became the subject of innumerable
experiments; and though these manipulations had not the desired effect,
they accidentally led to the discovery of several of its combinations,
which soon became known as powerful medicines. But it was reserved for
modern times to appreciate and understand the full importance of
mercury, and to extend the field of its utility to a variety of uses
unknown to former ages.
Alloyed with tin-foil, it forms the reflecting surface of looking-
glasses; and by its ready solution of gold and silver, and subsequent
dissipation by a moderate heat, it becomes the great instrument of the
arts of gilding and silvering copper and brass. The same property makes
it available in extracting these precious metals from their ores. To
science it is a substance of paramount value. Its great density, and its
regular rate of extension and contraction by increase and diminution of
temperature, give it the preference over all liquids for filling
barometer and thermometer tubes, so that without mercury we should know
but little indeed about the laws of caloric and of atmospherical
pressure. In chemistry it furnishes the only means of collecting and
manipulating, in the pneumatic trough, such gaseous bodies as are
condensible over water. To its aid, in this respect, the modern
advancement of chemical discovery is pre-eminently due, and without its
assistance many a branch of industry which now greatly adds to the
wealth of the nation could never have existed.
Mercury does not rank among those metals which are copiously
disseminated over the surface of the earth. Considerable deposits or
veins of even its commonest and most abundant ores (red cinnabar;
hepatic cinnabar) are confined to a few spots, and all Europe possesses
but two important quicksilver mines—at Almaden in Spain, and Idria in
Carniola.
The Sierra Morena or the Black Mountains in the Iberian Peninsula, so
well known as the scene of the exploits of Don Quixote, are no less
renowned in the mining world for their subterranean riches, among which
the famous quicksilver mines of Almaden del Azogue hold a conspicuous
rank. This small town of about 10,000 inhabitants is situated on the
northern border of the above-mentioned mountain chain, at the south-
western extremity of the province of New Castile, and, unlike most other
Spanish cities, affords the pleasing sight of well-built houses and
clean and regular streets. As is generally the case in mining districts,
the neighbourhood is sterile, but picturesque, and from the neighbouring
mountains magnificent prospects open on every side.
The mines of Almaden, after having been the property of the religious
knights of Calatrava, who had assisted in expelling the Moors, were
farmed off to the Fuggers, the celebrated merchant princes of Augsburg,
whose descendants still rank among the high aristocracy of Germany.
Afterwards, from the date of 1645 till the present time, they have
either been worked on Government account or farmed off to private
companies. A visit to these celebrated mines is highly interesting. A
spacious tunnel or gallery, completely walled with solid masonry, leads
into the bosom of the mountain and branches out at its extremity into
several galleries hewn in the slate which forms the matrix of the vein.
One of these galleries conducts to the Boveda de Santa Clara, a vast
circular hall in which formerly stood a horse-gin, for raising the ore
to the surface. At present, however, this work is performed through a
shaft which descends to the lowest level of the mine. From another
gallery convenient stairs lead down to the first working level of the
mine, and thence short ladders to the deeper stories. The shafts are
wide, the galleries high enough to allow one to walk upright through
them. The upper stories are almost thoroughly dry, the lower ones humid;
the water, however, is easily removed by hand-pumps, which raise it from
story to story into a large subterranean reservoir, emptied once a week
by a steam-engine of fifty-four horse-power. The veins are so extremely
rich that, though they have been worked pretty constantly during so many
centuries, the mines have hardly reached the depth of 1,140 feet. The
lode actually under exploration is from fourteen to sixteen yards thick,
and it becomes thicker still at the crossing of the veins. Its present
annual produce amounts to about 80,000 cwt. of pure mercury. The ore
presents a beautiful sight in the galleries where it is worked, on
account of the dark red glittering colour of the cinnabar, which is
sometimes earthy and sometimes forms compact crystalline masses, or fine
crystals mixed with calcareous spar. Often when a hewer detaches a block
of ore with his pickaxe, quicksilver masses of the size of a pigeon’s
egg roll from a crevice in which they were lodged, and, leaping along
the floor, divide into thousands of small drops. This, however, is no
loss, for all the rubbish which accumulates in the galleries is
carefully collected.
The ores are treated in thirteen double distillatory furnaces, called
alodels, and yield only ten per cent. upon an average. But the analysis
of the ores leaves no doubt that the barbarous apparatus employed in its
sublimation causes a loss of nearly one-half of the quicksilver, which
is dispersed in the air, to the great injury of the workmen’s health.
This apparatus has remained without any material change for the better
since the days of the Moorish dominion in Spain. The furnaces are heated
with brushwood, particularly with the resinous branches of the _Cistus
ladaniferus_, which grows over the greatest part of the surrounding
mountains. This dark evergreen shrub often extends over many miles of
ground, and when in flower covers the hills with a beautiful snow-white
carpet.
Formerly only criminals condemned to hard labour for life were employed
to work in the mines of Almaden. At sunrise they were conducted from a
prison, which still exists, through a subterranean passage into the
mines, where they were obliged to toil till evening, when they were led
back again to their dungeons, so that they never saw the light of day.
After a few years these poor wretches generally died from inhaling the
poisonous vapours of the mercury. Reduced to despair, they set fire, at
the beginning of the last century, to the galleries, which were then
constructed of wood, and thus rendered the mining operations impossible
for many years. Since then only free miners are employed, who are well
paid, and not allowed to work longer than six hours a day. Most of them,
however, die at an early age, between thirty and forty, and those who
live longer are affected by a spasmodic trembling, so as to be unable to
keep a limb quiet.
After the mines of Almaden those of Idria in Carniola are the richest in
Europe. This neat little town lies in one of the largest and most
picturesqe basins of the Julian Alps. The gigantic and naked rock walls
which inclose the sequestered valley are only partially decked along
their summits with clumps of firs; but lower down the slopes are covered
with beautiful meadows and forests, and here and there on the projecting
spurs of the mountains stand picturesque chapels, which serve to
heighten the beauties of the magnificent panorama.
Chance—to which man owes so much both of good and evil—also led to the
discovery of the subterranean treasures of Idria. In the year 1497 a
peasant found, in a tub which he had placed under a brook, some drops of
a heavy liquid shining like silver. Although quite ignorant of the value
of his discovery, he still was cunning enough to carry them to a
goldsmith without mentioning the place where he had found them. At
length a man named Anderlein, having promised him a handsome reward,
became master of the secret, and associating himself with several
wealthy persons, began to work the mine. After several years the
property passed into the hands of a company of goldsmiths of Salzburg
and Augsburg, which derived such profits from the mine as to excite the
greed of the neighbouring Venetians, who in the year 1510 forcibly drove
away the Germans, but were soon after expelled by the Emperor
Maximilian, who, as soon as he heard of this insolent attack, sent some
troops into the forest of Idria and restored it to its rightful owners.
In 1578 the mine was incorporated among the domains of the State, and
began to be worked with greater regularity.
The entrance lies to the south of the town, on the slope of a small hill
projecting from the circular zone of mountains which gird the basin. The
visitor may either descend, in less than five minutes, to the bottom of
the pit, through a perpendicular shaft, in one of the large tubs which
serve to raise the ore, or he may make use of convenient stairs. Here
and there are landing-places, whence galleries lead to the various
fields or stories of the mine, the lowest of which is 145 fathoms under
ground. The vein, however, descends much further, to an unknown depth,
and its horizontal extent has likewise not yet been measured.
As the limestone in which the ores are imbedded does not form a solid
compact mass, but is of a loose nature, most of the galleries had, from
the very beginning of the mining operations, to be artificially propped.
Until the end of the last century wooden beams were chiefly used for
this purpose—a construction which frequently gave rise to fearful fires.
Thus on March 16, 1803, the workmen saw a thick smoke issuing from
several of the deepest galleries. It rose higher and higher, and spread
through the upper galleries of the mine. No fire was to be seen, no
sound of flames was to be heard, yet there could be no doubt that the
mine was burning. Some of the workmen boldly undertook to descend to the
scene of the fire, but in vain; they were obliged to flee before their
enemy, for the smoke was not only dense and suffocating, but so
impregnated with poisonous vapours that no living being could exist
within its reach. An attempt was now made to smother the fire by
shutting out the air. All the galleries were blocked as near as possible
to the supposed seat of the fire, as well as the two shafts which led to
the upper world. The mine remained thus closed during five weeks, but to
no purpose; for when it was reopened, the fire burst forth more
furiously than before. The flames now howled fearfully from the bottom
of the pit, and the mercurial and sulphurous fumes which rose from it
threatened instant death to anyone who should be rash enough to approach
them. The director of the mine now resolved to flood the works as a last
resource against the ravages of fire. A river was turned into the
perpendicular shaft, and ran during two days and three nights into the
pit. On the first day there was no perceptible effect, but on the
second—whether it were that the vapours produced by the meeting of the
antagonistic elements were striving for an outlet, or that new
inflammable gases had been formed—a most terrific explosion took place,
which made the whole mountain tremble as if shaken by an earthquake. The
huts close to the opening of the shaft were rent to pieces, the stone
houses at the foot or on the slopes of the hill fell in with a
tremendous crash, and the inhabitants of Idria, fancying the day of
judgment had arrived, fled in terror to the hills.
In the mine itself the explosion was afterwards found to have torn up
the galleries, to have burst the vaulted roofs, and to have hurled away
the stairs. But the victory was now won. The vapour gradually drew off,
and after a few weeks it was possible once more to descend into the pit.
Two full years, however, passed before the water was fully pumped out
into the Idriza, where it poisoned all the fishes, with the exception of
the eels, who, it seems, are proof against everything except roasting or
boiling. Even after all the water had been removed, it was still found
impossible to work in the mines, partly from the heat, but chiefly on
account of the venomous fumes, which soon produced all the symptoms of
mercurial disease.
In order to stimulate almost superhuman exertions, an exorbitant salary
was offered to all those who should venture to explore the most
dangerous passages, and gather the quicksilver, which in some places had
collected in considerable masses. But many paid for their greed with
their lives, and for many months afterwards the air remained so noxious
that the ordinary mining works could not possibly be carried on. To
prevent similar accidents for the future, and also on account of the
increasing scarcity of wood, the galleries have since then been walled
with stone; but when we consider that the whole length of the
subterranean passages amounts to no less than fifty miles, we cannot
wonder that many of them are still propped with wood, and that as
recently as 1846 fire raged in the mine, which was again quenched by
putting part of it under water.
The stone galleries are vaulted, and of a masterly construction, seven
feet high and six feet broad. The cost is less than one would suppose,
as the progress of the mining operations furnishes the necessary
materials.
The temperature in many galleries is equal to that of a conservatory;
and if a floral hall, bathed in light and filled with delicious odours,
is felt to be disagreeably hot, the warmth of the air is naturally far
more intolerable in dismal excavations, where the workman pursues his
laborious task by the weak glimmering of a lamp, and in an atmosphere
full of deadly vapours.
Here, as in Almaden, a premature old age is the lot of the unhappy
miners, who while young tremble like old men. Yet some attain a
tolerably good old age, and he who reaches his forty-fifth year with
trembling limbs is said to get accustomed to the effects of the poison,
and may then live, or rather vegetate, till sixty or seventy.
Scarcely any animals live in the mines of Idria. Even spiders cannot
long resist the noxious atmosphere. Rats, however, formerly existed
there in considerable numbers, but have almost entirely disappeared
since the last fire, which proved too much even for them. In some parts
of the mine the mercury is inclosed in the clay-slate in extremely fine
globules, so as scarcely to be visible to the naked eye; but on removing
the ore many of them fall out and collect on the floor, in larger drops
or small pools, which are carefully gathered in leather pouches or bags.
By far the greatest part of the mercury of Idria, however, is combined
with sulphur, and is obtained by distilling the ore in vast furnaces.
It may easily be imagined that the carriage of a liquid body of the
weight of mercury requires the greatest care. The old mode of packing,
still partly in use, is in sheep-skins, which can acquire the necessary
firmness only by being tanned with alum, and are attentively examined
before being used. After having been filled, the sack is first tried on
a wooden table, and, having successfully stood the ordeal of severe
pressing and punching, is enclosed in a second skin. Two of these
packages, each containing forty-one pounds and a few ounces, are then
placed in a small cask, and three of these in a square box. But as, in
spite of all these precautions, the sacks will sometimes burst, the
mercury is now frequently transported in large iron bottles, the
stoppers of which are firmly screwed down by means of a machine invented
for the purpose. All the quicksilver packed up in this manner is sent to
Trieste, and thence chiefly to England, while that which is destined for
Vienna and Germany is exported in sacks.
In the years 1856, 1857, and 1858, 4,570, 7,178, and 4,331 hundredweight
of mercury were produced in Idria, and sold at an average price of one
hundred florins. In 1850 mercury was worth two hundred and fifty florins
the hundredweight, and thus we see how detrimental the competition of
California has been to the Austrian treasury, which, in its chronic
state of atrophy, is little able to bear any diminution of revenue.
A great part of the produce of the mines—about 1,000 hundredweight—is
manufactured into cinnabar in Idria, which supplies almost all Europe
with this splendid red colouring matter. All the other European
quicksilver veins, in Tyrol, Bohemia, Hungary, and the Bavarian
Palatinate, are utterly insignificant when compared with Almaden and
Idria, as none of them produce more than a few hundredweight.
But even Almaden and Idria have lost much of their former importance
since the discovery of the rich mines of New Almaden in California,
which in 1865 yielded 4,000 hundredweight of mercury. As the uses of
mercury are few, the falling off in price has been the consequence. But
the greater cheapness of mercury has had a most favourable influence on
the production of silver in Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, &c., as many of the
poorer ores can now be profitably worked; and thus California, which by
its gold placers threatened to disturb the relative value of the two
precious metals, has, by promoting at the same time the production of
silver, largely helped to maintain the former equilibrium and to relieve
the fears of many political economists.
It is a remarkable circumstance that, while Europe has for the last
three centuries received almost all its silver from America, Mexico and
Peru were all the time dependent upon the old world for the mercury
without which Potosi and Guanaxuato would have been comparatively
unproductive. Quicksilver, it is true, had been found here and there,
but the only mine of importance was that of Huancavelica in Peru, the
discovery of which in the year 1567 is attributed to the Indian Gonzalo
Navincopa, though, according to Humboldt, it was already known to the
Incas, who made use of cinnabar to paint their cheeks, as Roman senators
and Athenian archons had done before them. Here, at a height surpassing
that of the Peak of Teneriffe by 1,500 feet, from 4,000 to 6,000 cwt. of
quicksilver were annually obtained, until the folly of a director ruined
the chief mine. Ever since 1780 Huancavelica had with difficulty
supplied the growing wants of the Peruvian silver mines, for at a
greater depth the ore was found to be mixed with sulphuret of arsenic,
which greatly deteriorated its quality. As the lode forms an enormous
mass, strong pillars had been left standing to support the roof, and
these props the above-mentioned director had the improvident temerity to
remove, in order to increase the produce of the mine. What anyone with a
little experience or common-sense might have foreseen, took place. The
rock, deprived of its supports, gave way, the roof fell in with a
tremendous crash, and the mine was ruined—a memorable warning against
the greed which, snapping at a shadow, loses the substance.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE NEW METALS.
Zinc—The Ores, but not the Metal, known to the Ancients—Rapid Increase
of its Production—Chief Zinc-producing Countries—Platinum—Antimony—
Bismuth—Cobalt and Nickel—Wolfram—Arsenic—Chrome—Manganese—Cadmium—
Titanium—Molybdenum—Aluminium—Aluminium Bronze—Magnesium—Sodium—
Palladium—Rhodium—Thallium.
The metals known to the ancients were either such as occur in a native
state and whose lustre must attract even the attention of the savage, or
such as are easily extracted from their ores by the simple agency of
fire and carbon, and consequently require no complicated metallurgic
treatment. Their number is limited to the seven substances described in
the preceding chapters; but the art of the modern chemist has greatly
extended our knowledge of metals, and revealed to us the existence of no
less that fifty-six of these elementary bodies.
Some have been found to lurk under the obscure disguise of alkaline and
earthy matters, such as clay and chalk, magnesia and sand, soda and
potash; others have been discovered in the water of mineral springs, or
under the brilliant mask of precious stones. Most of these were unknown
before the beginning of the present century, nor can there be a doubt
that future researches will make us acquainted with many metals whose
existence is still a secret to mankind.
Most of these new metals are as yet mere objects of curiosity, either
from their rarity or the great difficulty and cost of their production;
but some of them are already of considerable use, and within the last
fifty years zinc has obtained a rank among the most important products
of the mineral world. Calamine, the chief ore which provides us with
this metal, was indeed known to the ancients, who by smelting it with
copper ores obtained an alloy similar to our brass;[61] but the metal
itself seems to have been first discovered by the famous alchemist
Bombastus Paracelsus, who flourished towards the end of the fifteenth
century. Zinc, however, remained unnoticed as a useful metal until the
year 1805, when Hobson and Sylvester’s discovery that it is malleable at
a temperature of 300° F., and can then be worked to any shape with great
facility, caused it to replace lead for many purposes, in which its
hardness and other valuable qualities render it superior. As it is very
easily extended into thin sheets, and combines the advantages of
lightness, salubrity, and durability, it is frequently used for the
roofing of houses and for the sheathing of ships. Many of our domestic
utensils, particularly those which serve for the holding of liquids, are
now made of zinc. Large quantities are moulded into architectural
ornaments; and the splendid white colour of the oxide of zinc has made
it a triumphant rival of ceruse, or white-lead. To provide for so many
uses, the production of zinc has in a short time made strides without a
parallel in the history of metals. While before 1808 from 150 to 200
tons sufficed for the annual consumption of Europe, more than 110,000
tons are now required, so that in little more than half a century the
demand has increased more than five hundred times, and a metal
previously almost unnoticed is now produced in masses worth several
millions of pounds.
Footnote 61:
A coin of Nero, analysed by Arthur Phillips, was found to consist of
81·07 per cent. copper, 1·06 tin, and 17·73 zinc; another, of Hadrian,
of 85·78 copper, 1·19 tin, 1·81 lead, 6·43 zinc, and 0·74 iron.
The chief zinc-producing countries of Europe are Prussia and Belgium.
The Prussian mines, which in 1866 yielded 1,204,419 hundredweight, or
about 60,000 tons, are situated in Silesia, Westphalia, and the Rhenish
provinces. In the same year Belgium produced 35,500 tons, chiefly from
the mines of the Vieille Montagne, near Aix-la-Chapelle, where calamine
occurs in a large mass, imbedded in chalk, and is worked like an open
quarry.
In England calamine is, next to galena, the most important ore obtained
from the Derbyshire mines, and of late years large quantities of blende
or sulphuret of zinc—an ore which, on account of the special
difficulties offered by its treatment, had hitherto been neglected—are
likewise furnished by the Isle of Man, Denbighshire, Flintshire, and
Cornwall.
In 1864 our entire production of zinc amounted to no more than 4,040
tons; but since that period it has been considerably increased by the
importation of immense quantities of Sardinian, Swedish, and Spanish
ores, which are for the most part reduced in the works of Messrs.
Vivian, at Swansea.
For many years the United States depended upon Europe for their whole
supply of zinc; but as nature seems to have denied none of her mineral
riches to the great republic, the discovery of immense deposits of
calamine and blende in the state of Tennessee has enabled them to
compete successfully with foreign produce, and the works of Leehigh and
Lasalle now furnish a large proportion of the zinc consumed in the
country.
Platinum, the heaviest body in nature, was first discovered by the
Spaniards, in the gold mines of Darien, probably in the first half of
the sixteenth century;[62] but as it remained infusible in the strongest
heat, and no method was known for purifying its ore, in which it is
remarkably combined with six or even seven other metals, it continued
for a long time to be a mere object of curiosity. In 1772 Count
Sickingen discovered that it can be welded like iron when urged to a
white heat, and first succeeded in producing platinum wire and platinum
leaves. A few years after the celebrated Swedish chemist, Bergmann,
isolated it from the metallic substances associated with its ore, and
proved it to be a peculiar metal.
Footnote 62:
Kopp, ‘Geschichte der Chemie,’ vol. iv. p.221.
Platinum is found in almost all the auriferous districts of the globe,
but generally in such small quantities as not to be worth the
collecting. Kuschwa Goroblagodat and Nishne-Tagilsk, in the Ural,
furnish annually about eight hundred hundredweight, which is nearly ten
times the amount from Brazil, Columbia, St. Domingo, and Borneo. But, in
spite of this scanty production, its discovery must be considered as one
of the most important conquests which science has made in the material
world, as its perfect infusibility, its hardness, its unalterability by
air and water, and its property of withstanding the action of the most
corrosive simple acids, render it an invaluable material for the
fabrication of various chemical vessels, without whose assistance many
important discoveries could not possibly have been made. To the
manufacturers of sulphuric acid large retorts of platinum are
indispensable for concentrating this highly corrosive fluid, which
devours every other metallic vase with which it comes in contact. The
price of platinum is intermediate between that of gold and silver.
The ores of Antimony played a great part in the labours of the
alchemists, but the metal is first mentioned in the works of Basilius
Valentinus, who flourished during the second half of the fifteenth
century. It is used chiefly in several important alloys. Combined with
lead it constitutes type-metal, and united with lead and tin it is
employed for making Britannia metal, and the plates on which music is
engraved. Nearly all the antimony of commerce is furnished by the grey
sulphuret (stibnite), which occurs in Hungary, Saxony, South America,
and Australia. Though Cornwall produces a considerable quantity of
antimonial ore, our chief supply is derived from Singapore, the emporium
of the various mines of Borneo and other parts of the Malayan
Archipelago.
The grey antimony ore was employed by the ancients for colouring the
hair and the eyebrows, and for staining the upper and under edges of the
eyelids—a practice still in use among Oriental nations for the purpose
of increasing the apparent size of the eye. According to Dioscorides, it
was prepared for this purpose by inclosing it in a lump of dough, and
then burning it in the coals till it was reduced to a cinder. It was
then extinguished with milk and wine, and again placed upon coals and
blown until it was ignited, after which the heat was discontinued, lest,
as Pliny says, ‘_plumbum fiat_’—it become lead. It hence appears that
the metal antimony was occasionally seen by the ancients, though not
distinguished from lead.
Bismuth, a metal of a dull silver-white colour, inclining to red, is
first mentioned in the writings of the alchemists of the Middle Ages. It
is almost exclusively furnished by the mines of Schneeberg in Saxony,
where it is generally found in a native state. On account of its great
fusibility and brittleness it is seldom used alone; but associated with
other metals it forms several valuable alloys.
In the Middle Ages the Saxon and Bohemian miners believed all those ores
from which, in spite of their promising appearance, they were unable to
extract a useful metal, to be a work of the gnomes mocking the industry
of man. Some of these ores they called Kobold—an opprobrious name given
to these evil subterranean spirits, who were supposed to be of dwarfish
stature and intense ugliness; others Nickel—a name probably of the same
meaning as our old Nick. The progress of metallurgic industry has fully
exculpated the gnomes of all evil intentions, for the last century
succeeded in extracting the metals Cobalt and Nickel from those
rebellious ores. Cobalt, though as yet but rarely employed, gives
promise of some future importance, as it appears to be extremely
tenacious. A wire made of pure cobalt will carry nearly double the
weight that an iron wire of the same thickness will do.
The cobalt ores, which impart a magnificent blue colour to glass, have
lost much of their importance as pigments since the discovery of
artificial ultramarine, while the nickel ores which usually accompany
them, and were formerly thrown away as rubbish, have become valuable,
since the metal which they contain has found some important uses. The
small coin of Belgium and Switzerland is now made of nickel instead of
copper, and large quantities are employed in the fabrication of German
silver, or Argentine plate, an alloy of copper, nickel, and zinc, which,
from its hardness and brilliant white colour, furnishes an excellent
material for tablespoons and forks. Both the nickel and cobalt ores are
produced chiefly by Sweden, Norway, and Germany; our own mines furnish
but insignificant quantities. In the United States the Camden works (New
Jersey) now produce nickel at the rate of 150,000 pounds a year.
Tungsten, a metal discovered in 1783 by two Spanish chemists, the
brothers Juan and Fausto d’Elhujar, in a black mineral called wolfram,
which frequently occurs along with tin ores in Cornwall (where it is
known under the names of cal, or callen, and gossan), Saxony, Austria,
&c., is in its isolated state a mere object of scientific curiosity, but
when melted with cast steel or even with iron only, in the proportion of
from two to five per cent., it produces a steel which is very hard and
fine-grained, and for tenacity and density is superior to any other
steel made. Hence wolfram-steel, which is now coming extensively into
use in Germany, makes the best knives and razors; but, unfortunately,
the rarity and high price of wolfram confine its production within
narrow limits. Several of the tungstates, or salts of tungsten, are used
as pigments; and the tungstate of soda has the highly valuable property
of rendering fabrics uninflammable, and thus furnishes a means for
preventing the accidents which constantly occur from the burning of
ladies’ dresses.
Albert the Great, a famous alchemist of the thirteenth century, is
supposed to have been the discoverer of Arsenic, a tin-white metal,
which, however, soon loses its brilliancy when exposed to the air, and
turns black. From its poisonous qualities it is only used in some
unimportant alloys which serve for the manufacture of insignificant
articles, such as buttons or buckles. Some of its ores and combinations,
which, from their lively yellow, green, and red colour, would otherwise
have been valuable pigments, are likewise for the same reason seldom
used. A great number of copper, nickel, lead, cobalt, zinc, and iron
ores contain some arsenic; but this dangerous substance is obtained
chiefly from the common arsenical pyrites (Mispickel—sulphuret of iron
and arsenic), which occurs in Cornwall and Devonshire. The whole supply
of arsenical ores amounted in 1866 to about 2,610 tons, of which England
and Prussia furnished the greater part.
The metal Uranium, discovered in 1789 by the celebrated Klaproth, in a
black heavy mineral, called Pechblende (pitch-blende), occurring in the
mines of the Erzgebirge, is not used as such, but is very valuable in
porcelain-painting, as it affords a beautiful orange colour in the
enamelling fire, and a black colour in that in which the porcelain is
baked. A laboratory has been opened at Joachimsthal, where the ore is
converted into uranate of soda for this purpose.
Chrome, like cobalt, is used chiefly as a pigment. Several of its salts
are splendid yellow colouring matters, and its oxide imparts the finest
green tints to porcelain. The metal itself, which was discovered by
Vauquelin in 1797, is, as yet, an object of interest only to the
chemist, but may one day become important, as in its pure state it is
very hard, unalterable by air and water, and even less fusible than
platina. Most of its ores belong to the rarer minerals, and but one,
chrome-iron, occurs in sufficient abundance for industrial purposes. It
is found in Hungary, in Norway (which annually exports about 16,000 tons
to Hamburg and Holland), in Siberia, and in large quantities in Maryland
and Pennsylvania. The ore employed in England is obtained mostly from
Baltimore, Drontheim, and the Shetland Isles, and amounts to about 2,000
tons annually.
Manganese is likewise a metal which has not yet left the domain of the
laboratory, but some of its ores are of considerable and increasing
importance. The grey and black oxides of manganese are largely used for
the manufacture of the chloride of lime, a substance well known for its
bleaching properties. They also serve in the fabrication of flint-glass,
as a means for correcting the green tinge which it is apt to derive from
iron, and are employed in the manufacture of various kinds of steel. The
ores of manganese are chiefly provided by the mines of Nassau, which in
1864 yielded 14,460 tons, and of Huelva in Spain, which furnished 24,430
tons in 1865. Our Cornish mines likewise produce considerable
quantities, but are still far from being able to supply the wants of our
colossal industry, which, in 1866, required the importation of no less
than 48,700 tons of oxide of manganese from foreign countries.
Cadmium, which accompanies most of the zinc ores, was discovered by
Stromeyer in 1818. Its sulphuret affords a fine yellow pigment; but the
metal itself, which has the colour and lustre of tin, and is very
fusible and ductile, has no commercial value.
Rutile, a red-brown mineral, occurring in small quantities in the Alps,
Norway, and many other localities, where it is generally found in
crystals, imbedded in quartz, was found by Klaproth, in 1795, to be the
oxide of a peculiar metal which, according to the old fashion of giving
mythological names to new planets and metals, obtained the name of
Titanium. The metal, which has a copper-red colour, has not hitherto
been applied to use; but rutile is employed as a yellow colour in
painting porcelain, and also for giving the requisite tint to artificial
teeth.
Like Titanium, the metal Molybdenum, discovered by Hjelm in 1782, is as
yet interesting only in a scientific point of view; but one of its salts
is used by the cotton-printers as a valuable colouring matter, and
another is indispensable as a re-agent in many chemical researches. Thus
more than one of the modern metals has already become an important
object to the porcelain-painter or the dyer.
Aluminium, the metal which Sir H. Davy discovered in clay or alumina,
and of which the purest native oxides are the varieties of corundum
(oriental ruby, sapphire, &c.), has of late become of technical
importance, and though the cost of its production is very great, as a
pound of aluminium is worth about 4_l._, yet it already serves for many
purposes. Its silvery lustre and perfect unalterability by atmospherical
influences render it an excellent material for objects of art and
ornament, and from its low specific gravity (2-56⁄100) it makes
excellent tubes for telescopes and opera-glasses, which when composed of
any other metal are of a fatiguing weight. Even culinary vases have
already been made of aluminium, for, besides its perfect innocuousness,
it cools very slowly when heated, and greasy substances do not adhere to
it. Its high price is the only obstacle which has hitherto limited its
uses. With copper it forms an alloy (aluminium-bronze) discovered by Dr.
John Percy, which possesses the hardness, tenacity, and malleability of
iron without its liability to rust, and consequently has already found
numerous applications. The beautiful gold colour of this alloy makes it
a valuable material for the fabrication of the vases and ornaments used
in Catholic churches, and a recent decree of the Pope has authorised its
employment for this purpose.
Magnesium, the metallic basis of magnesia, a native earth widely
disseminated in the mineral kingdom, and forming a constituent part of
whole mountain chains, had ever since its discovery by Sir Humphry Davy
been a mere object of curiosity, when a few years ago, Mr. Sonstadt, an
English chemist, succeeded in producing it in larger quantities. Its
silvery brilliancy, hardness, and ductility, its low specific gravity,
and unalterability by air and water, are qualities which will probably
lead to an extensive employment when a cheaper method of production
shall have been discovered; but even now it has found a highly
interesting use. It is so easily inflammable that a wire of considerable
thickness can be ignited in the flame of a candle, and the light evolved
by the combustion is of almost solar intensity. In lighthouses it serves
to guide the mariner in his course; it lights up the obscurest recesses
of stalactital caverns, and with its assistance the photographer no
longer depends upon the sun, and reveals to us the hidden paintings and
sculptures of rock-tombs and temples as distinctly as if they were
exposed to the light of day.
Sodium, the metallic basis of soda, was discovered by Sir Humphry Davy
in 1807. It is lighter than water, and white and lustrous as silver; but
exposure to air almost immediately converts it into soda. Thus it can
never become directly useful, like aluminium or magnesium; but being
indispensable for reducing the ores of these two metals, it renders
important indirect services, and is consequently produced in
considerable quantities.
Palladium, one of the hardest and heaviest of metals, is of a steel grey
colour, passing into silver white. Its alloy with silver, which has the
valuable property of not tarnishing in air, is eminently fitted for the
manufacture of delicate scientific instruments. The Wollaston medal,
given by the Geological Society, is, in honour of its discoverer, made
of palladium, which is considerably dearer than gold.
In 1804, the same eminent philosopher discovered another metal in native
platina, to which he gave the name of Rhodium. Mixed with steel in the
proportion of one to fifty, rhodium produces an excellent metal for
making the sharpest cutting instruments, and a mixture of equal parts of
rhodium and steel makes the best telescopic mirrors, as it is not liable
to be tarnished. It is also employed for making the unalterable nibs of
the so-called rhodium pens.
Thallium, though one of the newest metals, as it was discovered by Mr.
Crookes as recently as 1861, already bids fair to render some important
services. It imparts to optical glasses a considerable density and
dispersive power, and should no other use be found for it, this alone
would render it a valuable acquisition.
Such is the brief history of those new metals which have already found a
useful employment in the industrial arts. It throws a vivid light upon
the rapid progress of modern chemistry, for the very existence of most
of them was undreamt of at the beginning of the present century, and
their discovery could be attained only by an amount of analytical
knowledge beyond the scope of any previous age. On witnessing these
triumphs of science we may well ask where they will end, and when the
goal will be reached beyond which it will be impossible for the human
intellect to penetrate?
CHAPTER XXXII.
COAL.
The Age of Coal—Plants of the Carboniferous Age—Hugh Miller’s
Description of a Coal Forest—Vast Time required for the Formation of
the Coal-fields—Derangements and Dislocations—Faults—Their
Disadvantages and Advantages—Bituminous Coals—Anthracites—Our Black
Diamonds—Advantageous Position of our Coal Mines—The South Welsh Coal-
field—Great Central and Manchester Coal-fields—The Whitehaven Basin
and the Dudley Area—Newcastle and Durham Coal-fields—Costly Winnings—A
Ball in a Coal-pit—Submarine Coal Mines—Newcastle View from Tynemouth
Priory—Hewers—Cutting Machines—Putters—Onsetters— Shifters—Trapper
Boys—George Stephenson—Rise of Coal Production—Probable Duration of
our Supply—Prussian Coal Mines—Belgian—Coal Mines in various other
countries—Maunch Chunck.
The history of the primitive races of mankind, as far as we are able to
trace it in the few relics that have survived their existence, shows us
that an age of stone was followed by one of bronze, which in its turn
was succeeded by one of iron. The Golden Age has probably never existed
but in the fancy of poets who sought in the land of dreams a
compensation for the deficiencies of the real world; and there can be no
doubt that, despite California and Australia, our own times are as far
from realising the pleasing vision as any before them.
But a title to which they have a better claim is founded upon the vast
use of the mineral fuel without which the glorious inventions of Watt
and Stephenson would have been comparatively vain; and whoever has
attentively examined the foundations of our industry, our commerce, our
wealth, and our civilisation will hardly deny that we live in what may
justly be termed the Age of Coal.
This mineral, the importance of which in the political economy of the
leading nations of the globe can hardly be overrated, is also one of
surpassing interest in a geological point of view, for the history of
its formation is one of the great marvels of the subterranean world.
[Illustration: PECOPTERIS ADIANTOIDES.]
[Illustration: SPHENOPTERIS AFFINIS.]
The plants whose growth and decay originally furnished the materials of
which our black coal[63] is composed, flourished in that far distant
period when as yet no bird or mammalian quadruped had made its
appearance, when even the gigantic Ichthyosaurus was not yet born, and
the progress of organic life had not advanced beyond the creation of
some uncouth reptiles or strangely formed fishes. From the vast space of
time which separates us from the carboniferous age, it may easily be
imagined that the state of the vegetable world was then extremely
different from that now prevailing. The vegetable remains which
constitute coal have generally been so transformed as to afford no trace
of their original texture; yet the distinct plants found here and there
preserved in the mass, and which amount to about five hundred species,
plainly bear the character of a swampy vegetation, and show that they
must have grown in submerged, or at least extremely humid, situations.
They consist chiefly of ferns, of Lepidodendra, allied to the club-
mosses of the present day, of a few coniferous trees, the woody
structure of some of them showing that they were related to the
Araucarian division of pines, more than to any of our common European
firs; of some large ‘horsetails,’ and of Sigillariæ and Calamites, that
seem to have been distinct from all tribes of now existing plants.
Scanty as are these relics of an extinct world, they yet allow the fancy
to reconstruct the forests of which they formed a part, and to wander
through those dismal woods where generations after generations of
arborescent ferns and moor-plants flourished and decayed for the use of
beings that were to appear millions of years later upon the stage of
life.
Footnote 63:
Lignite, or brown coal, is of more modern origin.
[Illustration: LEPIDODENDRON ELEGANS.]
[Illustration: ASTEROPHYLLITES COMOSA.]
[Illustration: SIGILLARIA OCULATA.]
[Illustration: CALAMITES NODOSUS.]
The following description by Hugh Miller will assist our fancy in
roaming among the primeval thickets from which coal was formed: ‘We have
before us a low shore, covered with a dense vegetation. Huge trees of
wonderful form stand out far into the water. There seems no intervening
beach. A thick hedge of reeds, tall as the masts of pinnaces, runs along
the deeper bays, like water-flags at the edge of a lake. A river of vast
volume comes rolling from the interior, darkening the water for leagues
with its slime and mud, and bearing with it to the open sea reeds and
ferns and cones of the pine, and immense floats of leaves, and now and
then some bulky tree undermined and uprooted by the current. We near the
coast, and now enter the opening of the stream. A scarce penetrable
phalanx of reeds, that attain to the height and wellnigh to the bulk of
forest trees, is ranged on either hand. The bright and glossy stems seem
rodded like Gothic columns; the pointed leaves stand out green at every
joint, tier above tier, each tier resembling a coronal wreath, or an
ancient crown with the rays turned outwards, and we see atop what may be
either large spikes or catkins. What strange forms of vegetable life
appear in the forest behind! Can that be a club-moss that raises its
slender height for more than fifty feet from the soil? Or can these tall
palm-like trees be actually ferns, and these spreading branches mere
fronds? And then these gigantic reeds! are they not mere varieties of
the common horsetail of our bogs and marshes, magnified some sixty or a
hundred times? Have we arrived at some such country as the continent
visited by Gulliver, in which he found thickets of weeds and grass tall
as woods of twenty years’ growth, and lost himself amid a forest of corn
fifty feet in height? The lesser vegetation of our own country, its
reeds, mosses, and ferns, seems here as if viewed through a microscope,
the dwarfs have sprung up into giants, and yet there appears to be no
proportional increase in size among what are unequivocally its trees.
Yonder is a group of what seem to be pines—tall and bulky, ’tis true,
but neither taller nor bulkier than the pines of Norway and America.
There is an amazing luxuriance of growth all around us. Scarce can the
current make way through the thickets of aquatic plants that rise thick
from the muddy bottom; and though the sunshine falls bright on the upper
boughs of the tangled forest beyond, not a ray penetrates the more than
twilight gloom that broods over the marshy platform below. The rank
steam of decaying vegetation forms a thick blue haze, that partially
obscures the underwood. Deadly lakes of carbonic acid gas have
accumulated in the hollows; there is a silence all around, uninterrupted
save by the sudden splash of some reptile fish that has risen to the
surface in pursuit of its prey, or when a sudden breeze stirs the hot
air, and shakes the fronds of the giant ferns, or the catkins of the
reeds. The wide continent before us is a continent devoid of animal
life, save that its pools and rivers abound in fish and mollusca, and
that millions and tens of millions of the infusory tribes swarm in the
bogs and marshes. Here and there, too, an insect of strange form
flutters among the leaves. It is more than probable that no creature
furnished with lungs of the more perfect construction could have
breathed the atmosphere of this early period and have lived.’
As coal seams have been discovered as far to the north as Greenland,
Melville Island, and Spitzbergen, where now no trees will grow, it has
been inferred that, in the primeval ages which witnessed their birth, a
tropical climate must have reigned over the whole surface of the earth;
but the vegetation of arborescent ferns does not necessarily imply a
very warm climate, as such plants are found to flourish in New Zealand,
together with many conifers and club-mosses, so that a forest in that
temperate country may make a nearer approach to the carboniferous
vegetation than any other now existing on the globe. So much is certain,
that a very different distribution of sea and land must in those times
have mitigated the severity of the Arctic winter, or, perhaps, as
Professor Oswald Heer conjectures, our solar system may then have rolled
through a space more densely clustered with stars, whose radiant heat
gave to our earth the advantage of a mild climate, even at the poles.
The space of time required for the formation of the coal-fields is as
immeasurable as the distance that separates us from Sirius. We know by
experience how thin the sheet of humus is which the annual leaf-fall of
our trees, or the yearly decay of our moor-plants, leaves behind, and
how many decenniums must elapse before one single inch of solid mould is
formed. But there are many coal strata eight, ten, or even forty or
fifty feet thick; and if we consider besides the mighty pressure of the
superincumbent rocks which store them in the smallest compass, we cannot
possibly doubt that _one_ such stratum must have required thousands of
years for its formation. Our wonder increases when we reflect that in
many _coal-measures_ (the series of beds intimately associated with the
seams of coal) no less than a hundred thick and thin seams of coal
alternate with layers of sandstone and shale, so that the reckoning
would swell to millions were we able to fathom the ages of their
successive growth.
It may well be asked how such vast masses of vegetable origin, which
required the sun’s light for their formation, came thus to be incased in
stone thousands of feet beneath the surface of the earth? More than one
theory has been advanced to solve this difficult problem, which can
hardly be explained in any other manner than by a general, slowly
progressing subsidence of the humid lowlands, alternating with periods
of rest. Fancy a wide delta land, similar to Egypt or the Netherlands,
covered with luxuriant forests, whose spoils, accumulating where they
fall, form in the course of centuries a thick stratum of vegetable
matter. This land then sinks, suddenly or gradually, under water, many a
fathom deep, and remains there perhaps for ten thousand years, till a
vast deposit is formed of sandstone and shale, brought down from the
highlands by the rivers that come rolling from the interior, the
pressure of which, aided by water, converts the stratum of wood into
coal. By this deposit the bottom is gradually filled up, and the bay
again converted into marsh or meadow, upon which again vegetation
flourishes for a thousand years till the materials of a second bed of
coal are collected. A third submergence takes place, rocky strata are
again deposited, the water again shoals into land capable of bearing
plants, a third period of forests commences, and continues till the mass
of vegetable matter destined to form a new bed of coal is accumulated.
It is unnecessary to pursue the series any further; let it suffice to
say that in this manner coal followed upon sand, or sand upon coal, till
in the carboniferous basin of Nova Scotia, for instance, a vertical
subsidence of three miles was gradually filled up by the waste swept
down from the higher lands, or by the accumulation of vegetable matter.
Great as are these changes of level, they do not indicate any more
considerable or violent perturbations than those which take place at the
present day, either from earthquakes or from slow oscillations of the
soil. Large areas in the Pacific and elsewhere are known to be actually
subsiding at the rate of three or four feet in the century, and when
measured on the scale of geological time, the depression which sunk the
first carboniferous forests of South Wales or Nova Scotia to the depth
of ten or twenty thousand feet, probably proceeded at the same slow
rate. Adding to these vast epochs of gradual subsidence the long periods
of rest which intervened between them, it is perhaps no exaggeration to
affirm that several millions of years may have been required for the
formation of a coal-field such as that of Saarbrücken or South Wales.
The fossil remains inclosed in the various layers of the carboniferous
beds alone suffice to prove the immensity of time required for their
accumulation, for the species of ferns or lycopods imbedded in the lower
seams of a coal-field are found gradually to disappear in the higher
ones, while new species are continually appearing on rising in the
series, until, finally, the plants of the older seams have completely
made way for newer forms. Thus the coal formation has, during the vast
ages of its growth, changed more than once the aspect of its flora, and
the plants which flourished in its youth had long since disappeared from
the earth when it approached its end.
[Illustration:
COAL-BEDS RENDERED AVAILABLE BY ELEVATION.
_a_ _b_ _c_, shafts. A B C, coal-beds.
]
Although all coal-fields must have originally been formed in horizontal
or slightly undulating situations, yet in many cases they have undergone
enormous derangements or dislocations from subsequent terrestrial
changes; and to this circumstance is mainly due their utility to man.
Had they been permitted to remain in their primitive _geological_
position, we probably should never have enjoyed the benefit of the coal,
because it would have been too deep for our reach. We might have known
it to be there, but it would have been beyond our power to pierce a mile
or two into the earth. But, by a wonderful and merciful providence, the
oscillations to which the earth-rind is subject, have frequently
upheaved them enormously out of their original positions; and the
elevated portions having often been denuded by water, large patches of
coal have thus been rendered available to man.
The various subterranean changes which have acted upon the coal-fields
during the course of unnumbered ages have not only raised or sunk, but
frequently dislocated, contorted, ruptured, or broken them up in a most
extraordinary manner. In the coal-field near Mons, in Belgium, for
instance, a vast lateral pressure has curved the strata again and again,
and even folded them four or five times into zigzag bendings, so that on
sinking a shaft the same continuous layer of coal is cut through several
times.
[Illustration: SECTION OF COAL-FIELD SOUTH OF MALMESBURY.]
1. Old red sandstone.
2. Mountain limestone.
3. Millstone grit.
4. Coal seams.
5. Coarse sandstone.
6. New red sandstone.
7. Lias.
8. Inferior oolite.
9. Great oolite.
10. Corn brash and
forest marl.
Frequently a concave form has been the result of these terrestrial
revolutions, and hence coal-fields are often called coal-basins. Thus,
in the coal-field south of Malmesbury, the strata appear to dip from the
surface, and rise again to it after attaining a certain depth, so that a
section of them suggests the idea of a boat or basin.
Very commonly one portion of a continuous stratum or series of strata
has been broken away from the rest, and has been displaced, either by
elevation or depression, or shifting on one side, for various distances.
The amount of displacement is sometimes only a few inches, and at other
times several hundred fathoms, and the extent may be twenty yards or
twenty miles.
We may easily conceive the difficulties which these disruptions
frequently throw in the way of the miner, who in following what he
considers a valuable seam of coal is suddenly stopped by coming in
contact with a fault, a trouble, or a slip, as these phenomena are
expressively called, and finds the coal shifted several yards above or
below, or even completely lost. On the other hand, the miner, thus
provokingly stopped in his labours, must not forget that it is perhaps
owing to the very shifts he complains of that the outcrop of the coal
has occurred at all in his neighbourhood, and that the coal is workable
throughout a very large portion of the district in which he is
interested.
A most important advantage is also derived from the existence of these
numerous faults in coal strata; namely, that they intersect a large
field of coal in all directions, and by the clayey contents which fill
up the cracks accompanying minor faults, they become natural coffer-
dams, which prevent the body of water accumulated in one part of the
field from flowing into any opening which might be made in it in another
part. A remarkable instance of the advantage arising from the presence
of a great line of fault occurred in the year 1825 at Gosforth, near
Newcastle, where a shaft was dug on the wet side of what is locally
termed the Great Ninety Fathom Dyke, which there intersects the coal-
field. The workings were immediately inundated with water, and it was
found necessary to abandon them. Another shaft, however, was sunk on the
other side of the dyke, only a few yards from the former, and in this
they descended nearly 200 fathoms, or 1,200 feet, without any hindrance
from the water.
The separation of a coal-field into small areas by dykes or faults is
likewise very beneficial in case of fire in a coal-pit, for in this case
the combustion is prevented from spreading widely, and destroying, as it
otherwise would, the whole of the ignited seam.
‘The natural disposition of coal in detached portions,’ says the author
of an excellent article in the _Edinburgh Review_,[64] ‘is not simply a
phenomenon of geology, but it also bears upon national considerations.
It is remarkable that this natural disposition is that which renders the
fuel most accessible and most easily mined. Were the coal situated at
its normal geological depth, that is, supposing the strata to be all
horizontal and undisturbed or upheaved (_sic_), it would be far below
human reach. Were it deposited continuously in one even superficial
layer, it would have been too readily, and therefore too quickly mined,
and all the superior qualities would be wrought out, and only the
inferior left; but as it now lies, it is broken up by geological
disturbances into separate portions, each defined and limited in area,
each sufficiently accessible to bring it within man’s reach and labour,
each manageable by mechanical arrangements, and each capable of gradual
excavation without being subject to sudden exhaustion. Selfish
plundering is partly prevented by natural barriers, and we are warned
against reckless waste by the comparative thinness of coal-seams, as
well as by the ever-augmenting difficulty of working them at increased
depths. By the separation of seams one from another, and by varied
intervals of waste sandstones and shales, such a measured rate of mining
is necessitated as precludes us from entirely robbing posterity of the
most valuable mineral fuel, while the fuel itself is preserved from
those extended fractures and crumblings and falls which would certainly
be the consequence of largely mining the best bituminous coal, were it
aggregated into one vast mass. In fact, by an evident exercise of
forethought and benevolence in the Great Author of all our blessings,
our invaluable fuel has been stored up for us in deposits the most
compendious, the most accessible, yet the least exhaustible, and has
been locally distributed into the most convenient situations. Our coal-
fields are, in fact, so many _bituminous banks_, in which there is
abundance for an adequate currency, but against any sudden run upon them
nature has interposed numerous checks, by locking up whole reserves of
the precious fuel in the bank cellar, under the invincible protection of
ponderous stone-beds.’
Footnote 64:
Vol. cxi. p. 80.
If we examine the nature of the mineral fuel thus provided for us in the
bowels of the earth, we find a number of varieties greatly differing
from each other in chemical composition and in combustible value. Thus
the _anthracites_ or _non-bituminous coals_, which contain from eighty-
five to ninety-seven per cent. of pure carbon, are not easily ignited,
and yield no flame and but little or no smoke.
[Illustration:
Map showing the
COAL FIELDS
and
CHIEF MINING DISTRICTS
of
GREAT BRITAIN
]
The _bituminous coals_, on the contrary, contain a large proportion of
volatile matter, amounting to as much as thirty, forty, or fifty per
cent., and are consequently very inflammable, burning with a bright
flame, considerable smoke, and a penetrating odour.
But as Nature in general does not love those sharp divisions to which
theorists are so partial, thus also there is no fixed boundary between
these two classes of mineral fuel; and we find an uninterrupted series
of intermediate qualities between pure anthracite and the fattest coal.
It may be remarked that if coal were of one uniform chemical
composition, its utility would be confined within narrower limits, as
the bituminous, semi-bituminous, and anthracital varieties have each
their distinguishing properties which adapt each to special uses. Some
kinds, from their richness in volatile bituminous matter, are excellent
for the manufacture of illuminating gas, while, from their smaller
proportion of carbon, they could hardly be used for the making of iron;
and the anthracites, which yield little or no gas, are very serviceable
for smelting or domestic purposes.
It appears from the researches of modern chemistry that the different
varieties of coal are due to the progress of decomposition which wood
and vegetable matter undergo when buried in the earth, exposed to
moisture, and partially or entirely excluded from the air. Slowly
evolving carbonic acid gas, and thus parting with a portion of their
original oxygen, they become gradually converted into lignite or wood-
coal, which contains a larger proportion of hydrogen than wood does. A
continuance of decomposition changes this lignite into common or
bituminous coal, chiefly by the discharge of carburetted hydrogen, or
the gas by which we illuminate our streets and houses; and bituminous
coal still continuing to evolve its volatile matter, not only after its
being covered with strata thousands of feet in thickness, but even to
the present day (as the fire-damp sufficiently proves) is thus
ultimately transformed into anthracite, to which the various names of
splint-coal, glance-coal, hard-coal, and culm have been given.
When we consider the manner in which coal has been formed in swampy
lowlands, or more particularly in river-deltas, which gradually subsided
to a considerable depth beneath the level of the sea, we cannot wonder
that, when compared with the whole extent of the globe, the area of the
coal-fields is extremely limited, and confined to but a few favoured
countries. In our times delta lands occupy but a small part of the
continents and large islands, and there is no reason to suppose that
they were more considerable during the carboniferous age, or at any
other epoch. Besides, many of the ancient deltas, probably, never
subsided at all, so that no coal could be formed on their site; and
others, where coal strata were gradually piled up, may still be whelmed
beneath the sea awaiting some future upheaval to become serviceable to
future generations of man.
After the preliminary remarks on coal and the coal formation in general,
I will now briefly describe the chief coal-producing countries of the
globe. First on the list stands Great Britain, whose pre-eminence in
industry and commerce is entirely founded on her vast deposits of coal.
It is this invaluable mineral which sets those countless steam-engines
in motion that perform the labours of a hundred millions of men; which
spins and weaves the cotton of America, the silk of China, the wool of
Australia, and the flax of Belgium into that amazing variety of tissues
that serve to clothe almost all the nations of the globe; and which
finally produces a greater quantity of the cheapest iron than the
combined efforts of all the world. Thus our coals may well be called our
black diamonds, and the comparison is indeed paying the latter too high
a compliment, for larger masses of diamonds would be utterly worthless,
while, by means of our coal, we are able to enjoy the produce of every
zone.
Not only do our fifty-one coal-fields surpass in magnitude those which
are disseminated over a far greater territory in Germany, Belgium, and
France; but their local distribution and geological formation are as
favourable as could possibly be wished. Furthest north we see the
considerable deposits of Scotland extending from the coast of Fife to
the valley of the Clyde. It is to them that Glasgow owes its half-a-
million of inhabitants, and a wealth far surpassing that of all Scotland
under the reign of ‘bonnie’ Queen Mary. In England, north of the Trent,
along the Wear and Tyne, and even extending far beneath the sea, we have
the coal-fields of Northumberland and Durham, with Cumberland and those
of Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and Derbyshire. After these comes the
large field of Lancashire, or, as it is sometimes named, the Manchester
Coal-field. Looking to the central districts, we see the coals of North
and South Staffordshire and of Leicestershire. In the north-west we have
the field of North Wales; in the more central west, the deposits of the
Plain of Shrewsbury, Coalbrook Dale, and the Clee Hills; and in the
south-west, the great coal-field of South Wales, and the minor ones of
the Forest of Dean, of Somersetshire, and of Gloucestershire.
[Illustration:
COAL BASIN OF CLACKMANNANSHIRE.
_a_, _b_. Coal seams. _c_. Limestone strata. _x_, _y_. Slips.
]
The inspection of a good geological map shows us at once how
advantageously for commerce these several coal-stores are distributed.
Every large coal-field in England and Scotland is hardly ever distant
more than thirty miles from the next, so that from the Clyde to
Somersetshire the whole interior of the country can easily, by means of
canals and railroads, be provided with fuel. The east and west coasts of
the land are nowhere above fifty miles from a coal-field; and even the
most remote localities in the three kingdoms are able to provide
themselves from distances within 150 miles.
But it is chiefly the neighbourhood of the sea which gives such an
incomparable value to our most important coal-fields; as, thanks to this
advantageous situation, which none of the French, Belgian, and German
coal-fields possess, Great Britain is enabled to provide not only her
own coast-towns, but almost all the sea-ports in the world, with a
cheaper fuel than can be produced in their own country. Even in Ostend,
Belgian coal, rendered dear by canal transport, is unable to compete
with that which is brought over sea from England; and Hamburg provides
herself with fuel from Newcastle and Hartlepool, and not from the coal-
fields of Saxony and Westphalia.
Coal is found in seventeen counties in Ireland, over an area of about
3,000 square miles. Yet, notwithstanding this great abundance of coal
which the country possesses, and which is distributed throughout almost
all parts of the island, from Limerick to Antrim, her capital and chief
cities and ports have hitherto depended upon Great Britain for their
supplies of mineral fuel, both for domestic and for manufacturing
purposes. To those who are unacquainted with the actual circumstances,
it appears scarcely credible that this fine country has made so little
use of the coal which has been so bountifully bestowed upon her. Among
other causes not political, which perpetuate this state of things, is
the extraordinary facility and cheapness with which the ports of Ireland
can be supplied from the great western coal-fields of Great Britain. The
excellence, abundance, and cheapness of peat, which is not only the
common fuel of the poor in the interior, and, indeed, of all classes in
some districts, but is also brought in barges by the great canal, and
consumed to a considerable amount in the capital itself, is another
reason why the Irish coal-mines have, as yet, been so little worked.
When we consider the vast importance of coal, we cannot wonder at the
paramount influence which it has exercised over the distribution of our
population in modern times. While Salisbury, Winchester, and Canterbury—
important towns of mediæval England—are reduced to atrophy from the
distance and absence of coal-fields, Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester,
Sheffield, Birmingham, Glasgow, and a host of other flourishing towns
may truly be said to be built on coal.
Where there are large coal-fields there is life and a prospect of almost
unlimited prosperity, for they are sure to attract machinery and man.
Take a geological map of a new and thinly-populated country; and if it
be marked with coal-fields the spots where large cities will exist
hereafter may be safely determined.
A more detailed examination of the chief coal-fields of England shows us
the immensity of the mineral riches which are here still hoarded up for
the benefit of future generations.
The superficial extent of the South Welsh coal-fields is about a
thousand square miles. On its northern wing we find on an average
twenty-one coal bands, forming an aggregate thickness of eighty and a
half feet. In some parts of the south wing there are even as many as
thirty-three bands of an aggregate thickness of one hundred and four
feet of pure coal, so that the average depth of the field may be
estimated at ninety-two feet.
Numerous transversal valleys intersect this magnificent coal-field, and
afford the easiest means of working it in every depth. They also
facilitate the transport of the coal on the canals and railroads which
lead along their bottom or along their slopes to the harbours of the
Bristol Channel. In the chapters on iron and copper, I have had occasion
to describe the gigantic industries, founded on these natural
advantages, which have raised South Wales from being one of the most
insignificant into one of the most important provinces of the empire.
All the coals of this basin are so rich in carbon as to yield from
seventy to ninety per cent. of coke. They are either anthracites or only
semi-bituminous, and are consequently not suitable for making gas, nor
are they much liked for burning in open fire-places, as they do not emit
a genial flame. On the other hand, the semi-bituminous Welsh coal is
invaluable for burning in steam-engines, for it has been proved to
generate one-quarter more steam than any other kind of English coal. One
of its properties—by no means unimportant—is its non-liability to
spontaneous combustion, which, it is well known, occasionally takes
place with bituminous coals, and by which vessels have been lost at sea,
and warehouses ignited on land. The value of the Welsh steam or slightly
bituminous coal is enhanced by its quality of burning almost without
smoke, a property hitherto slightly appreciated, but the importance of
which in time of war is evident. Steamers burning the fat, bituminous
coal can be tracked at sea at least seventy miles, before their hulls
become visible, by the dense columns of black smoke pouring out of their
pipes or chimneys, and trailing along the horizon. It is a complete
tell-tale of their whereabouts, which is not the case with vessels
burning Welsh or anthracital coal. From its compactness and density, the
latter has likewise great advantages in point of stowage space over the
ordinary weak bituminous coals. For long voyages this concentration of
power and economy of space may easily be appreciated. From its great
superiority over other kinds, Welsh coal has been exclusively used for
some time past by the French Government, and it is also employed in
England by all the chief mail packet companies.
Coal is not exported from the South Wales basin as much as from some
other fields, owing to the enormous requirements of the large iron
works, most of which consume as much as can be supplied by their
collieries. Every week, however, sees increased supplies of Welsh coal
thrown into the London market, and every year fresh collieries are
opened to meet the demand. The total number of pits in South Wales in
1865 was four hundred and eighteen, which produced between seven and
eight million tons annually. The New Navigation Pit at Mountain Ash may
be cited as an example of the grand scale on which the most important of
these workings are conducted. The shaft is eighteen feet in diameter
inside the walling, and divided into four compartments, two of which are
for the drawing of coal, one for sending the workmen up and down, and
the fourth for the drainage. Notwithstanding the great depth of three
hundred and seventy yards, a carriage containing two half-tons of coal
can be wound up in one minute, and the whole colliery is estimated to
supply more than one thousand tons a day. The mineral property extends
over an area of seven miles long by three miles in width, covering from
four thousand to five thousand acres of four-foot coal. From this one
case the reader may form a slight estimate of the boundless resources of
the whole basin.
The Great Central Coal-field, which ranges through South Yorkshire,
Nottinghamshire, and Derbyshire, has a superficial extent of about one
thousand square miles. In character it is closely allied to that of
Newcastle, and is considered by some geologists to be a re-emergence of
the same strata from beneath the covering of the magnesian limestone
under which they suppose it to be concealed through the intervening
space. It extends a little from the north-east of Leeds nearly to Derby,
a distance of more than sixty-five miles. Its greatest width—twenty-
three miles—is on the north, reaching nearly to Halifax on the west. On
the south it extends towards the east to Nottingham, and is there about
twelve miles wide. Though possessing some fine coal-seams, it is of far
inferior importance to the Manchester or South Lancashire Coal-field,
from which it is separated by a lofty chain of hills. This highly
valuable basin, which extends over about five hundred and fifty square
miles, begins in the north-west of Derbyshire, and continues thence to
the south-west part of Lancashire, forming an area somewhat in the shape
of a crescent, having Manchester nearly in the centre.
[Illustration:
DUDLEY COAL-FIELD.
1. Limestone strata. 2. Coal.
]
Of the smaller coal-fields, the most important are the Whitehaven basin
(one hundred and twenty square miles) and the Dudley or South
Staffordshire area (ninety square miles) which is particularly valuable
for the extensive iron works which it maintains. One portion of this
coal-field is distinguished by the presence of one continuous bed of
coal thirty feet thick, which for British coal is astonishing; and this
mass extends seven miles in length and four in breadth. In this favoured
district coal-seams five or six feet thick are called thin seams; in
Newcastle they would be called thick seams.
Though not so extensive as the South Welsh area, the coal-fields of
Newcastle and Durham are of far more ancient celebrity. Their produce is
chiefly shipped on the Tyne, Wear, and Tees, small rivers hardly
traceable on a map of the world, and yet far more important to commerce
than the mighty Orinoco or the thousand-armed Amazon. This magnificent
coal area is bounded on the north by the river Coquet, and extends
southward nearly as far as Hartlepool, a distance of about forty-eight
miles. Its extreme breadth is about twenty-four miles, and the whole
superficial extent may amount to about eight hundred square miles.
There are in all about fifty-seven different seams of coal in the Great
Northern Coal-field, varying in thickness from an inch to five feet five
inches and six feet, and comprising an aggregate of about seventy-six
feet of coal.
The pits are established chiefly with reference to one or more of the
three following seams. The most valuable is called the _High Main Seam_,
and is about six feet thick. The next in value is the _Bensham Seam_,
about three feet thick, which is remarkable for its excellent quality as
a domestic coal, and for the enormous quantity of gas evolved from it in
the mine. The _Hutton or Low Main Seam_, averaging from three feet six
inches to five feet nine inches, is likewise of very good quality, and
is extensively worked. It must, however, be remarked that the same seam
of coal is not generally valuable in all places. Thus the High Main,
which furnishes excellent coal on the Tyne, becomes injured as it
proceeds in a south-easterly direction by being intermixed with a band
of coal of inferior quality containing iron pyrites, &c.
The Newcastle Coal-field is generally worked at a great depth, an
expense of upwards of 50,000_l._ having in some instances been incurred
before the seam of coal was reached which was to reward all this vast
outlay and labour. The most remarkable and enterprising work of this
kind on record is a sinking at Monk Wearmouth Colliery near Sunderland.
After piercing the superincumbent beds of magnesian limestone and lower
new red sandstone, the coal strata were reached at a depth of three
hundred and thirty feet; but at the same time a spring was tapped which
poured water into the workings at the rate of three thousand gallons per
minute. This fearful influx was kept under by a steam-engine of two
hundred horse-power, and the work was made sure by strong metal tubbing,
and carried on successfully, though not without extreme difficulty. On
entering the coal measures, however, a new and unexpected check was
experienced in the extra thickness of the uppermost coal strata, for
which no calculation had been made, and the difficulties were increased
when at the depth of one thousand feet a fresh _feeder_ or spring of
water was tapped. Additional expense and great loss of time were thus
caused; but the proprietors persevered with real Anglo-Saxon
pertinacity, undaunted by the apparently hopeless nature of the
undertaking, and by the fearful expenses incurred. Success crowned their
efforts, and finally, at a depth of 1,710 feet, the Hutton seam of coal
was reached, at a cost which, including the necessary preliminary
operations, could not have been less than 100,000_l._
Another remarkable and costly piece of mining was that of Gosforth
Colliery, which lies about three miles north from Newcastle, on the west
bank of a romantic ‘dean’ or little valley, through which the Ouseburn
winds its way to the Tyne. The sinking was commenced in 1825, and the
coal was won on Saturday, January 31, 1829. The High Main coal was
reached at twenty-five fathoms below the surface, but near its first
appearance the seam was thrown down in an inclined direction by the
great Ninety Fathom Dyke which there intersects the coal-field. Hence it
became necessary to sink the shaft to the depth of 181 fathoms, in order
to come at the level of the lower range of coal. This having been
accomplished, a horizontal drift 700 yards long was worked through the
face of the dyke to the seam of coal a little above its junction with
the dyke. A great part of this excavation had to be made through solid
rock. To celebrate the completion of this remarkable work, a grand
subterranean ball was given at the very place of triumph, 1,100 feet
below the surface of the earth. As the guests arrived at the bottom of
the shaft they went to the end of the drift to the face of the coal,
where each person hewed a piece of coal as a memento of the day, and
then returned to the ball-room, which was brilliantly lit up, and where
born-and-bred ladies joined in a general dance with born-and-bred
pitmen’s daughters. Between 200 and 300 persons were present, nearly
one-half of them belonging to the fair sex. It must be remembered that
the pit had not been worked, so that no smoke and dust exuded from its
mouth or defiled the ball-room.
Some of the older coal-pits, where excavations have been going on
perhaps for a century or more, may be likened to large subterranean
cities. The galleries of St. Hilda Colliery, near South Shields, are
full seventy miles long; and Killingworth pits are said, on good
authority, to have nearly one hundred and sixty miles of gallery
excavation.
In some parts the operations of the collier have encroached upon the
domains of the ocean. At the Howgill pits, for instance, west of
Whitehaven, the excavations have been carried more than 1,000 yards
under the sea, and about 600 feet below its bottom. But the most
remarkable marine colliery which Great Britain has ever possessed was
situated at Borrowstounness. The coal was found to continue under the
bed of the sea in this place, and the colliers had the courage to work
it half a mile from the shore, where there was an entry that went down
into the submarine coal-pit. This was made into a kind of round quay,
built so as to keep out the tide which flowed there twelve feet. Here
the coals were laid, and a ship of that draught of water could lay her
side to the quay and take in the coal. This wonderful pit, which
belonged to the Earl of Kincardine’s family, continued to be wrought
many years to the great profit of the owners, and the astonishment of
all that saw it; but at last an unexpected high tide drowned the whole
at once, together with the labourers who were at work. ‘While,’ says the
French geologist, Faujas de Saint Fond (who visited this remarkable mine
about the end of the last century), ‘the pitmen, by the dismal shine of
their lamps, make the deep caverns resound with the blows of their
pickaxes, ships driven by a fair wind sail over their heads, and the
sailors, rejoicing at the beautiful weather, express their joy in songs:
at another time a storm arises; the horizon is in flames, the thunder
roars, the sea rages, the boldest tremble; then the pitmen, unconscious
of the terrible scene, calmly pursue their labours, and think with
pleasure of their homes, while the ship above is shattered to pieces and
sinks; unfortunately, but too faithful a picture of the daily changes of
human life.’
[Illustration:
Map showing the
COAL FIELDS
and
MINERAL DISTRICTS
of
AMERICA
]
Nowhere in the world, perhaps, does human activity display a more
restless energy than on the site of the Newcastle Coal-field, where,
night and day, successive trains heaped with the black diamonds of
England speed along far-stretching railways, and hurry down to river and
ocean, until they are unloaded and their contents shipped by machinery.
Steam-engines are unceasingly at work drawing coals and pumping out
water. Thousands of men are underneath our feet cutting down the coal by
severe and peculiar labour, while thousands above are receiving the
loads and speeding them forwards.
‘Go where you will, there is a network of small railways, leading from
pit to pit in hopeless intricacy, but all having a common terminus on
the river’s bank or the ocean’s shore. Go where you will, tall chimneys
rise up before you, and here and there a low line of black sheds,
flanked by chimneys of aspiring altitude, indicates that you are
arriving at a colliery. As you draw nearer, men and boys of blackest hue
pass you and peer at you with inquiring glances. Now trains of coal-
waggons rush by more frequently, noises of the most discordant character
increase, and you know that you are at the pit’s mouth, when you behold
two gigantic wooden arms slanting upwards, upon which are mounted the
pulleys and wheels that carry the huge flat wire ropes of the shaft. For
a moment the wheels do not revolve—no load is ascending or descending—
but the next minute they turn rapidly, and up comes the load of coals or
human beings to the surface. Perhaps the most impressive sight is a
large colliery fully engaged at nightwork, with burning crates of coal
suspended all around; and after this a view from some neighbouring
eminence of all the far-flaming waste coal-heaps, burning up the
accumulation of waste and small coal not worth carriage, ever added to
the ever-consuming mound, until the whole district appears like the
active crater of some enormous volcano.’[65]
Footnote 65:
‘Edinburgh Review,’ vol. cxi. p. 86.
The banks of the Tyne are in many places very high and precipitous, and
consequently render peculiar contrivances necessary for the shipping of
the coals. The means used for this purpose are various: sometimes
inclined tunnels, through which the train of waggons is lowered in
chains to the water; sometimes slopes, along which the coals are
shovelled into the ship, or still better, the ingenious mechanism of
which William Howitt gives us the following description:—
‘As you advance over the plain you see a whole train of waggons loaded
with coal, careering by themselves without horse, without steam-engine,
without man, except that there sits one behind, who, instead of
endeavouring to propel these mad waggons on their way, seems labouring
hopelessly by his weight to detain them.
‘But what is your amazement when you come in sight of the river Tyne,
and see these waggons still careering on to the very brink of the
water!—to see a railway carried from the high bank, and supported on
tall piles, horizontally, above the surface of the river, and to some
distance into it, as if to allow those vagabond trains of waggons to run
right off, and dash themselves down into the river!
[Illustration: SHIPPING COAL.]
‘There they go, all mad together! Another moment, and they will shoot
over the end of the lofty railway, and go headlong into the Tyne,
helter-skelter. But behold! these creatures are not so mad as you
imagine them. They are instinct with sense; they have a principle of
self-preservation, as well as of speed, in them. See, as they draw near
the river they pause, they stop! one by one they detach themselves; and
as one devoted waggon runs on, like a victim given up for the salvation
of the rest, to perform a wild summersault into the water below, what do
we see? It is caught! A pair of gigantic arms separate themselves from
the end of the railway. They catch the waggon, they hold it suspended in
the air, they let it softly and gently descend—and whither? Into the
water? No; we see now that a ship already lies below the end of the
railway. The waggon descends to it; a man standing there strikes a bolt,
the bottom falls, and the coals which it contains are nicely deposited
in the hold of the vessel. Up, again, soars the empty waggon in that
pair of gigantic arms. It reaches the railway; it glides like a black
swan into its native lake upon it; and away it goes, as of its own
accord, to a distance, to await its brethren, who successively perform
the same exploit, and then joining it, all scamper back again as hard as
they can over the plain to the distant pit.’
The produce of the collieries situated further up the Tyne, where the
river is no longer navigable by sea-going craft, is conveyed in a kind
of oval vessels, called keels, to the port of Newcastle, or its out-
stations, North and South Shields, where it is discharged into larger
ships.
Newcastle may well be called the capital of King Coal. Once a town of
military importance, as the old, grim-looking donjon-keep of Robert
Curthose, the son of the Conqueror, still testifies, it entirely owes
its modern importance to the treasures of coal adjacent to its walls.
Its quays, black and sooty as the mineral on which its prosperity is
founded, are lined with a dense row of counting-houses, and before them
in the river still denser rows of colliers lie at anchor; while between
both ebbs and flows a black-looking crowd—for all here wear the livery
of the article to which all owe their bread. Some idea may be formed of
the vast activity waving to and fro in this chief artery of the coal
trade, from the fact that the annual arrivals in the Tyne are not less
than 13,000 or 14,000, 10,000 of which are on account of the coal trade.
Sunderland, the great port of the river Wear, where annually more than
10,000 cargoes of coal are shipped to all ports of the world;
Hartlepool, a town of modern date with magnificent docks; Stockton-on-
Tees, and a number of minor places of shipment on the coast, likewise
owe their prosperity to coal, so that probably no other article of trade
gives constant employment to so many vessels within so confined a
territory.
From Tynemouth Priory, a ruin romantically situated on a bold
promontory, the visitor frequently enjoys a magnificent marine picture;
for when, after long-continued easterly gales, the wind changes to a
westerly breeze, many hundred vessels—mostly colliers—put to sea
together in a single tide, and distribute themselves over the ocean with
their prows turned in almost every direction, some southward and coast-
wise, for English ports, for the Channel, and for the southern countries
of Europe; others, northward for Scotland and the Norwegian coast; and
others, again, due east, for Denmark and the Baltic—all sinking deep in
the water, weighed down by that mineral fuel which is more valuable for
England than if it were replaced by the mines of Mexico or the diggings
of Australia.
Yet a few years, and probably the dingy and crawling craft, which
perform the chief part in this animated scene, will be abolished.
Clipper screw steamers are rapidly taking their place, and the railroads
daily transport a greater proportion of the seven or eight million tons
of coal which are annually devoured by our huge metropolis.
Before quitting the Northern coal districts, a few words may be added on
the swarthy population whose labours bring their subterranean riches to
the light. The chief underground workmen are the hewers, who either
remove the coal with pickaxes, or sometimes blast it with powder. To hew
well is a work of skill as well as of strength, and men must be early
practised in it to earn high wages by piece-work. In tolerably thick
seams of coal of five and six feet and upwards, hewing is more a work of
strength than skill; but in the narrower seams skill predominates. In
these the arm is confined, the blow is shortened, the pick is impeded.
To gain space by adaptation of position, you may see one hewer kneeling
down on one or both knees, another squatting, another stooping or
bending double, and occasionally one or more lying on their sides or on
their backs, picking and pegging away at the seam above them. If the
seam be hard as well as thin, and the man’s position confined, it is
manifest that he cannot get his strength to bear in full, or his full
measure of coals. In such cases he is bathed in perspiration, in a state
of semi-nudity, enveloped in floating and clinging coal-dust. If to this
we add the very faint light imparted by the Davy lamps, the constantly
thickening atmosphere, the exhalations from living beings, exaggerated
by heat, and not diminished by any free current of air, and remember
that eight hours is the usual day’s work of the hewer, we must surely
confess that few men have their strength more hardly tasked, or earn
their bread in a more laborious manner.
[Illustration: COAL HEWERS AT WORK.]
To relieve this arduous toil, coal-cutting machines have lately been
devised, which are worked either by steam or by compressed air, and will
probably in time perform a great part of the hewer’s labour, as those
already in employment appear to be well adapted to the purpose for which
they are contrived, and further improvements in their construction will
no doubt be introduced. Coal-cutting machines, which act either by
picking or gouging, have been found to work more economically than
manual labour, while at the same time much less coal is destroyed and
reduced to slack. A matter of still more importance is the diminished
risk to the persons and lives of the employed, who, when working in a
constrained position, and consequently unable to relieve themselves from
the fall of a superincumbent mass of coal, are frequently crushed to
death. The application of machinery to cutting coal gives another
advantage of national importance, as, by enabling the working to be
carried into the deeper seams of coal which lie at so high a temperature
as to present serious or insurmountable difficulty to handwork, it will
render available to posterity new and hitherto inaccessible stores of
coal.
The hewers may possibly fear to be thrown out of employment by its
introduction on an extensive scale; but as it will relieve them from
their most irksome drudgery, and allow them to reserve their strength
for less injurious trial, they cannot but be thankful for the aid which
it affords them.
They are usually paid according to the number of baskets or tubs they
are able to fill. These are then conveyed by the putters through the
smaller or lower galleries of the pit to the headways, where they are
hoisted by the crow-men upon the rolleys or waggons for transporting the
coals from the crow to the shaft. The roads along which the rolleys are
driven are made sufficiently high for an ordinary horse by cutting away
the roof or the floor. Some of them are two miles long, and are kept in
repair by a rolley-wayman. Where tubs are used for the conveyance of
coal the whole way, no crow is necessary, but a lad, termed a ‘flatman,’
who links the tubs together at the level or the flat.
Next to the hewers, the putters are the hardest labourers in the pit;
and in some places their labour is even harder, for it is no easy matter
to push corfs or tubs, weighing from six to ten hundredweight, along
galleries which are often but three or four feet high, where the heat
not seldom averages about 78° Fahr., and in consequence of the increased
pressure of the air, water boils at 220°. The term ‘putter’ includes the
specific distinctions of the ‘headsman,’ ‘half-marrow,’ and the ‘foal.’
Where full tubs or baskets are to be pushed along the rails from the
hewers to the crow and the rolley-drivers, the headsmen take the chief
part; a half-marrow goes at each end of the train alternately with
another half-marrow; while a foal always precedes the train. At the
bottom of the shaft the ‘onsetters’ are stationed, who attach the tubs
to the ropes which hoist them to the surface. Besides these various
classes of workmen, we find the ‘shifters,’ who keep the galleries in
repair, and the little ‘trapper-boys,’ whose duty it is to open the
ventilating-doors whenever they hear the drivers or trains of coal-
waggons coming on one side or the other. Their task, though humble,
tedious, and requiring the least amount of intelligence, is of great
importance, as the numerous doors which they guard must remain open only
long enough for the passage of the trains, and must then be closed again
immediately, or the current of air needed to ventilate the mine would be
diverted in its course. It is hardly possible to imagine a more joyless
childhood than that of these little fellows, condemned to sit in
solitary gloom during the greater part of the day, and only comforted by
the sudden shout or song of a team-driver, approaching with his train of
waggons, and demanding the opening of the door.
Besides the workers underground, a number of labourers or artisans are
constantly employed above pit, from the ‘banksmen,’ whose duty it is to
see all things living and lifeless up and down the shaft, to the
‘staithmen,’ who attend to the staith or shipping place of coals. Many
find constant occupation in the raff-yard, where old waggons, ironwork,
and woodwork are duly hospitalled and refitted for fresh duty.
The daily work of the mine is conducted according to the strictest
discipline. The ‘resident viewer’ is supreme, and has subordinate
viewers, overseers, and wastemen, lamp-keepers, and other officers, who
have each their departments, and discharge their duties assiduously.
Thus a first-rate northern colliery establishment—where a total of more
than five hundred persons are variously employed—resembles a little
community in itself. Men of all educations, arts, grades, and duties,
and males of almost all ages, from ten years, are here; men, too, of all
appearances—from the gentlemanly viewer to the doubtful wasteman, and
from the underground workers-in-chief—the hewers—to the humble trapper-
boys.
The peculiar nature of his underground occupations, which condemns the
pitman, while working, to a position of great restraint, and taxes the
limbs and muscles in a very unequal manner, naturally influences his
outward appearance, so that he can be easily distinguished from every
other operative.
His stature is diminutive, his figure disproportioned and misshapen; his
legs being much bowed, and his chest protruding like that of a pigeon.
His arms are long, and oddly suspended. His countenance is not less
strange than his figure, his cheeks being generally hollow, his brow
overhanging, his cheekbones high, his forehead low and retreating, his
complexion pallid. Many of these bodily peculiarities or malformations
are probably hereditary. Pitmen have always lived in communities; they
have associated only among themselves, and have thus acquired peculiar
habits and ideas. They almost invariably intermarry, and it is not
uncommon in their marriages to commingle the blood of the same family.
They have thus transmitted natural and accidental defects through a long
series of generations, and may now be regarded in the light of a
distinct race of beings. In spite of the general march of intelligence,
their education is still very imperfect, and they are just emerging from
the greatest possible moral and intellectual darkness—an improvement due
mainly to the Wesleyan Methodists. The untiring labours of this
religious sect not only imparted to the colliery population in the North
of England a higher tone of moral feeling, but in their efforts to
instil religious principles into their minds, afforded them, through
Sunday-schools, a slight amount of education and an imperfect capability
of reading. These first seeds of improvement will, it is hoped,
gradually ripen into fruit, and oppose a strong barrier to the prominent
vices of colliers—gambling and intemperance.
A lack of mental and personal openness and boldness, a great inclination
to injury and theft, the grossest superstition, and a want of the
commonest economy and forethought, are likewise faults which are said to
be very common among them. Deception is so much a practice with them
that they deceive when no earthly advantage can be obtained from their
dishonesty.
Oh the other hand, the proofs of filial affection which they exhibit,
and the noble feelings and heroism which they display when explosions or
accidents take place, prove that the groundwork of their character is
good, and merely requires the influence of a better education to remove
a great part of the blemishes which ignorance has engrafted upon an
originally wholesome stock. Under every disadvantage, several eminent
men have sprung from their class. Thomas Bewick, the celebrated wood-
engraver, was early immured in pits; the late celebrated mathematician,
Dr. Hutton, was originally a hewer of coal; Professor Hann, of King’s
College, in London, was a boy working underground in a northern
colliery; and George Stephenson, the illustrious engineer whose
wonderful inventions have revolutionised the world, and who, after the
lapse of many ages, will still be reckoned among England’s most
illustrious sons, began life as a trapper.
Though the use of coal was already known to the ancient Britons, yet the
first public notice of the mineral is mentioned by Hume to have been in
the time of Henry III., who, in the year 1272, granted a licence to dig
coals to the town of Newcastle. Somewhat later in 1291, the abbot and
monastery of Dunfermline in Scotland obtained a similar grant. The first
coal is said to have been brought to London about the year 1305, where
it was used only by smiths, dyers, and soap-boilers. The smoke, which
was supposed to be injurious to health, caused great annoyance to the
wealthier inhabitants of the city, so that in 1316 its use was
prohibited by a decree of Edward I. This ordinance seems, however, to
have been but little attended to; for a few years later inspectors were
named to levy fines in case of its non-observance, and if these proved
ineffectual, to demolish the fireplaces arranged for the burning of
coal. The complaints against this fuel continued several centuries, for
as late as 1661 King Charles II. was prayed to remedy the nuisance by
banishing from town manufacturers who required large quantities of coal.
Yet, in spite of all the interdictions, complaints, and prejudices
arrayed against it, coal continued to grow in use; for as early as 1615,
Newcastle gave employment to about four hundred vessels, one-half of
which number supplied the demands of London. French ships even then
fetched coals in that port, and the Hanse towns conveyed them to
Flanders.
About the middle of the seventeenth century the coal trade,
notwithstanding an increase of price, required nine hundred vessels; and
fifty years later, half a million of tons were exported from Newcastle,
requiring fourteen hundred vessels for their carriage. During the
eighteenth century the northern coal trade constantly increased with the
steady growth of London, which in 1770, although not possessing one-
sixth of its present population, already consumed seven hundred thousand
tons; and it would have been impossible for the collieries to satisfy
the constantly growing demand if the invention of the steam-engine had
not lent its powerful aid to raise larger quantities of coal from a
greater depth, and to drain many works which otherwise would have been
deluged with water.
The other English coal-fields began to be worked at a much later period
than that of Newcastle, but rapidly grew in importance with the vast
increase of our manufactories and smelting furnaces.
The extraction of coal is indeed constantly increasing at a truly
gigantic rate. Thus, in 1845 our whole annual production was rated at
thirty-five millions of tons; in 1859 it amounted, according to
trustworthy returns, to sixty-eight millions; in 1865 it had advanced to
ninety-six million tons; and now probably exceeds one hundred million
tons—a mass so enormous that with it a girdle of coal three feet wide,
and about seven high, might be put round the earth.
The question of the duration of our coal-fields is evidently one of
great national interest. It has of late excited the attention both of
statesmen and philosophers, but unfortunately it is more easily put than
answered. While some authorities give us the cheering assurance that we
have enough to last us for the next two thousand years at least, others
limit our supply to three or four centuries, or assign even a couple of
hundred years as the period when our descendants will have to seek their
coals in the mines of other countries. The quantity of fuel left in the
Newcastle basin—the most anciently worked of our coal-fields—was
estimated by Mr. Hall, in 1854, at 5,121,888,956 tons. Dividing this
total by 20,000,000 of tons as the present annual consumption, the
future supplies of this famous coal-field would thus be limited to about
two hundred and fifty years—a very short period in the history of a
nation. The immense consumption of coal in the iron furnaces and
foundries of Staffordshire will probably lead to an exhaustion of that
coal-field even before Northumberland and Durham, for its area is
scarcely more than one-half of the area of the Northern Coal-field. It
has, indeed, one very thick seam of coal of from thirty to forty feet,
but this will not alone compensate the difference. The coal-fields of
Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Derbyshire, situated amongst the numerous
iron-works and manufactories, as well as large populations, justify a
similar prophecy; but, on the other hand, better prospects are held out
by the great coal-field of South Wales.
After deducting the coal practically unattainable from its depth, sixty
thousand millions of tons may be considered a liberal estimate of the
available mass. At the present rate of extraction (ten millions of tons)
this would give a supply for the next six thousand years; but supposing
the other sources to fail, the extraction of coal from the South Wales
basin would of course be increased to such an extent as to limit its
duration to six or seven centuries. It may be remarked that the largest
estimates of future coal supply are based on the assumption that mines
may be worked at a depth of four or five thousand feet; but this is very
problematical. Mechanical skill may indeed pierce shafts to this depth,
or even deeper; but the increase of temperature which is raised by one
degree for about every successive seventy feet, along with the
increasing density of the air, must ever oppose insuperable obstacles to
human labour at such a distance below the level of the sea. To the
natural heat and density arising from depth must be added the
corruptions arising from human perspiration, which are constantly on the
increase during working hours in working places. ‘We speak,’ says the
author of an excellent article in the _Quarterly Review_,[66] ‘from some
brief personal experience of what these things are at a depth of nearly
eighteen hundred feet, where the actual temperature varied from eighty-
five to eighty-six and a half degrees. Such experience is necessary to
qualify any man to judge of the vertical limit of human labour, and we
hesitate to fix it at more than two thousand five hundred feet, and
should fix it at that depth only for the hardiest of hewers and haulers
of coal.’
Footnote 66:
Volume cx.
The pressure of superincumbent strata, which renders the upholding of
the roof, even at fourteen or fifteen hundred feet, a problem of
ceaseless anxiety and expense, must also be taken into account. At
depths much exceeding two thousand feet, it is very doubtful if the
roofs could be securely upheld except at such an outlay as would
considerably raise the cost of extraction, while the coal itself would
be more and more dense, and therefore more and more difficult to
dislodge. For these various reasons, all the strata of coal situated
below the depth of two thousand five hundred feet, or at the very utmost
three thousand feet, may be considered as practically unworkable; and
thus sober-minded calculators, on comparing the available solid contents
of our coal-fields with the rate of extraction, have come to the
conclusion that a thousand years is the maximum of the probable future
supply of England and Wales. Adding to this the Scotch and Irish coal,
which are not included in the estimate, and swelling our account with
lignite and peat, we have at any rate sufficient materials for keeping
our fires burning for a good time to come, and may safely leave all
desponding views on the subject to distant generations.
Next to England, no European country has so rapidly increased its coal
production as the German empire, where, thanks to the railroads, the
consumption of mineral fuel is yearly extending over a wider range, and
gradually supplanting in many localities the use of wood. The official
tables inform us that in 1866, 432,594,926 cwt. of black coal, and
130,661,182 cwt. of lignite—together, about 28 million tons—were
produced, a mass considerably greater than the joint production of
France and Belgium, and equal to about seven twenty-fifths of the
production of England. The chief coal-fields are those of Upper Silesia,
of the Ruhr, of the Saar, of Waldenburg (in Lower Silesia), of Dresden
and Zwickau (in Saxony), of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), Ibbenburen, and
Minden, which not only supply the greater part of Germany, but also
yield a considerable exportation to France, Switzerland, and Holland.
The German ports on the North Sea and the Baltic still largely consume
British coal, which, however, has been entirely driven from the Rhine;
and Berlin, which in 1860 burnt 202,970 tons of English coal, consumed
little more than one-half that quantity (123,401 tons) in 1865, in spite
of a considerable increase of population; while at the same time the
consumption of coal from Upper Silesia increased from 61,700 to 323,712
tons.
The small but thriving kingdom of Belgium, where the collieries of
Liège, Namur, and Hainaut give rise to a commercial activity unequalled
on the Continent, occupies the third rank among the coal countries of
Europe, its production in 1863 having amounted to 10,500,000 tons. The
provinces of Namur and Liège consume almost all the coal they produce,
while Mons and Charleroi, in Hainaut, export more than three millions of
tons to France.
This country, which, in 1862, produced 9,400,000 tons of coal, requires
at least 16,000,000 for its consumption, and imports the difference from
Belgium, England, and Germany. The chief coal-basins are situated in the
departments of the Loire, du Nord, Saône-et-Loire, and Gard, which
furnish about seven-eighths of the whole production. Austria, whose
principal coal mines are situated in Bohemia, produces about 3,500,000
tons. Spain possesses magnificent coal-fields in the Asturias and
Santanders, but as yet they have been but little worked.
Besides the coal-basins of the mother country, Britain is richly
provided with coals in many of her colonies. In New South Wales and
Tasmania, in Labuan and Farther India, in Hindostan and New Zealand, in
British Columbia and Honduras, valuable basins or seams of coal have
been discovered; and a magnificent coal-field, far surpassing in
magnitude those of the British Islands, extends from Newfoundland, by
Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia, across a large
portion of New Brunswick. Thus far it has been but little worked, in
countries but thinly peopled, and covered for the most part with
boundless forests; but as from its general proximity to the sea it
offers every advantage for mining operations, a brilliant future may
safely be predicted for the lands it underlies.
The coal-fields of the United States are of still more ample
proportions, as they surpass in extent all the known coal-basins of the
world besides. Beyond the Alleghany Mountains we find the magnificent
Appalachian Coal-field, traversing eight of the principal States in the
American Union, from the northern frontiers of Pennsylvania to Alabama,
and covering a space of about sixty-five thousand square miles.
Of scarcely inferior extent are the vast coal-fields of Indiana,
Illinois, and Kentucky, which nearly equal in magnitude the whole of
England; and another smaller but highly important coal region is
situated between the lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan, not to mention the
minor coal-basins scattered here and there from Texas to Missouri, and
from New York to Maine.
As yet, the Americans have not derived full benefit from their
extraordinary coal deposits; but the possession of so vast an
accumulation of _power_ allows us to predict a future of almost
boundless enterprise and production for that wonderful country.
While in most of our coal-seams deep shafts have to be sunk to obtain
the coal, and steam power has to be constantly employed to prevent its
submersion, the Appalachian Coal-field is intersected by three great
navigable rivers, the Monongahela, the Alleghany, and the Ohio, all of
which lay open on their banks the level seams of coal. At Brownhill, on
the first of these rivers, the main seam of bituminous coal, ten feet
thick, breaks out in the steep cliff at the water’s edge. Horizontal
galleries may be driven everywhere at very slight expense, and so worked
as to drain themselves, while the cars laden with coal, and attached to
each other, glide down on a railway so as to deliver their burden into
barges moored to the river’s bank. The same seam may be followed the
whole way to Pittsburg, fifty miles distant. Being nearly horizontal, it
crops out, as the river descends, at a continually increasing, but never
at an inconvenient, height above the Monongahela. Besides this main
seam, another layer of workable coal, six feet thick, breaks out on the
slope of the hills at a greater height. Here almost every proprietor can
open a coal pit on his own land, and the stratification being very
regular, he may calculate with precision the depth at which coal may be
won.
One of the most remarkable collieries in the world is that of Maunch
Chunk (or the Bear Mountain) in Pennsylvania, where an enormous bed of
anthracitic coal, nearly sixty feet thick, and probably caused by the
doubling back of a twenty-eight feet seam upon itself, is quarried in
the open air; the overlying sandstone, forty feet thick, having been
removed bodily from the top of the hill, which, to use the miners’
expression, has been ‘scalped.’
CHAPTER XXXIII.
BITUMINOUS SUBSTANCES.
Formation of Petroleum—Enormous Production of the Pennsylvanian Wells—
Asphalte used by the Ancients—Asphalte Pavements—The Pitch Lake of
Trinidad—Jet—Its Manufacture in Whitby.
The class of bituminous minerals exhibits a long series of inflammable
substances, which are supposed to be derived from the decomposition of
organic matter in the rocks containing them. Some (Petroleum—Rock-
naphtha) issue in a fluid state from the earth, while others pass by
insensible gradations from petroleum into pittasphalte or maltha (viscid
bitumen), and the latter as insensibly into the solid form of asphalte.
Certain bitumens, again, differ but slightly in composition from
bituminous coals, so that it is, in reality, very difficult to draw a
decided line between them. Hence it is highly probable that in petroleum
we see the product of a primeval vegetation which, under the influence
of chemical change and heat, has partly assumed a liquid form, and
oozing from the deep-seated strata in which it was confined by
terrestrial revolution, now permeates the superficial rocks, or exists
collected in subterranean cavities, whence it issues in jets and
fountains whenever an outlet is made by boring.
Petroleum springs have been known for many ages in Burmah, where there
are about one hundred wells from one hundred and eighty to three hundred
and six feet deep, each lined with horizontal tubes, but not all now
worked; at Baku, in the neighbourhood of the holy fires, already
mentioned; near the village of Amiano, in Parma, whence enough was
formerly obtained to light the streets of Genoa; at Zante, one of the
Ionian islands, which has furnished oil for more than two thousand
years, its petroleum spring having been mentioned by Herodotus; at
Agrigentum, in Sicily, which, according to Pliny, furnished a mineral
oil that was collected and used for burning in lamps; on the banks of
the Kuban, and many other localities; but it is only since the discovery
of the immense sources of supply in the north-eastern States of America
and in Canada that petroleum has become not only an article of the
greatest commercial importance, but a blessing to millions in all parts
of the world. It gladdens the long winter evenings of the Icelandic
peasant, and enlivens the hut of the Australian settler; it has found
its way into the remotest glens of the Alps, and to the distant sea-
ports of China. No wonder that its economical and cheerful light has
caused its consumption to increase with a rapidity almost without a
precedent in the annals of commerce. Though scarcely ten years have
passed since the American wells first began to pour forth their streams
of oil, no less than 670,000,000 gallons were exported in 1866 from the
ports of Philadelphia and New York. One-third of this enormous quantity
found its way to England; one-fifth to the port of Antwerp, its chief
staple place for Western Germany and the North of France; the remainder
was distributed among all the sea-ports of the world from Hamburg to
Hong Kong, and from the Cape to Valparaiso. When we reflect that this
amazing mass of liquid bitumen, which formed the cargo of no less than
seven hundred and thirty-one large vessels, must necessarily be
increased from year to year to meet a constantly increasing demand, it
might almost be feared that, in spite of the prodigality of nature, its
subterranean reservoirs must one day be exhausted.
Asphalte, a mineral pitch of a deep black colour and a conchoidal
brilliant fracture, is frequently found swimming on the surface of the
Lake Asphaltites, or Dead Sea, in Judæa, which receives its name from
the circumstance. It also occurs in many parts of Egypt, where it was
used for embalming. The ancients also frequently employed it, combined
with lime, in their buildings. Not only do we find the ruined walls of
temples and palaces in the East with the stones cemented with this
material, but some of the old Roman castles in this country are found to
hold bitumen in the cement by which their stones are secured.
‘It is a remarkable fact,’ says the late Dr. Ure, ‘that the substance
thus employed in the earliest constructions upon record, should for so
many thousand years have fallen well-nigh into disuse among civilised
nations; for there is certainly no class of minerals so well fitted as
the bituminous, by their plasticity, fusibility, tenacity, adhesiveness
to surfaces, impenetrability by water, and unchangeableness in the
atmosphere, to enter into the composition of terraces, foot pavements,
roofs, and every kind of hydraulic work. Bitumen, combined with
calcareous earth, forms a compact semi-elastic solid, which is not
liable to suffer injury by the greatest alternations of frost and thaw,
which often disintegrate in a few years the hardest stone, nor can it be
ground to dust and worn away by the attrition of the feet of men and
animals, as sandstone, flags, and even blocks of granite are. An
asphalte pavement rightly tempered in tenacity, solidity, and
elasticity, seems to be incapable of suffering abrasion in the most
crowded thoroughfares; a fact exemplified of late in a few places in
London, but much more extensively and for a much longer time in Paris.’
Many of the asphalte pavements made in England have, indeed, proved
failures; but as the proper proportions of the respective ingredients
may not have been maintained, further trials are advisable. At present,
although bitumen is employed, and with seeming advantage, as a cement
between paving-stones, its use in the formation of foot pavement has
been confined within narrow limits.
In Europe, the most extensive mine of asphaltic rock is undoubtedly that
of the Val de Travers in the canton of Neufchâtel; but the most
remarkable deposit of bitumen in the world is the celebrated Great Pitch
Lake in the island of Trinidad. With regard to its formation, Sir
Charles Lyell remarks that the Orinoco, which discharges its vast volume
of water right opposite to the island, has for ages been rolling down
great quantities of woody and vegetable bodies into the surrounding sea,
where, by the influence of currents and eddies, they may be arrested and
accumulated in particular places. The frequent occurrence of earthquakes
and other indications of volcanic action in these parts lends
countenance to the opinion that these vegetable substances may have
undergone, by the agency of subterranean fire, those transformations or
chemical changes which produce petroleum; and this may, by the same
causes, be forced up to the surface, where, by exposure to the air, it
becomes inspissated, and forms the different varieties of pure and
earthy pitch or asphaltum so abundant in the island. The Pitch Lake is a
mile and a half in circumference; the bitumen is solid and cold near the
shores, but gradually increases in temperature and softness towards the
centre, where it is boiling. The solidified bitumen appears as if it had
cooled as the surface boiled in large bubbles. The ascent from the lake
to the sea, a distance of three-quarters of a mile, is covered with a
hardened pitch, on which trees and vegetables flourish, and the best
pine-apples in the West Indies, called black pines, grow wild. As the
Trinidad pitch has been found by chemical analysis to be an excellent
material for the making of gas, it will probably become an important
article of commerce. The wonder is that it has been so long neglected.
[Illustration: THE PITCH LAKE, TRINIDAD. WEST INDIES. (_From an Original
Sketch._)]
Though Jet is frequently considered to be wood in a high state of
bituminisation, yet the fact that we find this beautiful substance
surrounding fossils, and casing adventitious masses of stone, seems to
show that a liquid, or, at all events, a plastic condition must at one
time have prevailed in its formation. This opinion is further
strengthened by the circumstance that petroleum strongly impregnates the
rock in which it is found, giving out a strong odour when it is exposed
to the air.
Jet occurs chiefly in the neighbourhood of Whitby in Yorkshire, the
estates of Lord Mulgrave being especially productive. The jet miner
searches with great care the slaty rocks, and finding the jet spread
out, often in extreme thinness, between the laminations of the rock, he
follows it with great care, and is frequently rewarded by its thickening
out to two or three inches.
The art of working jet is of very ancient date in this country, for the
Romans certainly employed it for ornamental purposes, and probably found
it in use among the Britons whom they conquered. Lionel Charlton, in the
‘History of Whitby,’ says that in one of the Roman tumuli, lying close
to the jaw-bone, he found the earring of a lady having the form of a
heart, with a hole in the upper end for suspension from the ear. There
exists no doubt that, when the Abbey of Whitby was the seat of learning
and the resort of pilgrims, jet-rosaries and crosses were common. The
manufacture was carried on till the time of Elizabeth, when it seems to
have ceased suddenly, and was not resumed till the year 1800, when
Robert Jefferson, a painter, and John Carter made beads and crosses with
files and knives. A stranger coming to Whitby, and seeing them working
in this rude way, advised them to try to turn it; they followed his
advice, and found it answer. Several more then joined them, and the
trade has been gradually increasing since; so that at present the total
annual value of the mourning ornaments made at Whitby and Scarborough
amounts to no less than 125,000_l._ About 250 men and boys are employed
in searching for jet, and between 600 and 700 are engaged in its
manufacture.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
SALT.
Geological Position of Rock Salt—Mines of Northwich—Their immense
Excavations—Droitwich and Stoke—Wieliczka—Berchtesgaden and
Reichenhall—Admirable Machinery—Stassfurt—Processes employed in the
Manufacture of Salt—Origin of Rock-salt Deposits.
Common salt is so necessary to man, and of such vast importance to the
manufacturer and agriculturist, that the processes by which it is
obtained are justly reckoned among the chief branches of industry.
In many of the warmer countries of the globe it is procured simply by
the evaporation of sea-water in shallow lagoons; in others, it gushes
forth in briny springs, or occurs in inland lakes, pools, and marshes,
or is extracted in the solid form of rock-salt from the bosom of the
earth.
The geological position of rock-salt is very variable; it is found in
all sedimentary formations, and is generally interstratified with
gypsum, and associated with beds of clay. In England its chief deposits
occur in the new red sandstone in the region around Northwich, in
Cheshire. They consist of two beds, which are not less than one hundred
feet thick, and are supposed to constitute large insulated masses about
a mile and a half long and nearly 1,300 yards broad. The uppermost bed
occurs at seventy-five feet beneath the surface, and is separated from
the lower mass by layers of indurated clay, thirty-one and a half feet
thick, with veins of rock-salt running between them. Hitherto only the
lower bed has been worked, for the upper deposits are of inferior
purity. These valuable mines were accidentally discovered in 1670 during
an unsuccessful sinking for coal; and as ever since that time they have
furnished a constantly increasing quantity of salt, amounting during the
last few years to more than 800,000 tons, the vastness of the
excavations may easily be imagined. To support the roof, which is about
twenty feet above the floor, and extends in some cases over several
acres, huge pillars not less than fifteen feet thick have been left
standing at irregular intervals, thus forming immense rows of galleries,
which even when illuminated by thousands of lights are lost in a dim and
endless perspective, which may well remind the spectator of the fabled
Hall of Eblis.
As the salt is detached from the rock by blasting, the grandeur of the
scene is not a little heightened by the frequent explosions re-echoing
through the spacious vaults, and booming like thunder from some dark and
distant gallery. For the transport of the salt underground, the roomy
passages are traversed in every direction by tram-roads, on which
waggons drawn by horses easily convey it from the place of extraction to
the bottom of the shaft. The chief part of the Cheshire salt (both
fossil and rock) manufactured is sent by the river Weever to Liverpool.
As it is rarely found of sufficient purity for immediate use, it is
first dissolved in water, and afterwards reduced to a crystalline state
by evaporating the solution. The necessary coals are mostly brought by
canal from the neighbourhood of St. Helens, and salt taken as a return
freight; so that, as in a clock-work where one wheel catches into
another, nothing is wanting to render its manufacture as economical as
possible.
Among the mineral treasures which nature has so prodigally bestowed upon
Great Britain, the salt-mines of Cheshire hold a conspicuous rank, as
they not only provide chiefly for our own vast consumption, but also for
that of many other countries. In 1864 the salt exports amounted to
596,063 tons, the total value being 281,443_l._ About one-third of this
immense quantity (183,097 tons) found its way to the British East
Indies, 72,201 tons to Russia, and 86,208 tons to the United States.
Next in importance to the Cheshire mines are the brine-pits of Droitwich
and Stoke, in Worcestershire, the former of which are said to have been
worked in the time of the Romans, and now chiefly supply the London
market. In 1865 their produce amounted to 185,000 tons, of which about
40,000 were exported.
At Droitwich the borings are only 175 feet deep, and so abundant is the
supply of brine that, if the pumps cease working, it speedily rises to
within nine feet of the surface, and if left unremoved, soon overflows.
The most renowned salt-mines on the continent of Europe are undoubtedly
those of Wieliczka, a small town of about 6,000 inhabitants, situated to
the south of Cracow, in a fruitful valley on the northern borders of the
Carpathian mountains. ‘After descending 210 feet,’ says Mr. Bayard
Taylor, an American traveller who visited them a few years ago, ‘we saw
the first veins of rock-salt in a bed of clay and crumbled sandstone.
Thirty feet more, and we were in a world of salt. Level galleries
branched off from the foot of the staircase; overhead, a ceiling of
solid salt, under foot a floor of salt, and on either side gray walls of
salt, sparkling here and there with minute crystals. Lights glimmered
ahead, and on turning a corner we came upon a gang of workmen, some
hacking away at the solid floor, others trundling wheelbarrows full of
the precious cubes. Here was the chapel of St. Anthony—the oldest in the
mines—a Byzantine excavation, supported by columns, with altar,
crucifix, and life-size statues of saints, apparently in black marble,
but all as salt as Lot’s wife, as I discovered by putting my tongue to
the nose of John the Baptist. The humid air of this upper story of the
mines has damaged some of the saints. Francis, especially, is running
away like a dip candle, and all of his head is gone except his chin. The
limbs of Joseph are dropping off as if he had the Norwegian leprosy, and
Lawrence has deeper scars than his gridiron could have made, running up
and down his back. A Bengal light, burnt at the altar, brought into
sudden life this strange temple, which presently vanished into utter
darkness, as if it had never been.
‘I cannot follow, step by step, our journey of two hours through the
labyrinths of this wonderful mine. It is a bewildering maze of
galleries, grand halls, staircases, and vaulted chambers, where one soon
loses all sense of distance or direction, and drifts along blindly in
the wake of his conductor. Everything was solid salt except where great
piers of hewn logs had been built up to support some threatening roof,
or vast chasms, left in quarrying, had been bridged across. As we
descended to lower regions, the air became more dry and agreeable, and
the saline walls more pure and brilliant. One hall, 108 feet in length,
resembled a Grecian theatre, the traces of blocks taken out in regular
layers representing the seats for the spectators. Out of this single
hall 1,000,000 cwt. of salt had been taken, or enough to supply the
40,000,000 inhabitants of Austria for one year.
‘Two obelisks of salt commemorated the visit of Francis I. and his
Empress in another spacious, irregular vault, through which we passed by
means of a wooden bridge, resting on piers of the crystalline rock.
After we had descended to the bottom of this chamber, a boy ran along
the bridge above with a burning Bengal-light, throwing flashes of blue
lustre on the obelisks, on the scarred walls, vast arches, the entrances
to deeper halls, and the far roof, fretted with the picks of the
workmen. The effect was truly magical. Presently we entered another and
loftier chamber, yawning downwards like the mouth of hell, with
cavernous tunnels opening out of the further end. In these tunnels the
workmen, half naked, with torches in their hands, wild cries, fireworks,
and the firing of guns (which here so reverberates in the imprisoned air
that one can feel every wave of sound), give a rough representation of
the infernal regions, for the benefit of the crowned heads who visit the
mines. A little further, we struck upon a lake four fathoms deep, upon
which we embarked in a heavy, square boat, and entered a gloomy tunnel,
over the entrance of which was inscribed (in salt letters) “Good luck to
you!” Midway in the tunnel, the halls at either ends were suddenly
illuminated, and a crash, as of a hundred cannon bellowing through the
hollow vaults, shook the air and water in such wise that our boat had
not ceased trembling when we landed in the further hall. A tablet
inscribed “Heartily welcome!” saluted us on landing. Finally, at the
depth of 450 feet, our journey ceased, although we were but half way to
the bottom. The remainder is a wilderness of shafts, galleries, and
smaller chambers, the extent of which we could only conjecture. We then
returned through scores of tortuous passages to some vaults, where a lot
of gnomes, naked to the hips, were busy with pick, mallet, and wedge,
blocking out and separating the solid pavement. The process is quite
primitive, scarcely differing from that of the ancient Egyptians in
quarrying granite. The blocks are first marked out on the surface by a
series of grooves; one side is then deepened to the required thickness,
and wedges being inserted under the block, it is soon split off.
‘The number of workmen employed in the mines is 1,500, all of whom
belong to the ‘upper crust,’—that is, they live on the outside of the
world. They are divided into gangs, and relieve each other every six
hours. Each gang quarries out, on an average, a little more than 1,000
cwt. of salt in that space of time, making the annual yield 1,500,000
cwt.!
‘The men we saw were fine, muscular, healthy-looking fellows; and the
officer, in answer to my questions, stated that their sanitary condition
was quite equal to that of field labourers. He explicitly denied the
ridiculous story of men having been born in these mines, and having gone
through life without ever mounting to the upper world.’
As far as explored, the salt-bed occupies a space of 9,000 feet in
length and 4,000 in width, and consists of five successive stages or
_stockwerke_, separated from each other by intervening strata of from
100 to 150 feet in thickness, and reaching to a depth of 1,500 feet.
Notwithstanding the immense amount of salt already quarried from this
wonderful deposit, which, according to authentic records, has been
worked ever since the twelfth century, and perhaps even much earlier, it
is estimated that, at the present rate of exploitation, the known supply
cannot be exhausted under 300 years.
It is a remarkable circumstance that sources of sweet water are found in
the mines in close proximity to the salt, a circumstance which is owing
to the latter not forming a continuous stratum, but being imbedded in
large nests or insular masses in the tertiary clay of the mountain, so
that in several places the water filtering from the top is able to gush
forth in the subterranean galleries without any saline admixture.
In the summer of 1868 a serious accident happened to the mines of
Wieliczka, which at one time was supposed to threaten their total
destruction. In the hope of discovering valuable potash salts, such as
occur at Stassfurt, in the vicinity of the rock-salt, a boring was
imprudently attempted at a great depth, through a contiguous aquiferous
stratum, and the consequence was that, instead of meeting with the
expected result, a powerful spring was tapped, which, pouring forth an
immense volume of water, filled the lower galleries. The inhabitants of
the village of Wieliczka, which is situated above the mines, were
terrified. They not only feared for the ruin of the mine, which afforded
them their chief means of subsistence, but dreaded also the falling in
of their houses, in consequence of the melting of the salt-pillars which
upheld the flooded galleries.
Fortunately their fears proved to be exaggerated, as the inundation,
which remained confined to the lower galleries, is now being rapidly
brought under by means of powerful steam pumps, and measures have been
taken for blocking up the spring. Even supposing the water to have
continued pouring in with undiminished force, and without any effort
being made to drain it off, the excavations are so vast that it would
have taken many years to fill them.
Besides the mines of Wieliczka, Austria possesses many other
considerable deposits of rock-salt in Gallicia (Bochnia), Hungary, and
Transylvania. In Salzburg (Ischl, Halstadt Hall), Tyrol, and the
neighbouring mines of Berchtesgaden, in Bavaria, the salt does not occur
in large solid masses, fit to be at once extracted from the bosom of the
earth, but imbues masses of gypsum and anhydrite, which become quite
light and porous when the salt has been removed by water. As it would be
too expensive to remove this compound, an ingenious method has been
contrived for introducing water into the mines from above, and drawing
it off again through an adit or lower gallery as soon as it is saturated
with salt.
The brine thus obtained at Berchtesgaden is then conveyed, by means of
pipes or conduits, to Reichenhall and Rosenhain, where the necessary
fuel for its evaporation is near at hand. The distance from
Berchtesgaden to Rosenhain is no less than thirty leagues; and between
both places many high mountains, steep rocks, and narrow gorges
intervene. The works which lead the brine over this distance, and
through all these natural obstacles, may therefore justly be considered
as a masterpiece of mechanical skill. As the pipes must often ascend
mountains, the highest elevation above the pit being 1,218 feet, and
then again slant down into ravines; as in many parts rocks had to be
levelled and forests cut down for the purpose of laying them, and as
they are subject to frequent damage in a severe climate, it may easily
be imagined that the greatest engineering power was required for the
execution of so grand a work.
Hydraulic machines serve to raise the brine over the mountains, and the
water-power of the rivulets descending from the heights is used for
forcing it upwards. The contrivance is so admirable that the small
machine at Berchtesgaden raises 270 cwt. of brine to a height of 311
feet by means of an equal weight of water descending from a height of
375 feet. In some parts the tubes of this colossal duct run along the
high road, in others tunnels have been pierced to shorten the distance.
Thus the Alpine rock-salt requires much ingenuity to be rendered
productive, while in other parts we find rock-salt cropping out on the
surface of the earth, so as to be very easily worked. The soil of many
extensive wastes in Asia and Africa is covered and impregnated with
salt, which has never been inclosed by superimposed deposits. Near Lake
Oroomiah, in Persia, it forms hills and extensive plains, and it abounds
in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea.
In the valley of Cardona in the Pyrenees two thick masses of rock-salt,
apparently united at their bases, make their appearance on one of the
slopes of the hill. One of the beds, or rather masses, has been worked,
and measures about 130 yards by 250, but its depth has not been
determined. It consists of salt in a laminated condition and with
confused crystallisation. That part which is exposed is composed of
eight beds, nearly horizontal, and having a total thickness of fifteen
feet, but the beds are separated from one another by red and variegated
marls and gypsum. The second mass not worked appears to be unstratified,
but in other respects resembles the former; and this portion, where it
has been exposed to the action of the weather, is steeply scarped and
bristles with needlelike points, so that its appearance has been
compared to that of a glacier.
The rock-salt deposit of Ilezk, about fifty miles to the south of
Orenburg, in Russia, is still more remarkable. On the sides of a crater-
like pit, which has been dug into the mass where it most nearly
approaches the surface, the rock-salt is seen standing in perpendicular
walls. On the west side of the gap a convenient staircase leads to the
bottom. The salt is hewn in large square blocks, which are afterwards
sawn into smaller pieces of eighty-five pounds. The regular annual
produce is fixed by Government at 700,000 pud, or about 10,000 tons, of
which part is furnished _gratuitously_ to the neighbouring Kirghise
hordes, who no doubt are made to pay dearly for their salt in some other
manner.
The labours in the mine are only carried on during the summer, and begin
by pumping out the water which has settled at the bottom of the pit from
the melting snow; while the transport to the next river by means of
sledges takes place during the winter. Were this mine situated in a less
barbarous or more accessible country, it might easily rival, or even
surpass, the produce of Cheshire. To the south of the pit, where the
regular mining operations, such as they are, take place, a great number
of old pits or holes may be seen, in which the Cossacks, Baschkirs, and
Kirghise used to provide themselves with salt before Government
undertook the regular working of the mine in 1754. These pits, some of
which are sixty feet square, and from six to eight feet deep, are
generally full of a saturated brine of a brownish colour, and are made
use of for bathing by the Kirghise, who justly consider them as an
excellent remedy for many diseases.
Before 1856 all the salt produced in Prussia was obtained from brine
springs, but since that time enormous beds of rock-salt have been
discovered in various parts of the kingdom. Those of Stassfurt, near
Magdeburg, produced 2,256,000 cwt. in 1866, part of which was exported
into foreign countries, through the ports of Lubeck and Hamburg. But the
mines of Stassfurt, besides rock-salt, contain also an inexhaustible
quantity of highly valuable potash salts, which are largely used for
agricultural purposes, and supply the wants of the numerous chemical
manufactories which have rapidly converted an obscure hamlet into a
flourishing seat of industry. At Speerenberg, about twenty miles to the
south of Berlin, the earth-borer has pierced through an enormous deposit
of rock-salt, more than two thousand feet thick, and at Segeberg, in the
province of Sleswig-Holstein, a shaft is now being sunk into a rich bed
of rock-salt, recently discovered.
The method of preparing the rock-salt, and the processes employed in
manufacturing salt from brine springs, are nearly the same in all salt-
works. The first process is to obtain a proper strength of brine, either
by saturating fresh water with the salt that has been brought up from
the mine, or pumping up the salt water from springs that have become
saturated by passing through saliferous beds. The brine obtained in a
clear state is put into evaporating pans and brought as quickly as
possible to a boiling heat (in the case of strong brine 226° F.), when a
skin is formed on the surface, consisting chiefly of impurities. This is
taken off, and either thrown away or used for agricultural purposes, and
the first crystals which form are likewise raked away and thrown aside
as of little value. The heat is then kept up to the boiling point for
about eight hours, during which time evaporation goes on steadily, the
liquid gradually diminishing, and the salt being deposited; it is then
raked out, put into moulds, and placed in a drying stove, to render it
perfectly dry and ready for sale.
When salt is to be prepared from the weak brines which are of common
occurrence in France and Germany, the brine is concentrated by natural
evaporation previous to the more costly application of artificial heat.
Having been first raised by pumps, it is then allowed to trickle in a
continuous stream down the surface of bundles of thorns exposed to the
sun and wind, and built up in regular walls between parallel wooden
frames. These evaporating works (_Gradirwerke_ or graduation-houses) are
frequently of an immense extent. At Salza, near Schönebeck, for
instance, the graduation-house is 5,817 feet long, the thorn walls are
from 33 to 52 feet high in different parts, and present a total surface
of 25,000 feet. According to the weakness of the brine it must be the
more frequently pumped up and made to flow down repeatedly over the
thorns in different compartments of the building. An immense quantity of
fuel is saved by this economical mode of evaporation.
The origin of rock-salt deposits is one of the most interesting
geological questions. According to some authorities, they were the
result of igneous agency, while others are of opinion that in every case
they have been deposited from solution in water. Their usual occurrence
in lenticular or irregularly-shaped beds, having a great horizontal
extension, favours the aqueous theory, for masses protruded upwards, or
sublimated by volcanic power, are generally found to occupy vertical
fissures. To account for their formation we must suppose a sea such as
the Mediterranean cut off by an elevation of the land at its mouth from
its previous communication with the ocean, and gradually losing more
water by evaporation than it receives by rain and rivers. As thus the
amount of salt which it holds dissolved increases, deposits of rock-salt
will ultimately form at the bottom of its deepest parts, and subsequent
changes in the earth’s surface may then either conceal them under
superincumbent strata, as at Northwich, or leave them exposed, as in
many of the African or Asiatic wastes.
CHAPTER XXXV.
SULPHUR.
Sulphur Mines of Sicily—Conflagration of a Sulphur Mine—The Solfataras
of Krisuvick—Iwogasima in Japan—Solfatara of Puzzuoli—Crater of
Teneriffe—Alaghez—Büdöshegy in Transylvania—Sulphur from the Throat of
Popocatepetl—Sulphurous Springs—Pyrites—Mines of San Domingos in
Portugal—The Baron of Pommorão.
Though in every volcanic region of the globe sulphurous exhalations
arise from a great number of craters or solfataras, yet sulphur is but
rarely found in sufficient quantities to remunerate the miner’s toil. In
this respect the island of Sicily is unrivalled, for no other country
possesses such masses of this valuable, and in many cases indispensable,
mineral.
The numerous sulphur pits of Sicily, which occur in crevices or hollows
over a space of 150 geographical miles, are situated chiefly in the
southern part of the island, in the districts between the sea-border of
the province of Girgenti and the mountains of Etna, Mannaro, Castro
Giovanni, and Catolica. They are no doubt the produce of a vast volcanic
action which took place about the beginning of the tertiary period, when
the sulphurous fumes, rising through countless clefts or fumaroles from
the mysterious furnaces of the deep, condensed in the chalk and clay
grounds of the superficial strata.
In former times, as long as the chief use of sulphur was confined to the
fabrication of gunpowder, its production was comparatively
insignificant; but since the manufacture of sulphuric acid has become a
branch of industry of continually increasing importance, sulphur, the
ingredient necessary to its formation, has considerably risen in value,
and now constitutes the chief article of Sicilian exportation.
Girgenti, the most important town on the south coast of the island,
though its dirty miserable streets and its 15,000 inhabitants form a
melancholy contrast to the wealth and luxury of ancient Agrigentum,
within whose lofty walls a population of 800,000 souls is said to have
existed, owes to the increase of the sulphur trade the slight dawn of
prosperity which has enlivened it during these latter years.
All the sulphur-pits in the south-west of the island send their produce
to the port of Girgenti, and on every road one meets with long files of
mules and asses loaded with sacks of sulphur.
The grape disease, against which this mineral is everywhere used in
France and Italy as the only successful remedy, has given a new impulse
to the sulphur trade by raising the price to about three times its
former value. The merchants of Girgenti did not neglect this opportunity
for making their fortunes, for as soon as the grape disease became a
national calamity for the chief wine-producing countries, they bought up
large tracts of sulphur-grounds, and thus acquired considerable wealth.
A visit paid by Dr. Häckel[67] in 1859 to the sulphur pits near Girgenti
proves that mining operations in Sicily are still in the primitive
condition described by all former travellers. Not even our commonest
improvements are known; the pickaxe and the spade are almost the only
implements employed, and with these the earth is excavated in the most
slovenly manner, wherever a vein promises to be productive. The
materials thus loosened from the rock are carried out of the mine in
baskets and thrown into large heaps, from which the sulphur is extracted
in the following wasteful manner. The conical mounds are covered with a
mantle of moist clay, in which some openings are left for the emission
of the smoke, and set fire to at the bottom. The melted sulphur collects
in grooves or channels, and flows into square forms, where it congeals
into a solid mass. This method, which is said to have been first
introduced by the Saracens, causes, of course, a great loss of sulphur;
but distilling ovens heated by coal have been found too expensive to
answer. Dr. Häckel traversed one of the longest excavations, which was
sometimes so narrow that he could only with difficulty pass, and then
expanded into high vaults whose roof was ornamented with beautiful
crystals of celestine and gypsum. The workmen were completely naked, on
account of the oppressive heat which reigns in these pits; and their
dark brown skins, sprinkled with light yellow sulphur dust, gave them a
very strange and savage appearance. Most of the inhabitants of Girgenti
are at present employed in the sulphur mines, and comparatively few are
engaged in cultivating the beautiful gardens and fields that extend from
the foot of the town to the sea, and occupy the site where once the
ancient city of Agrigentum rose from the shore to the terraced hills
which are still crowned with the ruins of her colossal temples.
Footnote 67:
‘Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde,’ No. 84, Juni, 1860.
On an average, the sulphur-ores of Sicily yield about sixteen per cent.
of brimstone, and the quantity annually produced has increased from
94,985 tons in 1851 to 184,173 tons in 1866. Besides Girgenti, the chief
ports from which sulphur is exported are those of Licata, Terranova,
Siculiana, Palermo, Messina, and Catania.
One of the most remarkable events in the history of Sicilian sulphur
mines occurred during the last century in the solfatara of Sommatino.
This celebrated pit, which is situated on the precipitous right bank of
the Salso Valley, took fire in 1787, through the negligence of the
workmen, and as may easily be imagined from the inflammable nature of
the materials, the conflagration caused the complete abandonment of the
pit. After two years, however, during which the fire raged incessantly,
the mountain suddenly burst asunder on its south-eastern flank, and a
stream of melted sulphur, gushing forth from the cleft, precipitated
itself into the neighbouring river. This phenomenon, which was evidently
caused by Nature having performed on a vast scale an operation similar
to that by which the sulphur is usually extracted from the ore, produced
a mass of the purest brimstone, amounting to more than 40,000 tons, so
that the owners of the pit, who had given up their property as totally
lost, became enriched by the very circumstance which had seemed to
menace them with utter ruin.
Next to the sulphur mines of Sicily, those of Teruel and Lorca, in
Spain, which in 1862 furnished 12,639 tons, are the most considerable in
Europe. The mines of Perticara di Talamella, in Italy, annually yield
about 4,000 tons; and the Austrian sulphur pits of Swoszowice, near
Cracovia, and of Radoboy, in Croatia, produced 1,867 tons in 1865.
In all these mines the sulphur has been deposited or condensed in times
long past, undoubtedly in the same manner as it is formed in the
solfataras of the present day, where the decomposition of the volanic
gases on reaching the atmosphere causes the precipitation of sulphur.
Most of these still active solfataras are unproductive in a commercial
sense, either from their inaccessible position in the crater basins of
enormous volcanoes, or from their situation in remote deserts, or from
the small quantities of the mineral forming on their surface.
The solfataras of Krisuvick in Iceland, for instance, are separated from
the nearest ports by such rugged lava-fields as to render the cost of
transport an almost insurmountable obstacle to their being worked with
profit. But though undeserving of the mercantile speculator’s attention,
these northern sulphur pits rank among the most striking natural wonders
of Iceland.[68]
Footnote 68:
‘The Polar World,’ p. 52.
The remote solfataras of Japan afford a more abundant supply. ‘The
sulphur,’ says Kämpfer, in his history of that singular country, ‘is the
produce of a small island which, from the great quantity it affords of
this substance, is called “Iwogasima,” or the Sulphur Island. It is not
above a hundred years since the natives first ventured to explore that
desert spot, which, from the smoke rising from its surface, was
previously supposed to be the abode of demons. At length a bold
adventurer obtained leave to visit the dreaded island. He chose fifty
resolute men to accompany him on his hazardous expedition, and on
landing found, instead of the fiends he expected to encounter, a
volcanic soil, covered in many parts with thick deposits of sulphur, and
emitting dense volumes of smoke from countless fumaroles. Ever since
that time the island yields a considerable revenue to the Prince of
Satzuma.’
One of the most celebrated solfataras is that of Puzzuoli, near Naples.
It may be considered as a nearly extinguished crater, and appears, by
the accounts of Strabo and others, to have been before the Christian era
in very much its present state, giving vent continually to aqueous
vapours, together with sulphureous and muriatic acid gases, like those
evolved by Vesuvius. This remarkable spot has attracted the attention of
naturalists and poets since the remotest antiquity, and Homer mentions
it in his immortal narrative of the peregrinations of Ulysses. The
process for the separation of the sulphur, which is condensed in
considerable quantities amongst the gravel collected in the circle which
forms the interior of the crater, is conducted in the following manner.
The mixture of sulphur and gravel is dug up and submitted to
distillation, to extract the sulphur; the gravel is then returned to its
original place, and in the course of about thirty years is again so rich
in sulphur as to serve for the same process once more.
‘The crater of the Peak of Teneriffe,’ says Leopold von Buch, ‘is now
but an immense solfatara. The sulphureous vapours which escape from
every part of the vast cauldron, decompose the rock, convert it into
white clay, and cover it in many places with beautiful crystals of
sulphur. By this constant chemical action, the soil towards the centre
of the crater has been rendered so soft that in many places great
caution is necessary to avoid sinking into the yielding mass, which has
a temperature higher than that of boiling water.’
A remarkable sulphur formation occurs on the rocks surrounding the
crater of the volcano Alaghez, situated in Northern Armenia. The sulphur
is precipitated in thick crusts on their walls, and as the summit of the
crater is inaccessible, the people of the neighbourhood, in order to
collect the sulphur, fire at it with musket balls, and pick up the
fragments thus detached.
Close beneath the summit of the Patuka, in Java, is a circular lake
about fifteen hundred feet in diameter. The borders are covered with a
rich vegetation; the water is clear and colourless, but appears
yellowish from the reflection of the sulphur which covers the whole
bottom of the lake. In 1818 Reinwardt found in this piece of water an
islet completely composed of sulphur.
After the eruption of the Tashem Idjem, another Javanese volcano, in
1796, such quantities of sulphur were formed that several hundred
shiploads could be gathered and exported as the produce of this single
volcanic paroxysm.
The mountain Büdöshegy, in Transylvania, exhibits the remarkable
phenomenon of sulphur caves. On entering one of these vast subterranean
crevices, incrustations of sulphur are seen to cover the lower part of
the walls; but respiration is still easy and free. On advancing a few
steps the air acquires a sharp acidulous taste, and the feet begin to
feel a warmth which gradually increases to an intolerable heat. On
advancing still further the lights are extinguished. A speedy retreat is
necessary, and imprudent visitors have been known to pay for their
curiosity with their lives.
In the island of Milo there are likewise numerous caverns the walls of
which are incrusted with sulphur and alum. A visit to these grottoes,
which annually yield about five hundred tons of pure sulphur, is not
without danger from the suffocating fumes that issue from their
crevices.
Some of the Arabian volcanoes also produce considerable quantities of
sulphur, such as the Dufan, which is called Djebel-el-Kebril, or
‘Sulphur Mountain’ by the Arabs, and is mentioned in the writings of
Herodotus.
Though the craters of volcanoes are generally almost inaccessible, yet
history mentions a curious instance where the most extraordinary
exertions were made for collecting sulphur above the regions of
perpetual snow. During the wondrous campaign which ended in the
overthrow of the empire of Montezuma, Cortez, being in want of powder,
sent a party under Francisco Montaño, a cavalier of determined
resolution, to gather sulphur from the smoking throat of Popocatepetl,
which rises, with its silvery sheet of everlasting snow, to the height
of 17,852 feet above the level of the sea. After traversing the lower
region, which was clothed with a dense forest, so thickly matted that in
some places it was scarcely possible to penetrate it, the track of the
Spaniards opened on a black surface of glazed volcanic sand and of lava,
the broken fragments of which, arrested in its boiling process in a
thousand fantastic forms, opposed continual impediments to their
advance. They now came to the limits of perpetual snow, where new
difficulties presented themselves, as the treacherous ice gave an
imperfect footing, and a false step might precipitate them into the
frozen chasms that yawned around. To increase their distress respiration
in these aërial regions became so difficult that every effort was
attended with sharp pains in the head and limbs. At length they reached
the edge of the crater, which presented an irregular ellipse at its
mouth more than a league in circumference. A lurid flame burned gloomily
at the bottom, sending up a sulphurous steam, which, cooling as it rose,
was precipitated on the walls of the cavity. The party cast lots, and it
fell on Montaño himself to descend in a basket into this hideous abyss,
into which he was lowered by his companions to the depth of four hundred
feet! This was repeated several times, till the adventurous cavalier had
collected a sufficient quantity of sulphur for the wants of the army.
Many mineral springs owe their medicinal properties to the
hydrosulphuric acid which they contain, and whose decomposition
frequently gives rise to the formation of sulphur. When the large marble
slab which covers the imperial source at Aix-la-Chapelle is removed at
the end of every twenty years, about two hundred pounds of sulphur are
collected from the walls above the spring.
Combinations of sulphur with metals, particularly with iron and copper
(pyrites), occur in much more considerable masses and in a far greater
number of localities than the pure uncombined mineral. Formerly the
sulphides of iron (52½ per cent. sulphur, 47½ per cent. iron) and copper
served only for the fabrication of vitriol and alum; but since the
progress of chemical science has allowed them to be profitably used for
the manufacture of sulphuric acid, they have acquired a far greater
importance. Our own mines, which are situated chiefly in the county of
Wicklow, produced in 1866 at least 135,000 tons of iron pyrites, besides
which an additional quantity of about 100,000 tons was imported from
other countries.
In Southern Spain the mines of cupriferous pyrites—particularly in the
province of Huelva, and in the Sierra de Tharsis, which on account of
the copper they contain were already worked in times anterior to the
Roman occupation, and give proof of their ancient importance by the vast
dimensions of their excavations—produced in 1863 no less than 246,137
tons. In Portugal the mines of San Domingos, in the province of
Alentejo, likewise afford a remarkable example of the mining industry of
the Romans, in the ancient adit which served for draining the works.
They merely used the ores that were richest in copper, and rejected the
poorer qualities, which form the immense mounds of scoriæ round the
mouth of the excavations. After having been abandoned for many centuries
the mines of San Domingos are once more diligently worked. Their newly
acquired importance is due chiefly to the enterprise of Mr. James Mason,
now Baron of Pommorão. A railroad nine miles long unites the mine with
the left bank of the Guadiana, which has been rendered navigable for
larger vessels for a length of ten miles. Moreover the port of Pommorão
has been excavated in the steep bank of the river for the convenient
shipping of the pyrites. Before 1858 a solitary hermitage was the only
dwelling at San Domingos, which is now a thriving village of five
hundred houses, with a handsome church and a railroad station. The
number of the workmen employed in 1866 amounted to two thousand, and
large works were being erected for the separation of the copper. In 1859
the produce of these mines amounted to 7,887 tons, and in 1866 it had
already risen to 167,028 tons, which formed the cargo of 544 ships. Such
are the wonderful changes which can be brought about when the right man
finds the right place for the employment of his energies. France
produced in 1866 about 100,000 tons of pyrites, Prussia 38,248 tons, and
Belgium 28,956 tons, so that the total production of Europe now probably
amounts to more than a million tons. In Canada the ore of a vast deposit
of pyrites is exported to the United States, where it serves for the
fabrication of sulphuric acid. Thus a substance scarcely noticed twenty
years ago has become an important article of commerce in both
hemispheres.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
AMBER.
Various Modes of its Collection on the Prussian Coast—What is Amber?—The
extinct Amber Tree—Insects of the Miocene Period inclosed in Amber—
Formidable Spiders—Ancient and Modern Trade in Amber.
Amber is a resinous substance, the produce of extinct forests that now
lie buried in the earth or under the bottom of the sea.
It is found abundantly on the Prussian coast of the Baltic, where it is
collected in many ways. After stormy weather it is frequently cast
ashore by the surf, or remains floating on the water. The amber-fishers,
clothed in leather dresses, then wade into the sea, and secure the amber
with bag-nets, hung at the ends of long poles. They conclude that much
amber has been detached from its bed when they discover many pieces of
lignite floating about. In some parts the faces of the precipitous
cliffs along the shore are explored in boats, and masses of loose earth
or rock, supposed to contain the object of search, are detached with
long poles having iron hooks at their ends. It is also dredged for on an
extensive scale at the bottom of the Frische and Curische Haffs, and
further inland large quantities are dug up out of the earth. That which
is washed ashore generally consists of small pieces, more or less
damaged, while the specimens obtained by digging or dredging are
frequently of large size and of a tuberous form, so that, though
inferior in quantity to the former, their value is probably ten times
greater.
Digging for amber is a favourite pursuit of the peasantry; and though in
many cases it proves unsuccessful, yet sometimes it is highly
remunerative. Near the village Kowall, a few miles from Dantzig, avenues
of trees were planted a few years back along the high road. On digging
one of the holes destined for their reception, a rich amber nest was
found. Favourable signs induced the landowner to persevere in digging,
and at length, at a depth of about thirty feet, such rich deposits of
amber were found as enabled him to pay off all the mortgages on his
estate.
The territories where amber is found extend over Pomerania and East and
West Prussia, as far as Lithuania and Poland, but chiefly in the former
provinces, where it is found almost uniformly in separate nodules in the
sand, clay, or fragments of lignite of the upper tertiary and alluvial
formations. It also occurs in the beds of streams, and in the sand-banks
of rivers. How far its seat may extend under the Baltic is of course
unknown. Amber is likewise met with on the coast of Denmark and Sweden,
in Gallicia and Moravia, near Christiania in Norway, and in Switzerland,
near Basle. It is occasionally found in the gravel-pits near London, and
specimens have been dug up in Hyde Park. At Aldborough, after a raking
tide, it is thrown on the beach in considerable quantities, along with
masses of jet.
On the Sicilian coast, near the mouth of the River Giaretta, many pieces
of a peculiar blue tinge are collected and sent to Catania to be cut and
polished.
Single pieces and even large deposits of amber are said to have been
discovered on the coasts of the Caspian Sea, in Siberia, Kamtschatka,
and China, in North America and Madagascar. These accounts, however,
require confirmation, as several other fossil or non-fossil resinous
substances so strongly resemble amber as to have deceived even well-
informed naturalists.
What is this substance, and how has it been produced? There is now no
longer any doubt that, like other vegetable resins, it has been secreted
by trees which have long since disappeared from the surface of the
earth, but once formed extensive forests on the islands or shores of the
vast sea which at that time covered the plains of Northern Europe as far
as the foot of the Ouralian chain.
How those islands disappeared, and how those primeval forests came to be
buried under land and sea, becomes apparent from the changes that have
taken place in the South Baltic lands since the last two thousand years
in consequence of partial upheavings and subsidences. According to the
oldest Prussian chronicler, Peter of Duesburg, whose narrative begins
with the year 1226, the waves of the Baltic at that time reached as far
as the present town of Kulm, and a century later vessels sailed as far
as Thorn. The present delta of the Vistula was a shallow morass, dotted
here and there with a flat island, and continued in that state until
towards the end of the thirteenth century, when dykes, raised by the
industry of man, prevented the constantly recurring inundations of the
river, and converted gloomy swamps into fertile meadows.
In other parts we find the sea incroaching upon the land. Since the
times of the Teutonic Order a whole province between Pillau and Balga
has been submerged by the floods of the Frische Haff; and the first
Christian church in Prussia, originally built five miles from the sea,
now stands close to the shore. Dense fir-forests rose in gloomy
monotony, but a thousand years back, where now the Baltic rolls its
waters; and where at that time ships lay at anchor we now find hillocks
of sand. After such changes in comparatively so short a time, we cannot
wonder that the islands of the amber period should have been replaced by
other lands and another sea.
We are indebted for the first accurate observations on the nature of the
amber-tree to Professor Goeppert, who proved, by the microscopical
examination of the cells of fossil pieces of wood that were veined or
streaked with amber, and thus evidently had secreted the resin, that
they proceeded from several coniferæ, belonging to the extinct genus
Pinites.
In many of our pines and firs we frequently find between the annual
rings crevices or interstices filled with resinous matter, but far less
abundantly than in the amber-trees. The only existing coniferous plant
that can in any way be compared to them is the _Dammara australis_, of
New Zealand, at the base of whose trunk masses of resin, weighing twenty
or thirty pounds, are frequently found. In Brazil Von Martius often saw
similar lumps at the foot of the copal-tree, which dropping from the
trunk had collected in considerable masses between the roots, thus
showing that the large rounded or globular pieces of amber must have
been formed in the same manner, while the thin and flat straight or
cupuliform pieces were moulded upon the rind, or between the annual
rings of the tree.
When we consider the abundant secretion of the amber-trees, and the
numberless ages during which they may have flourished, we cannot wonder
that, since the oldest historic times, every violent storm which stirs
up the ancient forest-grounds at the bottom of the Baltic casts the
valuable fossil ashore, and that in all probability future generations
will still be able to collect it in undiminished quantities.
Interesting in itself, amber acquires a still greater scientific
importance through the remains of extinct plants and animals which are
found imbedded in its substance, as in a transparent shrine. As, in the
present day, many a luckless fly is caught in the recently secreted
resins of the coniferæ and hymeneæ, thus also amber, while still in a
semi-fluid state, became the tomb of numerous insects and spiders. So
wonderful is their preservation that they seem to have lived but
yesterday, and yet how many millenniums may since have passed away; for
although the amber formation belongs to the miocene period, and is
consequently of modern date when compared with the forests of the coal-
formation, we still are separated from it by a vast series of ages.
[Illustration: INSECTS OR VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES ENCLOSED IN AMBER.]
The extinct organic world which is thus beautifully revealed to us so
greatly resembled the present vegetable and animal creation that, on a
superficial examination of the fossil remains contained in a rich amber
collection, one would hardly suppose them to be anything very uncommon.
The unlearned observer who connects the idea of a past world with
grotesque or gigantic forms, shakes his head with an incredulous smile,
and thinks that he has often seen similar flowers blooming in the
fields, or met with similar insects in the forest. Even the naturalist
is uncertain, until a closer inspection teaches him that each of these
so wonderfully preserved plants or animals possesses some distinct
characteristics which widely distinguish it from the analogous forms of
the present day.
Of the plants of the coal period we find not a single one existing in
the Amber Forest; the vegetation is much more complicated and various in
its aspect; and the numerous coniferæ indicate a climate similar to that
of the present northern regions. But arboreal growth was by no means
confined to the coniferæ, for evergreen oaks and poplars flourished
along with them.
Heath plants, chiefly belonging to genera similar to _Andromeda_,
_Kalmia_, _Rhododendrum_, _Ledum_, and _Vaccinium_, as testified by
numerous leaves, formed the underwood of these forests, a vegetation
similar in character to that of the Alleghany Mountains.
The deep shade of these primitive woods prevented the evaporation of
water, the ground remained damp and swampy, and the mouldering leaves
produced a thick layer of humus, on which flourished, no doubt, a dense
cryptogamous vegetation, as well-preserved ferns, mosses, lichens,
confervæ, and small mushrooms, partly growing as parasites on dead
insects, sufficiently testify.
But the vegetable remains of that ancient period are far surpassed in
variety and number by the embalmed relics of the animal creation. Among
2,000 specimens of insects collected by Dr. Berendt, to whom we owe the
best monograph on amber, this naturalist found more than 800 different
species.
Flies, phryganeæ, and other neuroptera, crustacea, millepedes and
spiders, blattidæ in every phase of development, beetles, bees, and a
large variety of ants, show a great similarity to the insect life of the
present day, and justify the conclusion that the contemporaneous animal
forms, whose size or peculiar habitat prevented their being embalmed in
amber, were comparatively no less abundant.
Whether man already existed at the time of the amber-formation is a
question which, of course, could only be thoroughly settled by the
discovery of some specimen of human workmanship _imbedded_ in the
fossilised resin. At all events, the amber-rings of rude workmanship
which have been found at a considerable depth below the surface of the
earth, along with rough pieces, sufficiently prove that man must have
been a very old inhabitant of the Baltic regions, for those remarkable
specimens of his unskilled industry have evidently preceded the
catastrophe which buried the rough amber under the earth, and must have
been exposed for the same lapse of time to the influences of the soil,
as they are all found covered with the same dull and damaged crust.
That birds enlivened the amber-forest might well have been supposed, as
there was no want of fruits and mealy seeds for their subsistence; but
their existence is proved beyond all doubt by a feather which Dr.
Berendt discovered in a piece of pale yellow transparent amber. To what
bird may this remarkable relic of the past have belonged, and when may
the wing to which it was attached while living have cleaved the air?
No fish or reptile has ever yet been found in amber, however frequently
fraud may have attempted to imbed them in a resinous case for the
deception of ignorance. It is, indeed, hardly conceivable that the finny
and agile inhabitants of the waters could ever have allowed themselves
to be caught in the resins of a terrestrial forest, though some small
and less active reptiles may occasionally have been entrapped.
Of all the insects and spiders, and the more rare crustaceans inclosed
in amber, not a single specimen belongs to a species of the present
time; but though the species have disappeared, almost all the animals of
those primitive woods, as far as they are known, belong to genera of the
present time, so that upon the whole the proportion of the still
flourishing genera to such as are extinct is as eight to one.
It is remarkable that, along with many specimens similar to the present
indigenous types, some are found with a tropical character, whose
representatives are at present existing in the Brazilian forests, while
others are completely without any analogous forms in the present
creation; as, for instance, those strange Arachnidans, the Archæi,
which, armed with toothed mandibles longer than the head, and provided
with strong raptorial claws, must have been most formidable enemies to
the contemporaneous insects.
Amber was held in high estimation by the nations of antiquity, and
reckoned among the gems on account of its rarity and value. Ornaments
made of this substance have been found among the vestiges of the
lacustrine dwellings of Switzerland, and afford a convincing proof that
even in prehistoric times it was an article of commerce. Many centuries
before the Christian era the Phœnician navigators purchased amber from
the German tribes on the coast of the North Sea, these, in their turn,
having obtained it, probably by barter, from the Baltic lands. Thus from
hand to hand the beautiful fossil resin found its way to the courts of
the Indian princes on the Ganges, and of the Persian kings in Susa and
Persepolis. According to Barth[69] the search for the Amber Land was
most probably the aim of the journey which the celebrated traveller
Pytheas of Massilia undertook 330 years before Christ, in the times of
Alexander the Great.
Footnote 69:
‘Urgeschichte Deutschlands.’
Plato and Aristotle, Herodotus and Æschylus, have described and lauded
in prose and verse the wonderful properties of amber, which was not only
highly valued for its beauty, its aromatic smell, and its electro-
magnetic power, but also for the medicinal virtues ascribed to it by a
credulous age.
Under Nero the wealthy Roman senators and knights lavished immense sums
on decorating the seats and tables, the doors and columns, of their
state-rooms with amber, ivory, and tortoiseshell; and even at a later
period, under Theodosius the Great, when the declining empire was
already verging to its fall, large quantities still continued to be
imported from Germany.
Though no longer so highly prized as by the ancients, amber still
continues to be a source of considerable profit to the Baltic provinces.
Almost all the amber collected throughout the land finds its way to the
seaports of Königsberg and Dantzig, where it is sorted according to its
size and quality. Good round pieces of a shape fit to be worked into
ornaments, and weighing about half an ounce, are worth from nine to ten
dollars per pound; a good piece of a pound weight fetches as much as
fifty dollars; and first-rate specimens of a still more considerable
size, and faultless in form and colour, are worth at least one hundred
dollars, or even more, per pound. A mass weighing thirteen pounds has
been found, the value of which at Constantinople was said to be no less
than 30,000 dollars. Smaller pieces from the size of a bean to that of a
pea, such as are fit for the beads of necklaces or rosaries, are valued
at from two to four shillings per pound, and the grit or amber rubbish
which is used for varnishing, fumigating, or the manufacture of oil and
acid of amber, is worth no more than from three to eighteen pence. It is
much to be regretted that amber, when melted or dissolved, is incapable
of coalescing into larger masses with the retention of all its former
qualities, as then its value would be considerably greater. Large amber
vases would then ornament the apartments of the wealthy, and the corpses
of the illustrious dead might repose in transparent shrines, and their
features be preserved from decay for many ages.
The trade in rough amber is almost exclusively in the hands of the Jews,
who purchase it from the amber-fishers, or are interested in the
diggings which are made on most of the littoral estates. Through the
agency of the smaller collectors, it is then concentrated in the hands
of the rich traders, who sell or export it in larger assortments.
The best qualities only of translucent, milky, or semi-opaque amber find
a ready sale in the Oriental market, where they are almost exclusively
used for making the mouth-pieces to pipes, and these form an essential
constituent of the Turkish tschibouque; for there is a current belief
among the Eastern nations that amber is incapable of transmitting
infection.
Every Turkish pasha sets his pride on a rich collection of pipes, as it
is the hospitable custom of the Orient to offer a cup of coffee and a
hookah or tschibouque to a stranger; and this fashion is of no small
importance to the amber-dealers of the Baltic. A somewhat inferior
quality is sent by way of Copenhagen and London to China, Japan, and to
the East and West Indies.
Russia also consumes a considerable quantity of amber, which is very
elegantly turned or manufactured in St. Petersburg and Polangen, and
thence finds its way over the whole empire. Here, as among the Turks,
only the translucent and perfectly opaque white qualities are esteemed;
the latter being chiefly employed for the manufacture of the calculating
tables which are commonly used by the Russian merchants. Necklaces of
transparent amber are in great request among the peasantry of Hanover
and Brunswick, where strings of pale-coloured crystalline beads weighing
from half a pound to a pound are worth from fifty to sixty dollars.
Amber of a deeper colour and of a rounded form is chiefly exported to
Spain, France, and Italy.
Thus each country chooses according to its taste among the abundant
amber-masses which extinct forests furnish to the inhabitants of the
Baltic coast-lands, and which trade, through a hundred known and unknown
channels, scatters over the whole surface of the globe.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
MISCELLANEOUS MINERAL SUBSTANCES USED IN THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS.
Alum—Alum Mines of Tolfa—Borax—The Suffioni in the Florentine Lagoons—
China Clay: how formed?—Its Manufacture in Cornwall—Plumbago—Emery—
Tripolite.
Alum, a double salt, consisting of sulphate of alumina (the peculiar
earth of clay) and sulphate of potash, or sulphate of alumina and
sulphate of ammonia, was known to the ancients, who used it in medicine,
as it is now used, and also as a mordant in dyeing, as at the present
day. Their alum was chiefly a natural production, which was best and
most abundantly obtained in Egypt. In later times Phocis, Lesbos, and
other places supplied the Turks with alum for their magnificent Turkey
red; and the Genoese merchants imported large quantities from the Levant
into Western Europe for the dyers of red cloth. In 1459 Bartholomew
Perdix, a Genoese merchant who had been in Syria, observed a stone
suitable for alum in the Island of Ischia, and burning it with a good
result, was the first who introduced the manufacture into Europe. About
the same time John di Castro learnt the method at Constantinople, and
manufactured alum at Tolfa. This discovery of the mineral near Civita
Vecchia was considered so important by John di Castro that he announced
it to the Pope as a great victory over the Turks, who annually took from
the Christians 300,000 pieces of gold for their dyed wool. The
manufacture of alum was then made a monopoly of the Papacy; and instead
of buying it as before from the East, it was considered a Christian duty
to obtain it only from the States of the Church. With the progress of
Protestantism, however, the manufacture began to spread to other
countries. Hesse-Cassel began to make alum in 1554, and in 1600 alum
slate was found near Whitby in Yorkshire.
Alum-stone is a rare mineral, which contains all the elements of the
salt, but mixed with other matters from which it must be freed. For this
purpose it is first calcined, then exposed to the weather, in heaps from
two to three feet high, which are continually kept moist by sprinkling
them with water. As the water combines with the alum, the stones crumble
down and fall eventually into a pasty mass, which must be lixiviated
with warm water, and allowed to settle in a large cistern. The clear
liquor on the surface, being drawn off, is to be evaporated and then
crystallised. A second crystallisation finishes the process, and
furnishes a marketable article. Thus the Roman alum is made; but its
production being far from enough for the supply of the world, the
greater portion of the alum found in British commerce is made from alum-
slate and analogous minerals, which contain only the elements of two of
the constituents, namely, clay and sulphur, and to which, therefore, the
alkaline ingredient must be added.
Borax, or Borate of Soda, is a substance extensively used in the glazes
of porcelain, and recently in the making of the most brilliant crystal
when combined with oxide of zinc. Formerly its chief supply was obtained
under the name of Tincal, from Thibet, where the crude product was dug
in masses from the edges and shallow parts of a salt lake; and, in the
course of a short time, the holes thus made were again filled. Crude
borax is also found in China, Persia, the Island of Ceylon, and in South
America; but at present by far the largest quantity used in commerce is
derived from the lagoons of Tuscany, where vapours charged with a minute
quantity of boracic acid rise from volcanic vents.
Before the discovery of this acid, in the time of the Grand Duke Leopold
I., by the chemist Hoefer, the fetid odour developed by the accompanying
sulphuretted hydrogen gas, and the disruptions of the ground occasioned
by the appearance of new suffioni or vents of vapour, had made the
superstitious natives regard them as a diabolical scourge, which they
vainly sought to remove by priestly exorcisms; but since 1818 the skill,
or rather the industrial genius, of Count Larderel, originally a simple
wandering merchant, has rendered these once abhorred fugitive vapours a
source of prosperity to the country, and were they to cease, all the
saints of the calendar would be invoked for their return.
By a most ingenious contrivance the waters which have been impregnated
by the volcanic steams are concentrated in leaden reservoirs by the heat
of the vapours themselves. The liquid, after having filled the first
compartment, is diffused very gradually into the second, then into the
third, and successively to the last, where it reaches such a state of
concentration that it deposits the crystallised acid, which the workmen
immediately remove by means of wooden scrapers. As this mode of gradual
concentration requires very few hands and no artificial heat, a
circumstance of great importance in a country without fuel, it may
almost be said that the acid is obtained without expense. The produce of
the lagoons amounts to more than 2,000 tons annually.
China-clay, or kaolin, a substance largely used for the fabrication of
porcelain and in paper-making, is quarried from amidst the granitic
masses of Dartmoor and Cornwall. It results from the decomposition of
felspar, the chief constituent of granite, and is thus, to a certain
point, provided by Nature. As it is, however, mixed with many grosser
particles, it requires repeated washings in a series of small pits or
tanks, until finally the water, still holding in suspension the finer
and purer china-clay, is admitted into larger ponds. Here the clay is
gradually deposited, and the clear water on the surface is from time to
time discharged by plug-holes on one side of the pond. This process is
continued until by repeated accumulations the ponds are filled. The clay
is then removed to large pans about a foot and a half in depth, where it
remains exposed to the air until it is nearly dry--a tedious operation
in our damp climate, as during the winter at least eight months are
necessary, whilst during the summer less than half the time suffices.
When the clay is in a fit state it is cut into oblong masses and carried
to the drying-house, a shed the sides of which are open wooden frames
constructed in the usual way for keeping off the rain, but admitting the
free passage of the air. The clay thus prepared is next scraped
perfectly clean, and is then packed up into casks and carried to one of
the adjacent ports, to be shipped for the potteries or the paper
manufactories. It is of a beautiful and uniform whiteness, and is
perfectly smooth and soft to the touch.
China-clay is an important article of commerce. The average annual
production of Cornwall and Devonshire amounts to 105,000 tons, and it is
reckoned that more than 200,000_l._ is annually spent in Cornwall in
obtaining and preparing it.
As in our times no branch of industry remains unimproved, a machine has
recently been invented which greatly accelerates the drying. The lumps
of china-clay are placed in the compartments of the drying machine, and
the whole is then rotated with great velocity. Thus the water is thrown
off by the operation of the centrifugal force, and two tons of clay can
be dried in five minutes.
The remarkable contrast between the extreme hardness and softness of the
same primitive rock is a curiosity of geology well worth notice. ‘A
stone,’ says the author of ‘Cornwall and its Mines,’ ‘is primevally
fused and cooled into as hard a substance as nature affords; so hard
that it paves our streets in long enduring slabs and blocks. Tens of
thousands of feet passing daily over it make no impression upon it.
Years of travel only see it smooth and shining. The men who pass over it
pass away, but it is still durable and unsoftened. Halls and mansions,
clubs and palaces, are built of it, and it endures unmarked by Time’s
devouring tooth. Is it not adamantine? But lo! what is that elegant cup
from which you are sipping your tea? It is of Worcestershire china, fine
and almost pellucid. Well, it is made out of the soft ruins of that very
granite whose endurance is proverbial. How remarkable that the best
types of firmness and fragility should be found in the same stone! What
the immense billows of the Atlantic are now beating upon, at the Land’s
End, without effect, that very substance has been found in such a
friable natural condition as to be finally moulded into that vase which
stands, elegant and admired, upon your mantelpiece, and which one puff
of wind, or one whirl of a lady’s silk dress, would dash down into
innumerable and unmendable fragments.’
Valuable kaolins are likewise found in China and Japan, in Saxony and
France; but the production is nowhere so extensive as in Cornwall.
The best quality of Plumbago, graphite, or black-lead, from which the
finest lead-pencils were made, was formerly abundantly supplied by the
mine of Borrowdale in Cumberland. At one time as much as 100,000_l._ was
realised in a year, the plumbago selling at forty-five shillings per
pound. Its high value, however, proved a source of loss to the
proprietors, for robbery found here a most profitable field. Even the
guard stationed over it by the owners was of little avail against
determined thieves, for about a century ago a body of miners broke into
the mines by main force, and held possession of it for a considerable
time. The treasure was then protected by a building consisting of four
rooms upon the ground floor, and immediately under one of them is the
opening, secured by a trapdoor, through which alone workmen could enter
the interior of the mountain. The mine has now, however, not been worked
for many years. Its ‘nests’ of plumbago seem to be exhausted, and it is
no longer an object capable of exciting greed, or worthy of anxious
protection. At present the mines of Batougal, near Irkutsk in East
Siberia, furnish large quantities of graphite of the very best quality;
and the plumbago from Ceylon is likewise highly esteemed. Inferior
qualities--employed for counteracting friction between rubbing surfaces
of wood or metal, for making crucibles and portable furnaces, for giving
a gloss to the surface of cast iron, &c. &c.--are supplied by Lower
Austria, Bohemia, Bavaria, Ticonderago in the State of New York, New
Jersey, Arendal in Norway, Finland, &c. &c.
The name black-lead applied to plumbago, from its resembling lead in its
external appearance, is very inappropriate, as not a particle of that
metal enters into its composition. Plumbago might indeed more justly be
called black-diamond, for, consisting, in its pure state, of carbon, it
is consequently but another form of the chief of precious stones.
The beautiful oriental ruby has likewise a humble cousin among the
useful minerals, as it is identical in composition with Emery, which,
since the remotest antiquity, has been employed for the grinding of
metals and glass. Emery was formerly almost exclusively furnished by the
island of Naxos; but since 1847 new mines have been discovered in some
other isles of the Grecian Archipelago, and in the neighbourhood of
Smyrna, from which place it is now imported in large quantities. In 1850
the total production of the East amounted to 1,500 tons. In 1864 a
considerable mine of emery was discovered at Chester (Hampden County,
Massachusetts), and as might be expected in a country where none of the
gifts of nature are allowed to be wasted, already provides for the wants
of all the manufactories of the United States.
Tripolite, a mineral related to the precious opal, as it consists almost
entirely of silica, is likewise used for polishing stones, metals, and
glasses. Its composition is truly remarkable, as it is actually formed
of the exuviæ, or rather the flinty envelopes of diatoms, which belong
to the minutest forms of vegetable life. They are recognised with such
distinctness in the microscope that the analogies between them and
living species may be readily traced, and in many cases there are no
appreciable differences between the living and the petrified. As every
cubic inch of tripolite contains millions of these exuviæ, and the stone
not seldom occurs in deposits often many miles in area, imagination is
at a loss to conceive the innumerable multitudes of organised atoms
whose flinty remains have been piled up in these masses of hard rock.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CELEBRATED QUARRIES.
Carrara—The Pentelikon—The Parian Quarries—Rosso antico and Verde
antico—The Porphyry of Elfdal—The Gypsum of Montmartre—The Alabaster
of Volterra—The Slate Quarries of Wales—‘Princesses’ and ‘Duchesses’—
‘Ladies’ and ‘Fat Ladies’—St. Peter’s Mount near Maestricht—Egyptian
Quarries—Haggar Silsilis—The Latomiæ of Syracuse—A Triumph of Poetry.
Besides metals, and the various minerals mentioned in the previous
chapter, the solid earth-rind furnishes an inexhaustible supply of
marbles, slates, and stones for building or paving; and their extraction
occupies a vast number of industrious hands.
In a popular work on geology, published some years ago, Mr. Burat
informs us that about 70,000 persons were employed in the 18,000 more or
less important quarries at that time worked in France, and that the
produce of their labour amounted to a value of more than 2,000,000_l._
There can be no doubt that the quarries of England or Germany are at
least equally productive, and thus a very moderate estimate leads us to
the conclusion that the quarries of Europe, from those which furnish the
costliest marble to those which yield the commonest building-stone,
employ at least half a million of workmen, and produce an annual value
of no less than 12,000,000_l._, a sum which is probably doubled or
trebled before the heavy materials can be placed in the hands of the
consumer. A land ribbed with stone, like England, has therefore a
considerable advantage over a flat alluvial plain, like Holland, as it
possesses in its rocky foundations a source of wealth which nature has
denied to the latter.
Though several other stones, such as granite and porphyry, are
susceptible of a fine polished surface, and serve for the decoration of
palaces and churches, yet marble or pure compact limestone is chiefly
used for ornamental purposes, both on account of its beautifully
variegated tints, and its inferior hardness, which allows it to be more
easily worked. Our Derbyshire and Devonshire quarries supply a great
variety of richly coloured marbles; but the best material for the
sculptor is supplied by the limestone mountains of Carrara, which
furnish a homogeneous marble of the purest white, with a fine granular
texture, resembling that of loaf sugar. These far-famed quarries, which
were worked by the ancients, having been opened in the time of Julius
Cæsar, are situated between Spezzia and Lucca, in the Alpe Apuana, a
small mountain-group no less remarkable for its bold and sharp outlines
than for its almost total isolation from the monotonous chain of the
Apennines, from which it is separated by a wide semicircular plain.
Where the Alpe Apuana faces the sea, it is chiefly formed of magnesian
and glimmer slate, in which large masses of limestone are imbedded; but
the more inland part of the group belongs entirely to the limestone
formation, and abounds in romantic scenery and noble peaks towering to a
height of six thousand feet above the level of the sea. Towards its
north-western extremity rises Monte Sacro (5,200 feet in height), the
famous marble mountain on whose slopes are scattered the quarries to
which the small town of Carrara owes its ancient and world-wide
celebrity.
The quarries themselves by no means afford an imposing sight, as they
are mostly small, and very badly worked; but it is interesting to watch
the transport of the huge blocks of superb material from the various
glens in which the quarries are situated, while the numerous water-mills
for cutting or polishing the marble enliven the whole neighbourhood.
In the town of Carrara numerous sculptors are constantly employed in
rough-hewing the marble into various forms, such as capitals, friezes,
busts, &c., &c., in order to diminish the cost of transport, or to
discover faults in the stone before it is shipped. There are also shops
where marble trinkets or ornaments are exposed for sale; but Florence,
Leghorn, and Genoa are the chief dépôts of ready-made marble articles,
such as vases, urns, sculptured chimney-pieces, and copies of renowned
statues. Different kinds of fruit are also executed in marble, and with
the aid of colour made to imitate nature so closely as to deceive the
eye.
In Carrara the inferior qualities of marble are used for building and
paving, as it is here the cheapest material. The window and door frames,
the flooring and the chimney slabs, in even the meanest houses, are made
of marble, and form a striking contrast to the squalid poverty of the
remainder of the furniture.
The quarries which furnished the material for the finest works of the
Grecian chisel partake of the interest which attaches to every vestige
of ancient art.
About eight miles to the north of Athens rises the Pentelikon, or Mount
Penteles, from whose flanks was excavated the marble that served for the
construction of the Parthenon, of the Temple of the Olympian Zeus, and
of the other matchless edifices of the Athenian Acropolis. No other
quarries in the world can boast of their material having undergone a
more beautiful transformation, for never has marble been more highly
ennobled than by the genius of Pheidias! The ancient roads ascending
from the foot of the mountain to the quarries still show the traces of
the sledges on which were transported the huge blocks of more than
twenty tons in weight that now lie scattered among the ruins of the
Acropolis.
On the summit of the Pentelikon the Athenians had placed a statue of
Pallas Athene, that the goddess might overlook the land devoted to her
worship. Here, from a height of 3,500 feet, she looked down upon the
plain of Marathon, and many other spots of everlasting renown; but the
outlines of the prospect are monotonous and naked, and require for their
embellishment the beautifying remembrances of the past.
Mount Marpena, in the island of Paros, furnished the most renowned
statuary marble of ancient times. It was called Lychnites because its
quarries were worked by lamp-light, in deep, minelike excavations; and
the difficulty and cost of its extraction show how highly it was prized.
It has a yellowish white colour and a texture composed of fine shining
scales lying in all directions. The celebrated Arundelian marbles at
Oxford consist of Parian marble, as does also the Medicean Venus. More
than twenty centuries have elapsed since the Parian quarries were
abandoned in consequence of the decay of Grecian art; but in our
enterprising days a company has been formed (1857) for working the
beautiful marble which has been recently discovered near St. Minas, not
far from the site of the ancient quarries, and is said to be superior
not only to that of Carrara but even to the renowned Lychnites of the
ancients.
The quarries which in olden times furnished the beautifully coloured
marbles called Rosso antico and Verde antico had likewise for many
centuries been abandoned and totally forgotten. In 1846 they were
rediscovered on the island of Tino and in the Maina by Professor Siegel,
who soon after undertook to work them, and has furnished, among others,
a large number of the beautiful columns of Rosso antico which decorate
the interior of the court of the basilica of St. Paul’s in Rome. The
hammer of the quarryman once more resounds in the wilds of the Taygetos,
and the lawless robber of the Maina already feels the beneficial
influence of industry.
On the slopes of the mountains which bound the impetuous Oesterdal Elbe
in Sweden, in a wild and desolate country, where the poverty of the
people is so great that they frequently grind the bark of fir-trees to
mix it with their bread, are situated the finest quarries of porphyry
which Europe possesses. This beautiful stone, which attracts the eye
even in its unpolished state, consists of a red-brown or blood-red mass,
in which numerous small flesh-coloured felspar pieces are embedded.
After having been rough-hewn on the spot, the blocks are transported to
the neighbouring works of Elfdal, where they are cut and polished into
slabs, vases, chimney-pieces, and other articles fit for the decoration
of palaces. The contrast is most striking when, after having traversed
the barren neighbourhood, and still deeply impressed with the sight of
poverty and distress on his road, the traveller suddenly finds himself
before a group of handsome buildings which at once bear witness to the
activity within.
Besides the red porphyry of Elfdal, that of the Altai Mountains in Asia
deserves to be noticed. It consists of a brown-red mass with snow-white
crystals, and is capable of a very fine polish. The quarries are
situated on the face of a high rock on the left bank of the Kurgun, one
of the wildest mountain streams of the Altai, about one hundred miles
from the town of Kolywansk, where it is cut and polished.
Gypsum, or sulphate of lime, and the peculiar form of that mineral
called Alabaster, are substances of considerable importance in the arts.
Rendered more valuable by a slight admixture of carbonate of lime, the
gypsum of Montmartre, near Paris, has long been celebrated for its
excellence as a cement or stucco. It is found resting on a limestone of
marine origin, and in some places appears immediately beneath the
vegetable soil, so that it can be readily and conveniently worked
without having recourse to subterranean excavation. These quarries
furnish the whole of northern France with the well-known plaster of
Paris, and the value of their annual produce amounts to not less than
100,000_l_.
When sulphate of lime or gypsum assumes the opaque, consistent, and
semi-transparent form of alabaster, it is worked like marble. The pure
white and harder varieties are usually employed for the sculpture of
statues and busts; while the softer kinds are cut into vases, boxes,
lamps, and other ornamental objects. The alabaster quarries in the
neighbourhood of the ancient Etruscan town of Volterra are the most
famous in Europe, and have afforded employment for many centuries to her
industrious population. Volterra exports her beautiful produce to all
parts of the world, even as far as the interior of China. Beggary is
here unknown (a rare case in Italy), for even women and children are all
employed in cutting, sawing, rasping, or filing alabaster. In the
remotest antiquity, when the city was still called Volathri or
Volaterræ, this industry was practised within her walls, and a
collection of sepulchral urns and other works of Etruscan art contained
in the town-hall bears testimony to her ancient skill. Now, however, art
seems to have degenerated into mere manufacturing ability; the statues
and other objects are almost always repetitions of the same models, and
but very rarely some speculative person introduces a novelty, for the
purpose of obtaining a somewhat higher price for his wares.
[Illustration: FENRHYN SLATE QUARRY, NORTH WALES.]
Great Britain possesses apparently inexhaustible quantities of alabaster
in the red marl formation in the neighbourhood of Derby, where it has
been worked for many centuries. The great bulk of it is used for making
plaster of Paris, and as a manure, or as the basis of many kinds of
cements. For these common industrial purposes it is worked by mining
underground, and the stone is blasted by gunpowder; but this shakes it
so much as to render it unfit for works of ornament, to procure blocks
for which it is necessary to have an open quarry. By removing the
superincumbent marl, and laying bare a large surface of the rock, the
alabaster, being very irregular in form, and jutting out in several
parts, can be sawn out in blocks of a considerable size and
comparatively sound. This stone, when preserved from the action of
water, which soon decomposes it, is extremely durable, as may be seen in
churches all over this country, where monumental effigies many centuries
old are still as perfect as when they proceeded from the sculptor’s
chisel. The Derbyshire alabaster, commonly called Derbyshire spar, gives
employment to a good many hands in forming it into useful and ornamental
articles. Another kind of alabaster also found in Derbyshire is
crystallised in long needlelike silky fibres, which, being susceptible
of a high polish and quite lustrous, is used for making necklaces,
bracelets, brooches, and other small articles.
Besides her inexhaustible coal, iron, and lead mines, Wales possesses in
her slate quarries a great source of mineral wealth. For this article,
which many would suppose to be but of secondary importance, is here
found in such abundance and perfection as to command a ready market all
over the world. Thus, in North Wales the face of the mountains is
everywhere dotted or scarred with slate quarries, of which by far the
most important and largest are those of Llandegui, six miles from
Bangor, in which more than three thousand persons are employed. This
circumstance alone will give an idea of their extent, but still more
their having their own harbour, Port Penrhyn, which holds vessels of
from 300 to 400 tons, and whence slates are sent not only to all parts
of Great Britain, but even to North America. The cost of the inclined
planes and railroads which serve to transport the slates from the
quarries to the port is said to have amounted to 170,000_l._ The masses
of slate are either detached from the rock by blasting, or by wedges and
crowbars. They are then shaped on the spot into the various forms for
which they are destined to be used.
Though the quarries of Llandegui are unrivalled, yet there are others
which give employment to workmen whose numbers range from a thousand to
fifteen hundred. In those that export their produce by way of Carnarvon,
which owes its prosperity almost entirely to this branch of industry,
about 2,300 men were employed in the year 1842, and since then their
number has very much increased. Walking on the handsome new quay of the
town, the visitor everywhere sees slates ready for shipment in the
numerous small vessels which crowd the picturesque harbour. They are
heaped up and arranged or sorted in large regular piles according to
their dimensions or quality, the ‘ladies’ and ‘fat ladies’ apart, as
also the ‘countesses,’ ‘marchionesses,’ ‘princesses,’ ‘duchesses,’ and
‘queens,’ for by these aristocratic names the slate merchants
distinguish the various sizes of the humble article they deal in.
Kohl, the celebrated traveller, remarks that, whenever a new branch of
industry springs up in England, a number of active hands and inventive
heads set to work to extend its application. This was also the case with
the Welsh slates, when, about half a century ago, they first began to
attract the notice of the commercial world. A polish was soon invented
in London which gave them the appearance of the finest black marble. As
they are easily worked with the aid of a turning lathe, they can thus be
used for the manufacture of many useful and ornamental articles, which
have all the lustre of ebony, and may be obtained at a much cheaper
rate.
The quarries of St. Peter’s Mount, near Maestricht in the Netherlands,
are probably the most extensive in Europe. For the white tufaceous
limestone of the mountain has been used from time immemorial both for
building and manuring, and the enormous extent of its caverns is perhaps
even owing in a greater measure to the agriculturist than to the
architect. And yet St. Peter’s Mount, situated near a town of moderate
extent, would hardly have been excavated beyond the limits of a common
quarry if the broad Meuse, flowing at its foot, had not opened towards
Holland an almost unlimited market for its produce. Sure of being able
to dispose of all the materials they can possibly extract from the
earth, the quarrymen of the neighbourhood are thus yearly adding new
passages to the labyrinths at which so many generations of their
forefathers have toiled from age to age.
In spring and summer they are mostly occupied with agricultural
pursuits, and then but rarely leave the light of day to burrow in the
entrails of the earth by the dismal ‘sheen’ of smoky lamps; but as soon
as the approach of winter puts a stop to the labours of the field, they
descend into the cavities of the mountain, and begin to excavate the
vast mounds of stone or grit which are to be shipped in the following
spring.
Accompanied by a guide, the stranger enters these amazing quarries, that
extend for miles into the interior of the mountain, and is soon lost in
wonder at their endless passages, perpetually crossing each other to the
right and left, and ending in utter darkness. The dismal grandeur of
these dark regions is increased by their awful silence, for but rarely a
drop of water falls from the vaults into a small pool below, and even
the voice of man dies away without awakening an echo.
But in order to make one feel the full impression of night and silence,
the guide, after penetrating to some distance into the interior of the
cave, extinguishes his torch. A strange sensation of awe then creeps
over the boldest heart, and by an almost irresistible instinct the
stranger seeks the nearest wall, as if to convince himself that he has
at least the sense of touch to depend upon where the eye vainly seeks
for the least ray of light, and the ear as vainly listens for a sound.
Then also he feels how dreadful must have been the agonies of the
despairing wretches who, having lost their way in these dark labyrinths,
prayed and wept and shouted in vain, until their last groans died away
unheard.
It has not seldom happened that persons have hopelessly strayed about in
these vast caverns, and there slowly perished, while but a few fathoms
above the labourer was driving his plough forward or the reaper singing
his evening song. In several parts of the caverns an inscription on the
walls points out where and under what circumstances a corpse has been
found, or a few traces of black chalk give a rude portrait of the
victim. Here we read the short story of a workman who, losing his way,
roamed about till the last glimmer from his torch died out in his burnt
fingers; there that of another whose lamp by some chance was overturned,
and who, plunged in sudden darkness, was no longer able to find his way
out of some remote passage.
The French geologist, Faujas de Saint-Fond, who, in the year 1798
minutely explored the Mount, relates that one day the torches that were
carried before him discovered at some distance a dark object stretched
out upon the floor, which on a closer inspection proved to be a corpse.
It was a shrivelled mummy, completely dressed, the hat lying close to
the head, the shoes separated from the feet, and a rosary in its hand.
From the dress Faujas conjectured it to be the body of a workman, and
perhaps more than half a century might have passed since the poor man
died in the quarry which had probably given him bread for many a year.
The dry air, and the total absence of insects in these subterranean
vaults, explained the mummy-like preservation of the corpse.
In the year 1640 four Franciscan monks resolved, for the greater glory
of God and of their tutelary saint, to construct a chapel in a deserted
part of the caverns. Taking with them a thick pack of thread, they
attached one end of it to a spot where the trodden path ceased, and
penetrating deeper and deeper into the unknown vaults as long as their
thread lasted, finally came to a larger cavity or hall, which had
probably not been visited for centuries, but which in consequence of
their misfortune has since become one of the show-places of the quarry.
At the entrance one of them drew with a piece of coal a still existing
sketch of his convent on the wall, and wrote underneath the date of the
discovery which was to be so fatal to him and his companions. What must
have been their dismay when, wishing to retrace their steps, they
discovered that, by some accident, the thread which alone could lead
them out of the labyrinth had been severed, and that they were left
without guide or compass in the inextricable maze of the caverns. The
prior, alarmed at their prolonged absence, and knowing that they had
visited the quarries, ordered them to be sought for. But such is the
vast extent of the excavations that it was only after seven days that
their corpses were found, lying closely together, their faces downwards
and their hands folded, as if their last moments had been spent in
prayer.
The caverns of St. Peter’s Mount, generally devoted only to the pacific
labours of the quarryman or to unbroken silence, have once been the
scene of a bloody fight; and as the quiet waters of the Todtensee, on
the heights of the Grimsel, have witnessed a sanguinary battle between
the French and the Russians, so these subterranean vaults have once
resounded with the din of fire-arms and the shouts of embittered
enemies.
During the siege above mentioned, which brought Maestricht into the
power of the French Republic, some sharpshooters of the besieging army
took up their position in the quarries. The Austrians, who occupied Fort
St. Pierre, on the back of the mountain, and had already made several
successful sorties, formed the plan of penetrating into the caverns from
the interior of the fort, in the hope of surprising the enemy who
occupied their entrances. But as the torches which lighted their silent
march betrayed their intentions, the Frenchmen cautiously and slowly
advanced upon them, surprised them with a sudden volley of musketry, and
drove back into the depths of the caverns all those who were not made
prisoners or killed.
To the geologist the quarries of St. Peter’s are particularly
interesting, as the calcareous tuff of which they are composed is
extremely rich in valuable petrifactions. Here, among others, was found,
in 1770, the famous skull of the Mososaurus Hoffmanni, a giant lizard
twenty feet long, which before the discovery of the still more colossal
Ichthyosauri in England and Bavaria was considered as the most
remarkable fossil known, and now forms one of the chief ornaments of the
Museum of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.
There are no subterranean animals peculiar to the caverns of St.
Peter’s, such as have been found in large natural caves; but foxes and
martens not seldom find here a secure retreat, and many a bat hibernates
in their warm recesses.
Near the small village El Massara, which, like all the hamlets on the
Nile, stands in a grove of date-palms, are situated the quarries which
furnished materials for the temples and pyramids of Memphis. After
having first traversed a wide plain of sand, the visitor reaches the
foot of the Mokattam mountain. Here the ground is everywhere covered
with enormous heaps of rubbish from the quarries, which look more like
an attempt to cut the whole mountain into blocks and carry it away than
simple excavations for building materials. At first sight the traveller
might indeed almost fancy that all the eighteen thousand towns of
ancient Egypt must have been dug out of these stupendous excavations.
Here he may see the mountain cut through from top to bottom, and open
spaces as large as the squares of a great capital on a level with the
plain, while there the rock has been hollowed out into enormous halls,
their roofs reposing on titanic pilasters. In one spot the rocky wall
has been cut rectangularly, after which it runs parallel to the river
for a distance of about fifteen hundred feet, and then again projects at
a right angle towards the plain, so that in the space between the wings
there would be room enough for a small town, yet all the stone which
once filled this vast cavity has been sawn from the rock and carried
over the Nile. Here and there enormous masses of stone, like those which
in winter roll from the high Alps into the valleys, have fallen from the
overhanging rock. Many bear evident traces that the hand of man
originally severed them from the mountain; but their size was such as to
baffle even the perseverance and mechanical skill of the Egyptians. No
power could remove them from the spot, and thus they remained to be worn
away by time, which as yet, however, has hardly left a trace of its
passage upon their chiselled sides.
From the mounds of rubbish that lie before the openings of the quarries
there is a magnificent view of the long line of pyramids which mark, to
the west, the extreme limits of the fertile land. Here, indeed, is a
place for meditation, for nowhere do stones preach a more impressive
sermon!
The quarries of Haggar Silsilis, in a wild mountainous country between
Assuan and Edfu, are on a still grander scale. Passages as broad as
streets, running on both sides between walls fifty or sixty feet high,
now stretching straight forward, now curving, extend from the eastern
bank of the river into the heart of the mountain, where spaces have been
hollowed out large enough to embrace the Roman Colosseum! To the north
numberless Cyclopean caverns have been hewn out, and enormous colonnades
stretch along the foot of the mountain. The rough-hewn irregular roof
rests upon immense square, or many-sided, pillars, frequently eighty or
a hundred feet in circumference. Enormous blocks, already completely
separated from the rock, rest on smaller ones, ready to be transported,
while in other parts the labours of the quarrymen were suddenly arrested
by the invasion of the foreign conqueror who put a stop to the dominion
of the priests. The Bedouin, astonished at these vast works, so alien to
his roving habits, exclaims at their aspect, with a wondering mien,
‘Wallah! if these unbelievers had lived until now, they would have
carried away the whole mountain and levelled it with the ground!’
Syracuse, the proud city that vied with Rome itself, and the remembrance
of whose magnificence and glory, both in arts and arms, will live as
long as classical literature, is now reduced to a heap of rubbish, for
her remains deserve not the name of a city. But though even her ruins
have mostly disappeared, ‘_etiam periere ruinæ_,’ yet the vast quarries
which furnished the materials for her palaces and temples still bear
witness to her ancient grandeur.
The Latomiæ of the Capuchins, thus named from a convent of that order,
situated on the rock above, now form a noble subterranean garden, one of
the most romantic and beautiful spots imaginable. Most of it is about
one hundred feet below the level of the earth, and of an incredible
extent. The whole is hewn out of a rock as hard as marble, composed of a
concretion of shells, gravel, and other marine bodies. The bottom of
this immense quarry, from which pro bably the greatest part of Syracuse
was built, is now covered with an exceedingly rich soil; and as no wind
from any point of the compass can touch it, it is filled with a great
variety of the finest shrubs and fruit-trees, which bear with prodigal
luxuriance, and are never blasted. The oranges, citrons, pomegranates,
and figs are all of a remarkable size, and, frequently growing out of
the hard rock, where there is no visible soil, exhibit a very uncommon
and pleasing appearance. This quarry is the same that Cicero eloquently
describes as the vast and magnificent work of the kings and tyrants of
ancient Syracuse, hewn out of the rock to a prodigious depth. It also
served as a prison for the Athenian soldiers that were made captives
during the Peloponnesian war, and even now these vast excavations might
be used for a similar purpose, as their high and overhanging walls
forbid the possibility of escape, and ten men would be able to guard ten
thousand without danger. Yet the genius of Euripides liberated many of
his countrymen from this deep pit of bondage, for happening to sing a
chorus of one of his immortal tragedies, they moved the tyrant to
restore them to liberty, in honour of their illustrious fellow-citizen.
Never has a more grateful offering been awarded to a poet’s genius, and
never has the magical power of the Muses celebrated a nobler triumph.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
PRECIOUS STONES.
Diamonds--Diamond Cutting--Rose Diamonds--Brilliants--The Diamond
District in Brazil--Diamond Lavras--The great Russian Diamond--The
Regent--The Koh-i-Noor--Its History--The Star of the South--Diamonds
used for Industrial Purposes--The Oriental Ruby and Sapphire--The
Spinel--The Chrysoberyl--The Emerald--The Beryl--The Zircon--The
Topaz--The Oriental Turquoise--The Garnet--Lapis Lazuli--The Noble
Opal--Inferior Precious Stones--The Agate-Cutters of Oberstein--Rock
Crystal--The Rock-crystal Grotto of the Galenstock.
In former ages superstition ascribed a strange mysterious power to
precious stones. Gems of conspicuous size or lustre were supposed to
confer health and prosperity on their owners, to preserve them in the
midst of the most appalling dangers, or even to give them a command over
the world of spirits.
The crucible of modern chemistry has, indeed, effectually dispelled
these illusions of a poetic fancy; but the precious stones have lost
nothing in value by their nature being better known. They are still the
favourite and most costly ornaments of wealth and beauty, and they still
deservedly rank among the wonders of creation. For surely no fabled
talismanic virtues can be more worthy of admiration than that natural
power which in the secret laboratories of the subterranean world has
caused their atoms to unite in lustrous crystals, and imparted to such
vulgar materials as carbon, clay, or sand the gorgeous reflections of
the rainbow or the glorious colours of the setting sun.
The diamond, it is almost unnecessary to say, is the chief of precious
stones, none other equalling it in brilliancy and refractive energy.
Although generally colourless, like pure rock-crystal, yet it is also
found of every variety of tint, from a roseate hue to crimson red, or
from a pale yellow to dark green and blue, or even black. Colourless
diamonds are in general most highly esteemed, but coloured stones are
sometimes of an exquisite beauty, and of corresponding value. Blue is an
exceedingly rare colour, and one of this shade, the celebrated Hope
diamond, which weighs forty-four and a half carats,[70] and unites the
charming colour of the sapphire with the prismatic fire of the diamond,
is valued at 25,000_l._
Footnote 70:
The carat is equal to 3¼ grains Troy weight.
As the rough stones are rarely found with an even or transparent
surface, the assistance of art is required to develop their full beauty.
The diamond, being by far the hardest of all substances, can only be cut
and polished by itself. Hence the lapidaries begin their operations by
rubbing several diamonds against each other while rough, after having
first glued them to the ends of two wooden blocks thick enough to be
held in the hand. It is the powder thus rubbed off the stones, and
received in a little box for the purpose, that serves to grind and
polish them.
The process of diamond-cutting is effected by a horizontal iron plate of
about ten inches’ diameter, called a _schyf_ or mill, which revolves
from two thousand to three thousand times per minute, and is sprinkled
over with diamond dust mixed with oil of olives. The diamond is fixed in
a ball of pewter at the end of an arm resting upon the table on which
the plate revolves; the other end, at which the ball containing the
diamond is fixed, is pressed upon the wheel by movable weights at the
discretion of the workman.
The method of cutting and polishing diamonds was unknown in Europe
before the fifteenth century, but appears to have been practised long
before in India, though in a rude manner. The original facetting of the
Koh-i-Noor was the work of an unknown and prehistoric age.
The diamonds which were employed as ornaments before that period, as for
instance the four large stones which enrich the clasp of the imperial
mantle of Charlemagne, as now preserved in Paris, remained in their
rough and uncut state. The invention is ascribed to Louis von Berguen, a
native of Bruges, then the great emporium of Western trade and luxury,
who in the year 1476 cut the fine diamond of Charles the Bold; and ever
since that time Antwerp and Amsterdam have maintained the first rank in
the practice of an art which might be supposed to have a more
appropriate seat in London or Paris, the centres of modern wealth and
fashion.
Diamonds are generally cut either as rose diamonds or as brilliants. The
rose diamond is flat beneath, while the upper face rises into a dome,
and is cut into facets. The brilliant, which is always three times as
thick as the rose diamond, is likewise cut into facets, but so as to
form two pyramids rising from a common central base or _girdle_. Each
pyramid is truncated at the top by a section parallel to the girdle,
which cuts off -5⁄18 of the whole height from the upper one, and -1⁄18
from the lower one. The superior and larger plane thus produced is
called the _table_; and the inferior and smaller one is called the
_collet_. Although the rose diamond projects bright beams of light in
more extensive proportion often than the brilliant, yet the latter shows
an incomparably greater play, from the difference of its cutting. In
executing this there are formed thirty-two faces of different figures,
and inclined at different angles all round the table on the upper side
of the stone, while on the under side twenty-four other faces are made
round the small table. It is essential that the faces of the top and the
bottom shall correspond together in sufficiently exact proportions to
multiply the reflections and refractions, so as to produce the gorgeous
display of prismatic colours which renders the brilliant so pre-
eminently beautiful.
From the hardness of the diamond, its cutting is a very tedious and
expensive operation, requiring more time in the proportion of fifty to
one than the cutting of the sapphire, which comes next to it in
hardness.
Experiment has determined that the diamond consists of pure carbon, so
that the same substance which in its common black state is utterly
worthless in very small quantities, becomes the most costly of precious
stones, when it makes its appearance in the crystalline form. Already
Newton, by observing the extraordinary refractive power of the diamond,
had been led to place it among combustibles; but Cosmo III., Grand Duke
of Tuscany, was the first who proved the truth of this bold conjecture
by actual observation. He exposed diamonds to the heat of the powerful
burning glass of Tschîrnhausen, and saw them vanish in a few moments
into air. The formation of the diamond in nature is one of the many
problems which ‘our philosophy’ has not yet enabled us to solve. Time is
an element which enters largely into nature’s works; she occupies a
thousand or even thousands of years to produce a result, while man in
his experiments is confined to a few years at most.
The most anciently renowned diamond districts are situated in the Indian
peninsula, in the kingdoms of Golconda and Visapour, extending from Cape
Comorin to Bengal, at the foot of a chain of mountains called the Orixa,
which appear to belong to the trap-rock formation. Tavernier describes
them as giving employment to thousands of workmen, but they seem now to
be all but exhausted.
We are but little acquainted with the diamond mines of Landak in Borneo,
though Ida Pfeiffer, on her second voyage round the world, obtained
permission to visit them, a favour but rarely accorded to strangers by
the suspicious potentate to whom they belong. So much is certain, that
very few stones from this quarter find their way to the civilised world,
which at present draws its chief supplies from the mines of Serro do
Frio and Sincora in Brazil.
When diamonds were first found in the Serro do Frio, about the beginning
of the last century, the real value of the glittering crystals was so
little known that they were made use of as card-marks by the planters of
the neighbourhood. An inspector of mines, who had been some time in
India, was the first who discovered their true nature. Wisely keeping
his secret to himself, he collected a large quantity of them, and
escaped with his treasure to Europe. In 1729, the governor of Brazil,
Don Lourenço de Almeida, sent some of the transparent stones of the
Serro to the court of Lisbon with the remark that he supposed them to be
diamonds, and thus the attention of Government was at length attracted
to their value. By a decree of the 8th of February, 1730, the diamond
district was placed under the rule of an Intendant, armed with the most
arbitrary powers. Not only all strangers were carefully excluded from
its limits, but not even a Portuguese or a Brazilian was allowed to
tread its forbidden ground without a special permission; its population
was limited to a scanty number, nor durst the foundation of a new house
be laid unless in the presence of magistrates and mining inspectors. A
system of secret delations was introduced worthy of the worst times of
the Inquisition, and many an innocent person was banished, imprisoned,
or transported to Africa, without even knowing his accuser, or the
trespass laid to his charge. In one word despotism seemed to have
exhausted all her inventive powers for the purpose of securing to the
Crown the monopoly of the costliest gem on earth.
But in spite of every precaution, it was impossible to put down the
contraband trade in diamonds. The audacity of the smugglers increased
with the obstacles placed in their way, so that a far more considerable
quantity of diamonds was secretly sold and exported than ever came into
the hands of Government. Traversing the deep forests on almost
inaccessible mountain paths, the bold _free-traders_ met, at some place
of appointment, the negroes who had been able to secrete some of the
precious stones, and paid them a trifle for diamonds which beyond the
limits of the district were worth at least twenty times the price given.
Sometimes even the smugglers searched for diamonds themselves in the
unfrequented wilderness. While some were washing the sands, others kept
watch upon an eminence, and gave notice of the approach of the soldiers,
who were constantly patrolling the district.
The heaviest penalties could not prevent the inhabitants of the Serra
from defrauding the Crown, and Herr von Tschudi (‘Travels in South
America in 1857–1861’) was told many amusing instances of their
smuggling contrivances. One of them had concealed a diamond of twenty-
five carats in the handle of his riding whip, for which purpose he had
practised for many weeks the art of plaiting the thin leather straps
which covered it, and another had secreted his precious stones in a
kettle with a double bottom.
When the Brazils became an independent country, the monopoly of the
diamond trade was abandoned by the new Government, and any speculator
was allowed to search for diamonds on payment of a slight duty. The
precious stones are found chiefly in alluvial deposits (_Cascalho
virgem_), in the beds of torrents, or along low river-banks, and
frequently large quantities of overlying rubbish. (_Cascalho bravo_)
have to be removed before the diamond-bed can be reached. The mining
labours are generally performed by slaves, though some of the poorer
miners, or Faiscadores, have no other assistance but that of their own
families. The work varies with the seasons. During the dry period of the
year the cascalho is removed from the beds of the desiccated brooks, and
dams are raised or canals dug for the purpose of turning off the stream
into another channel, while the wet season is made use of for washing
the sands. While this operation is going on, an overseer, seated on a
high chair, keeps a sharp look-out upon the negroes; but in spite of all
his attention, and of the severe punishments that await them in case of
discovery, they know how to secrete many a diamond, by rapidly throwing
it into their mouth, and concealing it under their tongue or swallowing
it. In the Portuguese times an Intendant, complaining to the overseers
of the frequency of theft, accused them of negligence, but was told that
no vigilance in the world could prevent it. To convince himself of the
fact, he ordered a negro who enjoyed the reputation of being a most
expert hand at secreting diamonds to be brought before him, and placing
a small stone in a heap of sand, promised him his liberty in case he
should succeed in appropriating the stone without being detected. The
negro began to wash the sand according to the usual method, while the
Intendant was observing him all the time with the eyes of a lynx. After
a few minutes he asked the slave whether he had found the stone. ‘If the
word of a white man can be trusted,’ answered the black, ‘I am from this
moment free;’ and taking the diamond out of his mouth, he handed it to
the Intendant.
The negroes employed in the diamond washings are generally hired by the
miners at so many milrees a week. Although their labour is very severe,
they generally prefer it to any other, as on Sundays and Feast-days they
are allowed to search on their own account (of course in places not
previously occupied), and have, moreover, an opportunity of stealing
diamonds.
The profits thus lawfully or unlawfully made they generally spend in
drinking, a slave but very rarely saving money for the purpose of
purchasing his freedom. In the Portuguese times, while the mines were
still worked on account of Government, a negro who was fortunate enough
to find a stone weighing an oitava (17½ carats) was at once rewarded
with his liberty; at present only small rewards are given. Formerly most
diamonds were found in the district of Tejuco, the capital of which
received in 1831 the significant name of Diamantina; but in 1844 new
mines were discovered in the Serro do Sincora, in the province of Bahia,
whose richness eclipses that of the most brilliant times of Tejuco.
The total produce of Brazil is estimated at about 300,000 carats,
annually worth on the spot from 300 to 500 milrees the oitava (17½
carats). The miners rarely make a fortune, as their expenses are very
great; the chief profits of the diamond trade fall to the share of the
merchants, who purchase the stones in the mining districts and then sort
and export them. The price of diamonds is subject to considerable
fluctuations, which, proceeding from the markets of London, Paris, and
Amsterdam, are most sensibly felt in the diamond districts, for the
great European houses in whose hands the trade of the rough stones is
concentrated, and who dispose of considerable capital, are able to wait
for better times, while the small Brazilian trader or miner is soon
obliged, for want of money, to sell his stones at any price. After the
breaking out of the Crimean war, diamonds were very much depreciated at
Diamantina. They were offered for sale at absurdly low prices, and even
then a purchaser was rarely to be found. The market improved very
slowly; but when the war was at an end, the prices once more rose to a
height which had never been known before. The commercial crisis in North
America and Europe at the end of 1857, and in the beginning of 1858,
caused a new reaction, the effects of which Tschudi was able to note
during his stay at Diamantina. ‘Good ware’ (_fazenda regular e boa_),
consisting of stones averaging a vintem[71] in weight, which a few
months before had been paid with 500 milrees the oitava, were now
offered for 300. A stone of six vintems was sold in March 1858 for 170
milrees; six months before it would have been worth 240 or 260.
Footnote 71:
In the Brazilian diamond trade, the oitava (17½ carats) is considered
as the unity of weight. It is subdivided into 4 quartas or 32 vintems;
the vintem is equal to 2-18⁄100 grains. Stones of half a vintem still
pass as good ware (_fazenda ainda boa_), when well-shaped and
colourless. Middling ware (_fazenda mediana_) consists of from 64 to
100 stones to the oitava, while all below that weight is sold as
refuse.
While the price of the smaller stones of about a vintem or less is
regulated by the exporters in Rio, conjointly with the European houses,
fancy prices are asked at Diamantina for larger stones of several
carats. A fine diamond of an oitava sells for about three contos of rees
(360_l._), and one of two oitavas, or thirty-five carats, is often sold
on the spot for ten to twelve contos (1200_l._-1440_l._).
During the last thirty years, diamonds have risen about forty per cent.
in price in Europe, a natural consequence of the increase of wealth and
luxury while the supply of the article continues to be limited. As,
however, many large stones have recently been found in South Africa, and
Australia now adds the diamond to her many sources of natural wealth,
its value will probably once more decline.
When cut and polished, a brilliant of the first or purest water in
England, weighing one carat, is valued at 12_l._, a rose diamond of the
same weight at 8_l._, while the value of all those of a larger size is
calculated by multiplying the square of the weight in carats by twelve
or eight, except for those exceeding twenty carats, the price of which
increases at a much more rapid rate. The enormous value ascribed to
large diamonds is, however, merely fanciful, for they are worth neither
more nor less than what purchasers may be inclined or able to give for
them. According to the above valuation, stones weighing 100 carats would
be worth at least (100 × 100 = 10,000 × 12) 120,000_l._; a sum which has
probably never yet been paid for a diamond of that weight. A very
trifling spot or flaw of any kind lowers exceedingly the commercial
value of a diamond. The number of large diamonds is very small. Among
ten thousand stones, the Brazilian mines furnish but one that weighs ten
carats; diamonds above twenty carats are very rare, and in all Europe
there are but five diamonds of more than one hundred carats.
The largest of these is the magnificent gem of the first water, without
fault or blemish, which sparkles in the Imperial sceptre of Russia. It
weighs 194¾ carats; its largest diameter is one inch three lines and a
half; its height ten lines. It is of East Indian origin, and once
figured with another similar stone in the throne of Nadir Shah. When
this tyrant was murdered, it was stolen, and ultimately came into the
possession of an American merchant named Schafrass, who purchased it
with several other valuable stones of an Afghan chieftain in Bagdad, for
the round sum of 50,000 piasters. In 1772 the Empress Catharine II.
bought the diamond of Schafrass, who had meanwhile settled in Amsterdam,
for 450,000 silver roubles and a patent of nobility.
Of somewhat smaller size, but of unparallelled beauty, is the
magnificent diamond called the Pitt or Regent, which Mr. Pitt,
grandfather of the famous Lord Chatham, into whose possession it had
come while governor of Madras, sold to the Duke of Orleans, Regent of
France, for 135,000_l._ having himself paid 12,500_l._ for it to
Tamohund, the most famous native dealer in India. It originally weighed
410 carats, but has been reduced to 136¾ by cutting it into a brilliant—
an operation which is said to have lasted two years. It is now the first
among the jewels belonging to the French Government; Napoleon used to
wear it in the hilt of his sword.
During the five years the stone remained in his possession, Governor
Pitt is said to have lived in such constant dread of having it stolen,
that he never made known beforehand the day of his coming to town, nor
slept two nights following in the same house. If this story be true,
great indeed must have been his relief when he parted with his gem,
which, though small in weight, was to him a true millstone in anxiety.
The diamond of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, which weighs 139½ carats, and
is consequently a trifle larger than the Regent, once belonged to
Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and at the battle of Nancy fell into the
hands of an ignorant trooper, who plucked the gem from the helmet of the
unfortunate duke and sold it for a crown. At a later period it came into
the possession of the Court of Tuscany, and is now the first crown jewel
of the Emperor of Austria.
The most celebrated diamond in the world is undoubtedly the Koh-i-Noor,
or ‘mountain of light,’ which, according to Hindu legend, was worn by
one of the heroes of the Great War which took place about four thousand
years ago, and which forms the subject of the epic poem the Maha-
Bhârata. After numberless vicissitudes and peregrinations, we find it in
the possession of the Grand Moguls, and in 1739 in that of Nadir Shah,
who, on his occupation of Delhi, compelled Mohammed Shah, the great-
grandson of Aurungzeb, to give up to him all the valuables contained in
the imperial treasury. According to the family and popular tradition,
Mohammed Shah was imprudent enough to wear the Koh-i-Noor in front of
his turban at his interview with his conqueror, who being
‘the mildest-mannered man
With all true breeding of a gentleman,’
insisted on exchanging turbans in proof of his regard; and is said to
have bestowed upon the diamond thus politely annexed the name of Koh-i-
Noor. After the fall of his dynasty, the stone became the property of
Ahmed Shah, the founder of the Abdali dynasty of Kabul, and, when Mr.
Elphinstone was at Peshawur, was worn by his successor Shah Shuja, on
his arm. When Shah Shuja was driven from Kabul, he became the nominal
guest and actual prisoner of Runjeet Singh, who, following the good
example of Nadir Shah, _gently_ persuaded his protegé to part with his
diamond for the revenues of three villages, not one rupee of which he
ever realised. ‘By what do you estimate its value?’ asked the Sikh
Maharajah of his victim, as the surrendered Koh-i-Noor lay on the arm of
his new master. ‘By its good luck,‘ said Shah Shuja, ‘for it hath ever
been his who hath conquered his enemies.’
Subsequent events fully proved the truth of this remark, for when the
Punjab was annexed by the British Government, it was stipulated among
other conditions that the Koh-i-Noor should be presented to the Queen of
England. But in spite of its promising name, the ‘Mountain of Light’ was
but of inferior lustre, for the Orientals are mere bunglers in the art
of diamond-cutting, and lay greater weight upon the size than upon the
brilliancy of a jewel. Hence it was resolved to have it recut by the
most skilful Amsterdam lapidaries, who came over to England for the
purpose. The operation, which was performed with the assistance of a
small steam-engine, and cost no less than 5,000_l._, was perfectly
successful; and though the Koh-i-Noor, which formerly weighed 186¼
carats, has been reduced by its conversion into a brilliant of 102-3⁄16
carats, it has gained so much in lustre that it now fully deserves the
name assigned to it by the hyperbolical phraseology of the East.
All these large diamonds originally came from India; but latterly they
have been rivalled by a stone of Brazilian origin, originally weighing
254½ carats, but reduced by cutting to 125, which has received the
poetical name of ‘Estrella do Sul’ or Star of the South. It is a
singular fact that as yet this beautiful gem has brought good luck to
none of its possessors. An old negro woman accidentally found it in a
diamond mine at the Rio da Bagagem, in Minas Geraes, among a heap of
pebbles that had been previously washed. She gave it to her master, who
did not even reward her with her liberty, and superstition has traced
all the ill-luck attached to the stone to that ungenerous act. The first
proprietor of the diamond was a needy man, who for a trifling sum had
been allowed by the proprietor of the mine to search for stones with the
few slaves he possessed. The proprietor now claimed the diamond,
alleging that it had not been found on the premises hired by the former;
and a law suit, profitable of course to none but the lawyers, was the
consequence. To be able to defend his cause, the possessor of the stone
pawned it to the Brazilian Bank for about 8,000_l._, for which he had to
pay fifteen per cent. commission and a high interest.
The law suit, as may naturally be supposed, lasted so long that the man
died before it was decided, and but a very small sum of money remained
to his widow. After passing through several hands, the stone was
purchased at Rio for a million of francs, by a Dutch jeweller, who, to
make up this considerable sum, was obliged to borrow money at the usual
high interest of the place. He took the stone with him to Amsterdam,
where it was cut, at an expense of about 4,000_l._ The great desideratum
now was to find a purchaser for the magnificent jewel, which, however,
did not prove of the first water. It was offered for sale to several
crowned heads, and no princely bridal was allowed to pass without an
attempt to dispose of the ‘Star of the South;’ but all efforts proved
fruitless, for it seems that the monarchs of our days are of opinion
that the exorbitant sums formerly paid for diamonds of an uncommon size
may be invested in a much more profitable manner. The unfortunate
speculator died of a broken heart. By the latest accounts the stone is
still in Paris, held in pawn by a commercial house, which most probably
will keep it, as the accumulated interest of years must of course absorb
its whole value.
The uncut stone belonging to the King of Portugal, and weighing 1,680
carats, is now well known to be not, as was supposed, the greatest
diamond in the world, but a mere white topaz. The quality of another
stone of 138½ carats, found near the Rio Abaete in 1791, and likewise in
the Portuguese treasury, has not been determined. So much, however, is
certain, that the Portuguese Crown possesses (or possessed a few years
ago) the richest collection of diamonds in the world, the value of which
was estimated at about 3,000,000_l._(?) Of all the stones annually sent
to Lisbon by the General Intendant of the diamond districts, the king
selected the largest and finest for the royal treasury, and the others
were sold. When King Joao VI. returned in 1821 from Brazil to Portugal,
he carried along with him almost as many diamonds as Voltaire’s Candide
on his escape from Eldorado. The jewels were deposited in sealed bags in
the vaults of the Lisbon Bank, where they remained forty years as a dead
capital. In 1863 it was at length very wisely resolved, with the consent
of the Cortes, to sell these rough diamonds, and to invest the proceeds
for the benefit of the civil list.
Though diamonds are usually washed out from the soil, yet they also
generally occur in regions that afford a laminated granular quartz rock,
called _Itacolumite_, which in thin slabs is translucent and more or
less flexible. This rock occurs in the mines of Brazil and the Urals,
and also in Georgia and North Carolina, where a few diamonds have been
found. Before taking leave of the prince of gems, I will not omit
mentioning that it is not only the costliest of all ornaments, but
serves also for several more humble though more useful purposes, as for
cutting glass by the glazier, and all kinds of hard stones by the
lapidary. Small drills are made either of imperfect diamonds, or of
fragments split off from good stones in their manufacture for jewelling.
They are used for drilling small holes in rubies and other hard stones,
for piercing holes in china where rivets are to be inserted, or in any
other vitreous substance, however hard. Diamonds have also been recently
used for arming the end of the borer in a new rock-boring machine, for
scooping out holes in the hardest rocks, such as granite and porphyry.
The use of diamond dust within a few years has increased very materially
with the increased demand for all articles wrought by it, such as cameos
and intaglios.
The mineral substance that ranks next to the diamond, whether we
estimate it by its hardness, the splendour of its colour, or its
rareness, is that called by the mineralogists Corundum. It consists of
pure crystallised alumina (the oxide of the now well-known metal
aluminium), variously tinted by the addition of small quantities of iron
or chromium. To this class belong the ruby, the sapphire, the topaz, the
emerald, the amethyst, and other stones of gorgeous colour,
distinguished by the epithet ‘oriental’ prefixed to the name.
The Oriental Ruby, or Red Sapphire, is the red stone _par excellence_ of
jewellery, and, from its fiery lustre, probably identical with the
carbuncle of Pliny, and the anthrax or ‘burning coal’ of Theophrastus.
Its finest colour is a most rich and lovely crimson, known as the
pigeon’s blood tint; but its scarlet tints are also most beautiful. The
red rays of the prism falling on a ruby produce a charming effect. Pegu
is the land of rubies, and Australia now likewise furnishes stones of
excellent quality. A perfect ruby above three and a half carats is more
valuable than a diamond of the same weight. If it weigh one carat it is
worth ten guineas; two carats, forty guineas; three carats, one hundred
and fifty guineas; six carats, above one thousand guineas. The largest
oriental ruby known to be in the world was brought from China to Prince
Gagarin, Governor of Siberia. It came afterwards into the possession of
Prince Menschikoff, and is now a jewel in the imperial crown of Russia.
The blue variety of the corundum is the Oriental Sapphire of the
jeweller. There is one hue of it of a soft pure azure, distinguished
from the commoner kinds by its retaining its fine blue even by
candlelight, when an ordinary sapphire looks purple or black. Unlike the
ruby, it occurs in specimens of a considerable size. A good blue stone
of ten carats is valued at fifty guineas. If it weighs twenty carats its
value is two hundred guineas, but under ten carats the price may be
estimated by multiplying the square of its weight in carats into half a
guinea; thus one of four carats would be worth eight guineas. A sapphire
of a barbel-blue colour, weighing six carats, was disposed of in Paris
by public sale for 70_l._; and another of an indigo blue, weighing 6
carats and 3 grains, brought 60_l._, both of which sums much exceed what
the preceding rule assigns, from which we may perceive how far fancy may
go in such matters.
The Spinels, whose transparent and more precious forms consist
essentially of alumina combined with magnesia, and tinted perhaps with
iron, include two resplendent stones, the Spinel Ruby, a scarlet variety
of considerable fire and of rich colour, and the Balais or Balass Ruby,
thus called from one of the most celebrated localities of the spinel in
former times, namely Beloochistan or Balastan. The latter is of a
delicate and rarely deep rose-colour, showing a blue tint when looked
through, and a redder one when it is looked at. Both of these minerals
are termed rubies by the jewellers, and the deeper-tinted kinds are
sometimes sold for the true stone. In fact, nearly all the large and
famous gems that pass under the name of rubies belong to this species,
as for instance the ancient ruby in the crown of England, which was
presented to Edward the Black Prince by Don Pedro the Cruel, and the
enormous stone, time-honoured in Indian tradition, that came along with
the Koh-i-Noor into Her Majesty’s possession. Such was the superstitious
value attached to it by its former proprietor, Runjeet Singh, that he
would sooner have lost a province than this stone. When the weight of a
good spinel exceeds four carats, it is said to be valued at half the
price of a diamond of the same weight.
The Chrysoberyl, called also by the jewellers the Oriental Chrysolite,
is a stone of almost adamantine lustre and transparence. It is a
compound of alumina and the rare oxide glucina, a constituent of the
beryl. It has usually a peculiar, sometimes a very delicate greenish
yellow or primrose colour, and is then one of the most beautiful of
gems. The finer specimens are from Brazil.
The Emerald and the Beryl are one and the same mineral—a silicate of
alumina and glucina, which owes to a small trace of iron its blue, pink,
or yellow tints, or else to a little chromium the transcendent green
which characterises it as the emerald. The colour of this beautiful gem
is so pleasant to the eye that the ancients attributed to it the power
of strengthening and relieving the sight when fatigued by previous
exertions. Both from its beauty and rareness they held it in high
estimation, and Pliny ranks the emerald in value immediately after the
diamond and the oriental pearl. In the Egyptian tombs real emeralds are
sometimes found as the ornaments of regal mummies, and they have not
seldom been discovered among the ruins of Rome, or at Herculaneum and
Pompeii. Scythia, Bactria, and Egypt were renowned among the ancients as
the countries which furnished the most beautiful emeralds. At present
these precious stones are obtained chiefly from New Granada and Siberia,
in which latter country they occur of much larger size, but of less
beauty, and consequently far inferior value. The first Siberian emeralds
were discovered in the year 1831, in the neighbourhood of
Catharinenburg, by some peasants, while making tar, and other mines were
opened in 1834 ten versts distant from the former. Here was found an
enormous stone, fourteen inches long and twelve broad, and weighing 16¾
lbs. troy, and another superb specimen consisting of twenty crystals,
from half an inch to five inches long, and as much as two inches thick,
embedded in a matrix of mica-schist. Both these monstrous gems now rank
among the chief ornaments of the Imperial Mineralogical Cabinet.
When the Spaniards conquered Peru, they found many beautiful emeralds in
the possession of the natives. The largest of these stones, about the
size of an ostrich egg, was adored as a god in one of the temples, and
other emeralds of a smaller size placed around it were honoured as its
children. In their blind fanaticism, the otherwise greedy Spaniards
shivered the god and his family to pieces, but it is more than probable
that the wisest of the band quietly picked up the fragments and
afterwards disposed of them to advantage. The finest stones used to be
found in the valley of Manta; but the Indians kept the mines secret, to
avoid being obliged to work in them, or perhaps out of hatred against
their oppressors. At present, the American emeralds are chiefly obtained
from the valley of Tunka, in the province of Santa Fé de Bogota, in New
Granada.
The price of emeralds varies considerably, according to their purity,
the beauty of their colour, their lustre, and their size. Before the
discovery of America, they were uncommonly dear, all knowledge of the
old mines having been lost, so that the emeralds still used as ornaments
were all ancient. Afterwards their value decreased, when a greater
quantity was imported from Peru; but recently they have again risen in
price, as America at present furnishes but few good stones. A splendid
specimen in the possession of Mr. Hope, weighing six ounces, cost
500_l._; another fine American emerald belonging to the Duke of
Devonshire is two inches long, and weighs above eight ounces, but, owing
to flaws, it is but partially fit for jewellery.
The Beryl, which exhibits every gradation of tint, from a pale azure
blue to a fine mountain green, and also occurs in a pale orange yellow
variety, is found in great perfection at Oduntschilon and Mursinsk in
Siberia. A beautifully clear crystal, ten inches long, discovered in the
latter locality in 1828, and forming part of the mineralogical museum at
Petersburg, is valued at 8,000_l._ Formerly Brazil and Cangayum in the
Deccan were in much repute as fields in which the beryl was found, and
many a brilliant little stone has been furnished by the Mourne Mountains
in Ireland.
The Zircon consists of the mixed oxides of silicon and of the rare
element zirconium, and is one of the heaviest and most lustrous of gem-
stones. Its colourless variety is the nearest match in brilliancy and
refractive energy for the diamond, while the deep orange-tinted red
zircon is that transcendent gem, the true hyacinth, which makes a very
superb ring-stone.
The Topaz, a silicate of alumina and fluorine, is found chiefly in
Siberia, Brazil, and Saxony, and is also met with in the granitic
detritus of Cairngorm in Aberdeenshire. The colourless Brazilian variety
(_Pingo d’agoa_, or waterdrop) surpasses rock-crystal in purity and
refractive power, and being of the same weight as the diamond, is
sometimes mistaken for it. The pale yellow topaz when heated in a
crucible assumes a rose-red colour, and is then called by the jewellers
ruby of Brazil. The Saxon topaz, on the other hand, becomes white when
exposed to heat, and thus deprived of colour is sold for the diamond. In
ancient times the topaz was highly esteemed; but, in spite of its
beauty, it is not now considered of very great value, from its being too
frequently found, and is sold in the rough for about forty shillings per
pound.
When of a beautiful ‘forget-me-not’ blue, and above the size of a pea,
the Oriental Turquoise, which in inferior specimens is but of little
value, fetches a considerable price, so that fine stones of about half
an inch in length are worth 15_l._ or 20_l._ The turquoise, which
consists of phosphate of alumina coloured by oxide of copper, occurs
chiefly in the mountainous range of Persia, whence it is brought by the
merchants of Bochara to Moskau; but the Shah is said to retain for his
own use all the larger and finely tinted specimens.
Major Macdonald gives the following account of a new field for the
turquoise which he discovered in Arabia Petræa. ‘In the year 1849,
during my travels in Arabia in search of antiquities, I was led to
examine a very lofty range of mountains, composed of iron sandstone,
many days’ journey in the desert; and whilst descending a mountain of
about six thousand feet high, by a deep and precipitous gorge, which in
the winter time served to carry off the water, I found a bed of gravel,
where I perceived a great many small blue objects mixed with the other
stones; on collecting them I found they were turquoises of the finest
colour and quality. On continuing my researches through the entire range
of mountains, I discovered many valuable deposits of the same stones,
some quite pure in pebbles, and others in the matrix. The action of the
weather gradually loosens them from the rock, and they are rolled into
the ravines, and, in the winter season, mixed up by the torrents with
beds of gravel, where they are found.’
The Occidental or Bone Turquoise, which has generally but one-fourth of
the value of the oriental, is said to be fossil bones or teeth, coloured
with oxide of copper.
The Garnet, a silicate of some base which may be lime, magnesia, oxide
of iron, or chromium, is in its finer specimens one of the most
beautiful coloured products of nature’s laboratory. By jewellers the
garnets are classed as Syrian, Bohemian, or Cingalese, rather from their
relative value and fineness than with any reference to the country from
which they are supposed to have been brought. Those most esteemed are
called Syrian garnets, not because they come from Syria, but after
Syrian, the capital of Pegu, which city was formerly the chief mart for
the finest garnets. Their colour is violet purple, which in some rare
instances vies with that of the finest oriental amethyst; but it may be
distinguished from the latter by acquiring an orange tint by
candlelight. The Bohemian garnet is generally of a dull poppy-red
colour, with a very perceptible hyacinth orange tint, when held between
the eye and the light. When the colour is a full crimson, it is called
pyrope or fire-garnet, a stone of considerable value when perfect and of
large size. Garnet is easily worked, and when facet-cut is nearly always
(on account of the depth of its colour) formed into thin tables, which
are sometimes concave or hollowed out on the under side. Cut stones of
this latter kind, when skilfully set, with a bright silver foil, have
often been sold as rubies.
Though Lapis Lazuli, a silicate of soda, lime, and alumina, with the
sulphide of iron and sodium in minute quantities, is without
transparency, and without much lustre, yet its beautiful azure-blue
tints, often interspersed with yellow specks, and veins of iron pyrites,
which, from their brilliant appearance in the comparatively dull blue
stone, might easily be mistaken for gold, entitle it to be ranked among
the semi-precious stones. The finest quality, which sells in the mass
for 30_l._ per pound, is used for jewellery, and for making costly vases
and ornamental furniture. Lapis lazuli was also the source from which
the beautiful pigment ultramarine was obtained; but this colour is now
prepared artificially at a very cheap rate. This beautiful mineral is
found in crystalline limestone of a greyish colour on the banks of the
Indus, and in granite in Persia, China, and Siberia.
In the long list of the crystalline or hyaline quartzes, consisting of
silex or silica in various degrees of purity, there is but one variety,
the Noble Opal, that ranks among precious stones of the first quality.
In this beautiful gem, minute fissures are apparently striated with
microscopic lines, which, diffracting the light, flash out rainbow tints
of the purest and most brilliant hues. The Noble Opal, which is one of
the favourite jewels of modern times, was no less highly esteemed by the
ancients, ‘for in this stone,’ says Pliny, ‘we admire the fire of the
ruby, the brilliant purple of the amethyst, the lustrous green of the
emerald, all shining together in a wonderful mixture.’ For the sake of a
magnificent opal, set in a ring, and valued at 20,000_l._ of our money,
the senator Nonius was exiled by Mark Antony. He might have escaped
banishment by presenting his opal to the covetous triumvir; but he
preferred exile with his gem to staying in Rome without it.
The Precious Opal is so rare a stone that, with all our mining
enterprise and geological research, we know of only two certain
localities for it, namely, in Hungary and in Mexico, though some
specimens are said to have been found in the province of Honduras and in
the stormy Feroe Islands. The opal mines of Hungary, situated at
Czernewitza, in the county of Saros, belong to the Crown, and are at
present farmed by Herr Goldschmidt of Vienna, for 10,000 florins
annually. About 150 workmen are employed, and as good stones occur but
rarely, and are of a corresponding value, it may easily be imagined
that, what with the constant fear of being robbed, and that of not being
able to cover his expenses, poor Herr Goldschmidt is no less to be
pitied than Governor Pitt while in possession of his diamond.
The finest and largest opal in the world is in the Imperial
Mineralogical Cabinet in Vienna. It has the most magnificent play of
colours, chiefly green and red, weighs seventeen ounces, and is
irregularly cut, so as not to diminish the mass. An Amsterdam jeweller
is said to have offered half a million of florins for this unique gem.
Unfortunately, its large size prevents its being used as an ornament, as
for this purpose it would have to be cut to pieces, which would be an
unpardonable piece of Vandalism.
Their relative beauty increases the value of opals so considerably that
fine stones of a moderate bulk have, in modern times, been frequently
sold at the price of diamonds of equal size. The so-called ‘Mountain of
Light,’ an Hungarian opal in the Great Exhibition of 1851, weighed 526½
carats, and was estimated at 4,000_l._ The black opals, which allow the
red fire of the ruby to flash out from the dark ground-colour of the
stone, are also highly esteemed. Besides the commoner varieties of opal,
such as semi-opal, opal jasper, wood opal, different kinds of quartz
crystal, including amethyst, Cairngorm stone, and a long and beautiful
array of jaspers and chalcedonies, such as agate, onyx, sard, plasma,
and chrysoprase, may be placed in a list of stones of the second degree
in point of value, if that value be estimated by rarity and price.
The cutting, or grinding and polishing of most of these stones, which
are commonly comprised under the name of agates, is chiefly carried on
in the small towns of Oberstein and Idar, situated in the picturesque
valley through which the rapid Idar flows into the Nahe, a tributary of
the Rhine. The sterile soil yields but a scanty produce, but the
neighbouring hills abound in chalcedonies, which afford the people an
ample indemnity for the barrenness of their land. As early as the
fourteenth century, the art of agate-cutting was introduced into this
remote valley, from Italy, where it had long been practised; but for a
long time the trade was conducted in a very rude manner. The workmen
themselves undertook the sale of their ware, and wandered as pedlars to
the neighbouring castles or towns, where they could hope to dispose of
their agates to the best advantage. It was not before the middle of the
last century that the industry of Oberstein made a considerable
progress. Gold and silversmiths settled in the small town to set the
stones as they came out of the hands of the grinders, and gradually a
more wealthy class of traders was formed, who undertook long voyages,
and extended their operations to distant countries. The fairs of
Frankfort and Leipzig were regularly attended by the merchants of
Oberstein and Idar, and some of them even ventured as far as Smyrna or
Archangel. The taste and the ability of the workmen improved as their
market extended, but now the want of the raw material began to be felt.
The neighbouring hills were no longer able to meet the demand, the
stones continually rose in price, the better qualities could hardly be
procured, and thus the agate manufactory was menaced with decline, when
a fortunate circumstance gave it a new impulse.
Some of the inhabitants of Idar who in 1827 had emigrated to Brazil
discovered in their new home an inexhaustible supply of stones. Enormous
masses of chalcedony were found scattered as boulders near the banks of
some rivers or disseminated in the plains, and could be sent as ballast
at a trifling expense across the ocean. Thus almost all the rough
material that Oberstein needs comes at present from Brazil or even
India, and only the rarer varieties of agate-jaspis are at present
collected in the neighbourhood of Idar. In possession of the best
materials, supplied by a number of localities, and comprising all
imaginable varieties of chalcedony—carnelion, plasma, heliotrope,
jaspis, rock-crystal, amethyst, topaz, lapis lazuli, malachite—and
commanding a market which extends further and further over the globe,
the prosperity of Oberstein and Idar steadily increases. One hundred and
eighty-three water-mills (with 724 large grinding-stones), situated
along the romantic Idar, give employment to about 3,000 workmen, and the
value of the manufactured stones amounts to at least 220,000_l._
annually.
No stones are so porous or so easily coloured by artificial means as the
varieties of chalcedony. In ancient times the onyxes from the Nerbudda
were ‘baked in ovens,’ and to this day, in the neighbourhood of Brooch,
the nodules of onyx dug in the dry season from the beds of torrents are
packed in earthen pots with dry goat’s-dung, which is set on fire. By
this baking process the grey or dark green iron hydrate which permeates
their pores and gives them a dull colour is changed into the red oxyde,
which imparts to the improved stones rich hues of orange and hyacinthine
red, and the more ornamental of the mottled onyxes that come from Cambay
are those thus artificially beautified.
The art of baking and colouring is now fully understood in Oberstein.
Some agates consist of impermeable white bands or layers alternating
with others of a grey or dull colour, and of a porous nature. When
placed in honey and exposed to a moderate heat for eight or ten days,
the saccharine matter penetrates into the microscopical pores. Then the
stones are boiled in sulphuric acid, which, carbonising the honey,
imparts a deep black colour to the porous layers which it had permeated,
and by thus setting-off the white layers to the best advantage, changes
a previously almost worthless stone into a beautiful onyx or sardonyx.
An Italian who came to Oberstein to buy rough agates for the cameo-
cutters of Rome made the Germans acquainted with this method, which had
long been practised by his countrymen. By other chemical processes, some
of which are generally known, while others are kept a secret, rich
yellow, or apple-green, or blue tints are imparted by the agate-dealers
of Oberstein to the rough produce of nature. A description of all the
varieties of quartz used for ornamental purposes would lead me too far;
but a few words on rock-crystal may not be uninteresting.
This beautiful mineral occurs in many varieties, such as the violet,
rock-crystal, or amethyst, the most beautiful specimens of which are
procured from India, Ceylon, and Persia; the false topaz when yellow,
the morion when black, the smoky quartz when smoke-brown. The limpid and
colourless kinds are often called Bristol or Irish diamonds, after the
various localities in which they are found. Rock-crystal frequently
occurs in the Alps, as is well known to every traveller in Switzerland.
Small rock-crystals have hardly any value, but considerable prices are
paid for very large specimens, which are accordingly much sought for by
chamois-hunters and goatherds. About a century since a quartz cave was
opened at Zinken, which afforded 1,000 cwt. of rock-crystal, and at that
early period brought 300,000 dollars. One crystal weighed 800 pounds.
In 1867 a party of tourists, descending from the solitudes of the
Galenstock, discovered, in a band of white quartz traversing a
precipitous rock-wall about a hundred feet above the Tiefen Glacier,
some dark spots which the guide, Peter Sulzer, of Guttannen, declared to
be cavities in which undoubtedly rock-crystals would be found. The
weather being unpropitious, no search was made at the time; but a few
weeks after Sulzer and his son revisited the spot, and after having
clambered up to the holes with great difficulty, found that they
communicated with a dark cavity, from which the intrepid explorers
extracted some pieces of black rock-crystal with the curved handles of
their alpenstocks.
In the August of the following year the Sulzers, accompanied by a few
friends from Guttannen, to whom they had imparted the secret, made a
more decisive attempt to force their way into the cave, by widening the
entrance with gunpowder. To clamber and maintain one’s position on a
nearly vertical rock on ledges only a few inches broad is at all times a
matter of no small difficulty; but this difficulty is very much
increased when at the same time the hammer and other implements for
blasting are to be handled. The weather was also very bad, and every now
and then a dreadful gust of wind threatened to hurl the hardy
adventurers from the rock upon the glacier. Hail and rain stiffened
their limbs; and thus they passed a miserable night closely huddled
together on a narrow projection before the cavity. Wet to the skin, and
their teeth chattering with cold, they resumed their labours on the
following morning, and at length sufficiently widened the entrance to
open a passage into a cave which was found to penetrate to a
considerable depth into the mountain. The cave was filled nearly up to
its roof with a mound consisting of pieces of granite and quartz mixed
with chlorite sand; but here and there, imbedded in the rubbish,
glistened the large planes of jet black morions which showed that their
toil had not been fruitless. Originally the crystals had grown from the
sides or the roof of the cave; and who can tell the ages that were
required for their formation, or the mysterious circumstances that
favoured their growth?—then at an equally unknown time the concussion of
an earthquake, or maybe their own weight, had detached them from the
rock to which they clung, and precipitated them upon the floor. Upon the
whole more than a thousand large crystals were found in the cave, many
of them weighing from fifty pounds to more than three cwt.
After the first explorers had collected about a ton, the whole able-
bodied population of Guttannen, provided with hammers, spades, ropes,
baskets, and trucks, came forth to carry away the remainder. As the
report had spread that the Canton of Uri, on whose territory the cave
was situated, intended to stop their proceedings, they worked night and
day with feverish haste, and in the space of a week had entirely
stripped it of its treasures, which were partly conveyed to the new
Furca Road, and partly transported over the glaciers to the Grimsel. One
of the party fell into a crevice with a crystal of a hundred pounds upon
his back, but extricated himself, though he was obliged to abandon his
prize. Thus when the authorities from Uri made their appearance on the
spot nearly all the crystals had been removed out of their reach. Seven
of the finest specimens, each rejoicing in an individual name, like the
mammoth-trees of America, now form a magnificent group in the museum of
Berne, to which they were sold for 8,000 francs. The ‘king,’ 32 inches
high and 3 feet in circumference, weighs 255 pounds; the 'grandfather,’
though of inferior height, makes up for this deficiency by a superior
girth, and weighs 276 pounds. Many other fine crystals were sold to
various museums and private collections for six or seven francs per
pound, so that Sulzer’s discovery will long be gratefully remembered in
the annals of the poor village of Guttannen.
INDEX.
Aben Aboo, last Morisco chief of Granada, his end, 174
Abraham, his purchase of the field of Machpelah with silver money, 297
Abydos, rock-hewn cemeteries of, 205
Abyssinia, rock-churches of, 186
Aconcagua, height of the volcano of, 54
Adelsberg, cave of, vast dimensions of the, 135, 138
entrance to the Cave of, 137
stalagmital formations of, 140
traversed by a river, 150
fungi in the, 157
subterranean animals found in the, 162, 163
insects in the, 163
Adit levels, drainage by, 269
Adullam, David’s refuge in the cave of, 169
Æolian caverns, 198-200
those of Terni, 198
fables respecting, 199
Africa, future services of Artesian wells to, 51
cannibal caves of South, 234
Agates, 496
of Oberstein, 496, 498
Aidepsos, antiquity of the hot baths of, 44
Ajunta, rock-temples of, 182, 183
Alabaster, origin of, 4
of Montmartre, 468
of Volterra, 468
of England, 469
Alaghez, sulphur of the crater of the volcano of, 445
Albania, subterranean water-courses of, 150
Albano, Lake of, the crateriform hollow forming the, 132
Albert the Great, his discovery of arsenic, 385
Alchemists, their search for gold, 371
Aleschga, fire temple of, 91
Aleutian Mountains, volcanoes of the, 61
Aleutian Archipelago, formation of a new volcanic island in the, 60
Alexander the Great, wealth of, 286, 298
Aldborough, amber found on the coast at, 450
Algeria, Artesian wells of, 51
Algiers, great part of, destroyed by the earthquake of 1755, 118
Aljaska, volcanoes of the peninsula of, 61
Almaden del Azogue, quicksilver mines of, 371-373
mines of New Almaden in California, 378
Alpujarras, destruction of the Moors of Granada in the caves of, 173,
174
Alston, situation of the town of, 366
Alston Moor, horses used in the mines of, 262
great drain of Nent Force Level, 270
lead mines of, 365, 366
Altaï, copper mines of the, 326
porphyry of the, 468
Alten Fjord, copper mines of, 324
Aluminium, discovery and uses of, 387
Aluminium-bronze, 387
Amber, modes of collecting, on the Prussian coast, 449
diggings near Dantzig, 449, 450
various places in which it is found, 450
what is amber? 450
the extinct amber-tree, 451
insects inclosed in amber, 452-455
ancient and modern trade in, 455-457
constituents of, 458
mines of Tolfa, 458
manufacture of, 459
Amblyopsis spelæus, of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, 168
America, number of active volcanoes in Western and Central, 61
copper mines of, 326
ancient copper mines of, 327
iron industry of, 362
lead mines of, 367
silver mines of, 300-314
coal-fields of North, 424
fossil monkeys of South, 24
animals of the Pliocene period and of the present day, 24
Ammonites, number of species of the,18
characteristics of the, 18
Ammonites Henleyi, 9
Anaitis, golden statue of the goddess, 286
Anchorites, caves of, 178
Ancyloceras gigas, 19
Andernach, on the Rhine, glacial beer cellars of, 192
entrance to the glacière of, 201
Andes, sea-shells found on the, 34
fish disgorged from the volcanic caverns of the, 69
André, St., town and church of, buried by a landslip of Mount Grenier,
127
Andreasberg, St., depth of one of the pits of, 247
Animals, impressions produced on, by an earthquake, 113
subterranean, 159-168
divine honours paid to them by the Egyptians, and converted into
mummies, 205
caves containing remains of extinct animals, 213
Anoplotheriums, size and characteristics of the, 23
Antæopolis, rock-hewn cemeteries of, 205
Anthony, St., of Egypt, his rock-cave, life, and death, 178, 179
Anthracites, or non-bituminous coal, 401, 402
value of, for steam-engines, 405
Antimony, first mention of, 383
uses of, 383
Antioch, earthquake of, in the reign of Trajan, 97
its subsequent subversion by an earthquake, 97
Antiparos, Grotto of, 134
Antuco, eruption of the volcano of, in 1835, 79
Apallachian coal-field, its enormous extent, 424
Apollo, at Delphi, golden statue of, 285
Apteryx australis of New Zealand, 216
Aptornis, Professor Owen’s resuscitation of the, 217
Aqueducts of the Romans, 41
of the Turks, 41, 42
Aqueous rocks, countless ages of the formation of the, 1, 5
incomplete knowledge of these sedimentary formations, 1
aqueous strata disturbed by igneous formations, 4
Arabia, sulphur of, 446
Arcadia, consecrated caves to Artemis and Pan in, 187
Arcueil, artificial mushroom-beds at, 158
Arica, effects of an earthquake sea-wave at, 109
Argentiferous veins of the Clausthal and the Veta madre, their length,
247
Armenia, hermits in, 179
Arnaud, St., Colonel, his massacre of the Arabs in the cave of Shelas,
176
Arracan, mud volcanoes of the coast of, 93
Arsenic, discovery of, 385
supply of, 385
Artesian wells, subterranean heat shown by, 32
theory of, 48
of the inhabitants of the Sahara, mentioned by Olympiodorus, 48
the well of Grenelle at Paris, 49
Artesian well sunk in the London basin, 49
various uses of Artesian wells, 50
those of Algeria, 51
future importance of, in Africa and Australia, 51, 52
Ashes thrown out by volcanic eruptions, 66, 67
Asia Minor, earthquakes of, in the reign of Tiberius, 97, 100
Asphalte, 426
found swimming on the Dead Sea, 427
uses of, 427
pavements made of, 428
Assuan, rock-hewn cemeteries of, 205
Asterophyllites comosa, 392
Augustus, Emperor, and the sacrilegious soldier, story of, 286
Aurignac, sepulchral grotto of, 228, 229
Australia, future importance of Artesian wells to, 52
stalactital caves of, 141
ossiferous caves of, 216
discovery of gold in, 289
Sir Roderick Murchison’s surmises, 289
copper mines of, 329
Austria, coal-fields of, 423
salt mines of, 433-436
Auvergne, carbonic acid gas springs of, 88
maare, or crateriform hollows, in, 132
Avaricum (Bourges), Cæsar’s siege of, 347
Averno, Lake of, formed in an extinct crater of a volcano, 57
Aviculopecten sublobatus, fossils of, 15
Axmouth, landslip at, 128
Sir C. Lyell’s account of it, 128
Azores, earthquakes in the, 100
Azure Cave of Capri, beauty of the marine excavation called the, 143
Babylon, golden image of Belus at, 285
Bagdad, coins of, 287
Baghilt coal mine, in Wales, drowned, 273
Bahaud, Port, upheaval of the land at, 36
Baku, burning springs of, 91
new mud volcano near, 95
Balearic Islands, troglodytes of, 234
Ballarat, gold mines of, 291
Baltic, changes on the shores of the, 451
Banca, tinstone of, 335
Bann Bridge, subsidence of the land at, 36
Barbary, earthquake of 1755 in, 118
Barigazzo, burning springs near, 90
Bath, thermal springs of, 43
Bats, clusters of, in caverns, 159
Baumann’s Cave, in the Harz Mountains, 136
fatal expedition, 136
Bean shot and feathered shot of copperworks, 321, 322
Bear, grisly, of the Rocky Mountains, 125
bones of huge and formidable extinct species found in caverns, 123,
125
remains of bears found in caves, 213
Beatus, St., his cave on the Lake of Thun, 181
pilgrimages to his cave, 181
Beauheyl, or ‘living streams’ of tin, 337
Beaujonc, scenes of the inundation of the mine of, 274
Beckford, his remarks on the Grotto of Pausilippo and Virgil’s tomb,
242, 243
Beetle, cavern, in the cave of Adelsberg, 163
in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, 167
Belemnites of the Lias and Oolite, 19
size and characteristics of the, 19, 20
Belemnite, restored, 19
Belgium, lead mines of, 367
production of zinc in, 381
coal-fields of, 423
Belus, image of, in the temple of Babylon, 285
Belzoni, his aptitude for his work, 203
Benedict, St., his cave near Subiaco, 180
Berchtesgaden, salt mines of, 436
Bergmann, his experiments with platinum, 382
Berguen, Louis von, discovers the art of cutting diamonds, 478
Beryl, the, 491, 492
Bethlehem, Church and Grotto of the Nativity at, 188
Bewick, Thomas, a coal-hewer in early life, 419
Biban-el-Moluk, the royal tombs of Thebes, 202-204
Biscayana, Veta de la, silver mine of, 304
its great wealth and subsequent abandonment, 304
Billiton, tinstone of, 335
Birds, cave-haunting, 160
Birmah, mud volcanoes of, 93
rock-temples, 184
Bismuth, first mention of, 383
whence furnished, 383
Bituminous substances, 426
Black Country, iron furnaces of the, 351
Black lead. _See_ Plumbago.
Blast furnaces for iron, 352
benefits of the hot blast, 353
Blasting in mines and its dangers, 258-260
Bleyberg-à-Montzen, lead mines of, 367
Blothrus spelæus, of the Cave of Adelsberg, 163
its pursuit of the cavern-beetle, 163
Blowers in coal-mines, 279
Bogs, effects of bursting of, 130
Bohemia, ice-caves of, 197
gold coins of, 287
gold of, 288
silver mines of, 299
their produce, 300
tin mines of, 336
iron mines of, 358
coal-fields of, 423
Bolivia, active volcanoes of, 61
Bolsena, Lake of, formed in the extinct crater of a volcano, 57
Bonifacio, in Corsica, caverns of, 144, 145
Borax, or borate of soda, former chief supply of, 459
obtained as a crude substance in various places, 459
the suffioni of the Florentine lagoons, 460
Boring for minerals, 249
Williams’s account of the emotions of the boring party, 249
mode of operation, 250, 251
prices in the North of England for boring, 250 _note_
implements used for boring, 250
Borneo, diamond mines of, 480
Borrowstoness Colliery, 410
Bosio, Anthony, his discovery of the catacombs, 209
Boston, in America, smelting-houses of the Bay of, 328
Botallack mine, in Cornwall, 317-319
the blind miner of, 319, 320
Bourbon, Isle of, volume of the lava stream of the eruption of 1787, 75
Bracciano, Lake of, formed in the extinct crater of a volcano, 57
Brachiopods of the Silurian seas, 12, 13
Brandstein, ice-cave of, 197
Brazil, ossiferous caves of, 216
iron-ores of, 363
lead mines of, 367
Bressay, islet of, its marine caverns, 142
Breton, Cape, rain-drops of the Carboniferous period preserved at, 29
Brienz, village of, twice buried by a landslip, and twice
reconstructed, 127
Brilliants, 479, 484
Britannia metal, 335
manufacture of, 383
Brittany, traces of depression of the land on the coast of, 37
Brixham, bone-caves of, 227
Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, 332
implements of, found in Switzerland, 332
Brownhill, in North America, bituminous coal-field at, 424
Brûlé, near St. Etienne, burning coalmine at, 283
Brunswick, New, coal-fields of, 424
Buch, Leopold von, his observations as to the rise of the land of
Sweden, 35
Büdöshegy, in Transylvania, sulphur caves of the mountain, 446
visit to the caves, 446
Bufador, or the water-spout of Pope Luna, 146
Buffalo, food of the, 26
Burgbrohl, carbonic acid gas spring of, and quantity it produces, 88
Burra-Burra copper mine, in Australia, 329
Busingen, destruction of the village of, 124
Bustamente, Don José, his draining gallery, 304
Cadiz, effects of the great earthquake of 1755 on, 117, 118
Cadmium, discovery and uses of, 386
Calabria, earthquake of 1783 in, 98
conduct of the peasants in the, 99
movement of the sea during the earthquake, 107
depth of the original shock of 1857, 111
Calamine, zinc produced from, 380
worked in Prussia, Belgium, and England, 381
Calamites nodosus, 393
Caldera, copper mines of, 326
California, upheaval of the land at, 34
discovery of gold in, 288
immense flood of emigration into, 289
gold-washing at, 295
copper mines of, 328
iron discovered in, 362
quicksilver of, 378
Callistus, catacomb of, discovery of the, 210
Calobozo, sounds accompanying earthquakes at, 103
Camborne, copper mines of, 317
Cambrian rocks, antiquity of the, 2, 3, 10
fossils of the, 10, 11
Cambyses, his enormous wealth, 286
Campagna, different kinds of stone of the, 208
Canada, iron pyrites of, 448
Canary Islands, earthquakes of the, 100
maare, or crateriform hollows, of the, 132
Cane, Grotto del, cruel experiments on dogs at, 89
Canstadt, in Wurtemberg, mills kept at work in winter by Artesian
wells, 50
Capac Urcu, the volcanic cone of, blown to pieces, 67
Caraccas, town of, destroyed by an earthquake, 101
Carbonic acid gas springs, 88
those of Germany, 88
Carboniferous period, fishes of the, 13
vegetable and animal remains of the, 14, 18
insects of the, 15
rain-drops of the, preserved at Sydney, in Cape Breton, 29
proof of the density of the atmosphere of the, 29
plants of the, 391
Carburetted hydrogen, springs of, 90-93
Carclaze tin mine, 341
Cardiganshire, lead mines of, 366
Cardona, rock-salt of the valley of, 437
Cardrew mine, in Cornwall, drainage of, 270
Carguairazo, fish disgorged from the eruption of the volcano of, 69, 70
Carinthia, dollinas and jamas of, 130
subterranean water-courses of, 150
fungi of the caves of, 158
iron of, 358
Carlsbad, hot springs of, 43
Carmel, Mount, grotto of the prophet Elijah on, 188
church on, 188
Carniola, dollinas and jamas of, 130
subterranean water-courses of, 150
Carnon, near Falmouth, tin-stream of, 338
Carrara marble, origin of, 4
quarries of, 465
situation of the quarries, 465
the town of, 465
Carron iron-works established, 350
Carson river, silver mines near the, 314
Cass, General, his report on the copper mines of Lake Superior, 328
Cassiterides, or tin islands, Herodotus’ mention of, 333
Cassotis, at Delphi, antiquity of the, 44
Castro, John di, his manufacture of alum at Tolfa, 458
Catacombs of Rome, 205
gallery with tombs, 206
sepulchral inscriptions, 209
Bosio’s discovery of the catacombs, 209
Cavaliere de Rossi’s researches, 210
these of Naples and Syracuse, 210
those of Paris, 210
Catania threatened by the lava-stream from Etna, 72
partly destroyed by the lava, 73
Catorce, Alamos de, silver mine of, 303
Caucasus, mud volcanoes of the, 93, 95
earthquakes of, 100
Cavern-roofs, falling in of, causing landslips, 129
Caves, in general, 133
their various forms, 133
natural tunnels, 133, 134
dimensions of caves, 135
discovery of caves, 135
the various rocks in which they occur, 136
marine caves, 142
volcanic caves, 146
cave rivers, 149
cave vegetation, 156
subterranean animals, 159
caves as places of refuge, 169
hermit caves and rock-temples, 178
subterranean places of worship, 181
ice-caves and wind-holes, 192
rock-tombs and catacombs, 202
caves with bones of extinct animals, 213
subterranean relics of prehistoric man, 221
troglodytes, or cave-dwellers, 231
cave of St. Peter’s Mount, near Maestricht, 470
Celsius, his observations of the rise of the land in Sweden, 35
Cemeteries, rock-hewn, of Egypt, 204, 205
Cenis, Mont, railway tunnel through, 238-240
machines for boring the, 238, 239
mode of proceeding, 238-240
Cervus megaceros, the, of Ireland, 28
Ceylon, rock-temples of, 184
Chalcedony, 497
Chaldæa, silver mines of, 298
Chalk group, star fish of the, 18
Charlemagne, imperial mantle of, 478
Cheshire, salt mines of, 431
Chili, number of active volcanoes of, 61
great earthquake of, in 1835, 79
earthquakes of, generally, 100
effects of the earthquake sea-wave after the shock, 108
silver mines of, 313, 314
copper mines of, 326
lead mines of, 367
China-clay, or kaolin, how formed, 460
mode of treating it, 460
export of, from Cornwall and Devonshire, 461
‘Chinaman’s Hole,’ gold diggings at, 292
Chinese, their use of springs of carburetted hydrogen, 90, 91
at the Australian gold diggings, 291
their discovery of gold near Mount Ararat, 291
Choke-damp, or black-damp, 278
destruction caused by, 281
Choquier, bones of extinct animals found in the cavern of, 214
Christians, tombs of the early, near Rome, 207, 208
Chrome, uses of, 385
discovery of, 386
whence obtained, 386
Chrysoberyl, or oriental chrysolite, 491
Chuquibamba, height of the volcano of, 54
Cinnabar, uses of, in early ages, 370
Cirknitz Lake, the Proteus first discovered in the, 164, 165
Clara, Boveda de Santa, at Almaden, 372
Cleveland district, iron manufacture of the, 354
Clausthal, length of the argentiferous veins of, 247
great adit levels of the mines of, 270
Clodius, Roman prætor, defeated by Spartacus at Vesuvius, 82
Coal and coal mines, 245, 246
age of, 390
plants of the Carboniferous age, 391
extent of the coal seams, 395
vast time required for the formation of the coal-fields, 395
the probable mode of formation, 396
derangements and dislocation of coal beds, 397, 398
separation of a coal-field into small areas by dykes or faults, 399
bituminous and non-bituminous coals, 401
chief coal-producing countries of the world, 402
the coal-fields of Great Britain, 402-422
the hewers and their work, 415, 418
other workmen, below and above the pit, 416, 417
early knowledge of coal, 419
its use prohibited by Edward I. in London, 419
the trade in coal in the middle of the seventeenth century, 420
increase in the demand and supply, 420
the question of the duration of our coal-fields, 420
coal-fields of foreign countries, 422-425
Coal-hewers of the North of England, 414
at work, 415
how they are paid, 416
Coalbrookdale, iron manufacture in, 349
Coal-cutting machines, 415
Cobalt, name of, 384
uses of, and whence obtained, 384
Coca, stimulating properties of, 311
Cochin China, rock-temples of, 184
Coins, the oldest known gold, 287
Collieries, casualties in, 245
drainage of the water in, 272
Colossochelys Atlas, gigantic proportions of the, 24
Columbia, mud volcanoes of, 93
Columbia, British, gold-fields of, 293
coal-fields of, 424
Consolidated Mines in Cornwall, amount of sinking in the, 251
Conto, Monte, landslip of the, 127
Copal-tree, resin at the foot of the, 451
Copiapo, in Chili, discovery of silver at, 248
silver mines of, 313
Copper, name and antiquity of, 315
how found, 315
its uses and compounds, 315
mines of Cornwall, 316, 317
ores and process of smelting, 320, 321
mines of Sweden, Germany, and Russia, 322-326
those of America, 326-329
and of Australia, 329
history of some of our copper mines, 329
lodes of Cornwall, 337
Copperopolis, copper mines of, 328
Coquimbo, copper mines of, 326
Corals, primeval, 16
Corneale, Cave of, colossal stalagmites of the, 140
Cornwall, mines of, 316
tin mines of, 336
persons employed in them, 343
zinc produced in, 382
China-clay of, 460, 461
Corsica, marine caves of, 145
Cort, Mr., his improvements in iron manufacture, 350
Corundum, 489
Cosiguina, phenomena of an eruption of, 65, 67
destruction caused by the eruption of 1835, 67
Cosmo III., Grand Duke of Tuscany, burns a diamond, 479
Cotopaxi, shape of, 53
enormous stones hurled by an eruption of, 66
phenomena of the eruption of 1803, 69
noises heard 109 miles off during an eruption of, 104
Cretaceous period, fossils of the, 19, 22, 23
causes of landslips in the, 129
Crete, labyrinth of, 174, 175
consecrated caves and grottoes to Zeus in, 187
Crimea, mud volcanoes of the, 93
Crinnis Copper Mine, Old, abandoned but reworked, 329, 330
Crinoids, or sea-lilies, fossil, 17
Crœsus, his enormous wealth, 286
Crookes, Mr., his discovery of thallium, 388
Crowe, Mr., of Hammerfest, forms a copper-mining company in Norway, 324
Crustaceans of the Silurian seas, 11, 12
cavern, 163, 167
Cuba, copper mines of, 329
iron ores of, 363
Cumana, destruction of the town of, by an earthquake, 102
sounds accompanying the shocks, 103
Cuthbert, St., his cave on the Coast of Northumberland, 180
account of him, 180
‘beads of St. Cuthbert,’ 180
Curtis, Thomas, his difficult work in the Huel Wherry tin mine, 339,
340
Cyclops, troglodytic caverns of the, at the base of Mount Etna, 232
Cyrus, enormous treasures accumulated by, 286
Cyprus, ancient silver mines of, 298
Cyzicus, the oldest known specimen of a gold coin of, 287
Dahra, French atrocities at the caves of the, 176
Dalecarlia, iron ores of, 360
Dalmatia, dollinas and jamas of, 130
subterranean water-courses of, 150
Dalton-le-Dale, drainage of the coal-mine of, 272
Dambool, rock-temple of, 184
Dammara australis, masses of resin at the base of the trunk of the, 451
Dana, Professor, his views respecting volcanoes, 79
Dannemora, iron-works of, 360
Dantzig, amber found near, 449
Darien, platinum discovered at, 382
Darius Hystaspis, his enormous wealth, 286
Davy, Sir Humphry, his safety-lamp, 280
his discovery of aluminium and magnesium, 387
and of sodium, 388
Delgada, Punta, in the Island of San Miguel, 147
Delphi, subterranean hollow under the tripod of the priestess of, 187
Demidoff, Prince, his copper mines, 326
his iron mountain in the Oural, 357, 358
Denbighshire, lead mines of, 366
Derbyshire, lead mines of, 366
Denmark, enormous antiquity of the peat mosses of, 221
remnants of a former vegetation and articles of human workmanship
found in the mosses of, 222
the ‘shell-mounds’ of, 222
Depressions, subterranean, 34, 36
submarine forests in various places, 36
evidences of depression, 36, 37
probable causes of, 38
Derbyshire spar, 469
Devon Great Consols Mines, success of the copper mines of, 330
Devonian period, fishes of the, 13
Devonshire, tin mines of, 336
miners and wages of, 343
china-clay of, 460, 461
Diablerets, falls of the, 121
escape of a peasant from his living tomb in the, 122
causes of the phenomenon, 123
Diamond, the, 477
diamond-cutting, 478
rose diamonds and brilliants, 479
destroyed by heat, 479
stones of India and Brazil, 480
the Russian diamond, and the Pitt or Regent diamond, 485
that of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, 485
the Koh-i-Noor, 486
diamonds and diamond-dust used for industrial purposes, 489
Dinornis, size of the, 28
Professor Owen’s resuscitation of the, 217
Dinotherium, size and characteristics of the, 23
Diodorus Siculus, his account of the tin trade of Britain, 333
Divining rod, the, 248
how used, 249
Dolcoath tin mine, 337
Dolores, mine of, 303
Domingos, San, in Portugal, Roman mines of, 448
now worked by the Baron of Pommorão, 448
account of the works, 448
Donati, Vitaliano, his account of the fall of a mountain near
Sallenches, 122
Doncaster, gigantic fungus in a tunnel near, 158
Donegal, bursting of bogs in, 131
Droitwich, salt-works of, 432
Drontheim, or Tronyem, city of, 324
Dudley, Lord, establishes iron-works near Stourbridge, 349
Dufan, in Arabia, sulphur of the, 446
Dukinfield colliery, depth of, 247
Dunfermline, monastery of, obtains a licence to dig coals, 419
Durham, coal-fields of, 403, 407
Dyeing, use of tin in the processes of, 335
Earthquakes, preceding volcanic eruptions, 65
volcanoes considered as the safety-valves of, 78, 79
but sometimes accompany volcanic eruption, 79
extent of misery caused by, 97-99
the horrors of, increased by man, 99
the progress of civilisation retarded by earthquakes, 99, 100
regions to which they are confined, 100
duration of the shocks, 101
indications of a coming earthquake, 102
sounds accompanying earthquakes, 103
sounds unaccompanied by movement of the earth, 104
vertical or undulatory motion of shocks, 104
extent and force of the seismic wave motion, 105, 106
movements of the sea in earthquakes, 106, 107, 117
extent of the wave motion, 109
changes caused by earthquakes in the configuration of the soil, 109,
110
causes of earthquakes, 111
probable depth of the focus, 111, 112
opinions of Sir C. Lyell and Mr. Poulett Scrope, 112
effects of an earthquake on man and animals, 112, 113
account of the great earthquake of Lisbon, 114
Egg, Isle of, atrocities of the Macleods in the cave of the, 171
Egypt, rock-temples of, 184
tombs of the kings in Thebes, 202-204
compared to an iron furnace, 347
quarries of, 474, 475
Ehrenberg, his discovery of the animated dust of the Harmattan, 156
Eifel, volcanic district of the, 58
carbonic acid gas springs of the, 88
crateriform hollows, or maare, in the, 131
Eileithyia, rock-hewn cemeteries of, 205
Eimeo, hole in the island of, 133
tradition respecting this hole, 133
Elba, iron industry of, 362
Elephanta, rock-temples of, 183
Elevations of the land produced by earthquakes, 111
Elfdal, porphyry of, 467
Ellora, rock-temples of, 183
Emerald, or beryl, 491, 492
Emery, whence obtained, 463
total production of, 463
Emmanuel, St., church of, in Abyssinia, 187
Ems, hot springs of, 43
Enamel, materials used for, 335
Encrinites lily, called ‘St. Cuthbert’s beads,’ 181
Encrinus liliiformis, fossil, 17, 18
Engihoul, human remains in the cavern of, 226
Dr. Schmerling’s explorations, 226
Sir C. Lyell’s, 227
Engis, human bones discovered in the cavern of, 226
Engines, stationary, used in mines, 263
England, subsidence of the land on the west and east coasts of, 36, 37
effects of a violent earthquake in, 100
shocks felt in, at various times, 100, 101
effects of the great earthquake of 1755 in, 118
the extinct hyena of, found in caves, 214
ossiferous caves in, 227
flint implements found in, 231
main causes of the prosperity of, 245
copper mines of, 316
manufacture of iron in, 349
lead mines of, 365, 366
zinc produced in, 381, 382
vast deposits of coal of, 402, 403
and their convenient distribution, 403
extent of the Great Central Coal-field, 406
quarries of, 464
Eozoon canadense, the only fossil found in the Laurentian rocks, 10
its extreme antiquity, 10
Epomeo, volcano of, its long periods of rest, 58
Erasinos, in Greece, antiquity of the spring of, 44
Ernst August Stollen, in the Harz, 271
Erzberg, or iron mountain, in Styria, 358
works at, and produce of, 359
Esquimaux, their iron implements, 347
Estrella do Sul, or Star of the South, diamond, 487
Etna, Mount, M. Houel’s exploration of the crater of, 55
streams of lava in the eruption of 1669, 70
numbers of parasitic cones on the flanks of, 71
rate of progress of the lava-stream of 1699, 72
retention of heat in the lava-stream of 1832, 73
the Fossa della Palomba on, 147
ice-caves of, 198
troglodytic caverns of the Cyclops at the base of, 232
Euripides, his triumph, 476
Europe, volcanoes of, 61
Eurypterids, of the Silurian seas, 12
Fahlun, horses used in the copper mines of, 262
narrow escape in the mine, 264
copper-mine of, 322
ore of the mine, 323
the preserved body found in, 323
Ferdinand, Archduke, his visit to the Cave of Magdalena, 166
Fez, effects of the earthquake of 1755 at, 118
Fingal’s Cave, Sir W. Scott’s description of, 143
Fino, Don Andrea del, narrative of, in an earthquake, 99
Fire, its eternal strife with water, 1, 2
the subterranean forces, 7
Fire-damp, or carburetted hydrogen, 278
fatal explosions caused by, 281
Fish disgorged by volcanoes from caverns, 69
blind cavern, of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, 168
of the Upper Silurian group, 13
destruction of vast numbers of, by volcanic eruption, 15, 16
Flintshire, lead mines of, 366
Flores, Padre, his silver mine of ‘La Bolsa de Dios Padre,’ 304
Florins, or fiorini, origin of, 287
Fontaine-sans-fond, the, near Sable, 149
Footprints of former ages, preservation of, 28, 29
Forests, submarine, in various places, 36
Fossils, chronological importance of, to the geologist, 5, 6, 8
extinction of species, 9, 10, 14
those of the oldest and later periods, 10-29
Fountains, artificial, principle on which they are constructed, 42
of lava, 71, 72
of marine caverns, 146
Foxdale lead mine, in the Isle of Man, 366
Frais Puits, phenomenon of the, 150
France, effects of the great earthquake of 1755 in, 118
tin mines of, 336
consumption of coal in, 423
Frauenmauer Mountain in Upper Styria, ice-cave of the, 196, 197
Fredonia, town of, lit by springs of carburetted hydrogen, 90
Freiberg, drainage of the mines of, 270
French, their atrocities in the Cave of Longara, 170
their cruelty in Algeria, 176
Frio, Serro do, diamonds of the, 480
Fuegians, ‘shell mounds’ of the, 222
Fumaroles or steam-jets of volcanoes, 63
those of Jorullo of 1759 seen in 1803, 74
Fungi, subterranean, 157
Scopoli’s description of, 157
gigantic one at Doncaster, 158
the artificial mushroom-beds near Paris, 158
Furnaces, reverberatory, 321
Gallicia, salt mines of, 436
Ganoid fishes of the Upper Silurian group, 13
Garnet, the, 494
Garnock river bursts into a colliery, 276
Gas-springs, 88
Gellivara, in Swedish Lapland, mounds of magnetic iron-ore at, 360
Gems, superstitious power of, 477
Geological revolutions, influence of, on the earth-rind, 1
tabular geological profile, 3
periods of geological formations, 5
the same mineral substances in the oldest and newest formations, 5
guidance of the geologist in ascertaining the periods of the
formations, 5
a continuous development to more highly organised species, 6
Georges, St., ice-cave of, 192
entrance to the glacière of, 201
Georg Stollen, great adit levels of the, in the Harz, 270
Germain, St., artificial mushroom-beds at, 158
Germany, effects of the great earthquake of 1755 in, 118
copper mines of, 325
lead mines of North Germany, 365
coal-fields of, 422
consumption of coal in, 423
quarries of, 464
Gibraltar, Rock of, monkeys of the, 24
Girgenti, town and trade of, 442
the sulphur mines of, 442
Glass, stained, colours of, how formed, 335
Glenmalure, lead mines of, 366
Glyptodon, size and characteristics of the, 25
Goaves, or old workings in coal mines, fire-damp in, 279
Goeppert, Professor, his observations on the extinct amber-tree, 451
Goethe, his remarks on the great Lisbon earthquake, 119
Goffin, Hubert, his heroism, 275
his future career, 276
Gold, antiquity of man’s knowledge of, 285
the story of the Golden Fleece, 285
statues of gold in ancient temples, 285
quantities of gold possessed by ancient monarchs, 286
earliest use of the metal, 287
auriferous land of the Iberian peninsula, 288
California and Australia, 288, 289
British Columbia and other places, 293
localities in which gold is deposited, 293, 294
Goldau, Vale of, devastated by a landslip, 123
destruction of the village of, 124
Golden Fleece, story of the, 285
Golubinas, or pigeon-holes, in Dalmatia and Carniola, 130
Goniatites of the Carboniferous period, 18
extinction of the, 18
Good Hope, Cape of, upheaval of the land at the, 34
Goroblagodat, Kuschwa, platinum of, 382
Gortyna, in Crete, labyrinth of, 174, 175
Gosforth Colliery, 409
Gothard, Mount St., proposed tunnel through, 241
Gower, bone-cave of, 228
Grâce-Dieu, glacière of, 192
stalagmites of ice in the, 193, 194
Graham’s Island, volcanic formation of, 59
its disappearance, 59
Granada, New, extent of the wave-motion of an earthquake at, 105
Granada, in Spain, destruction of the Moors of, 173
Graphite. _See_ Plumbago.
Grasshopper, wing of, of the Carboniferous period, 15
Greece, subterranean water-courses of, 150
consecrated caves and grottoes of, 187
Greenhouses kept warm by water from Artesian wells, 50
Greenland, evidence of subsidence of the land at, 37
Grenelle, heat of the Artesian well of, at various depths, 32, 49
Grenier, Mount, landslip of, 127
Grosmont, iron manufacture of, 355
Guacharo, the Cueva del, 160, 161
Guacharo, a troglodytic bird, 160, 161
wholesale slaughter of, by the Indians, 161, 162
where found, 160, 162
Gualgayoc, the ventanillas of, 133
Gualgayoc, Cerro de San Fernando de, silver mines of, 309, 311
Guanaxuato, subterranean noises heard at, without earthquake, 104
Guanaxuato, rise of the town of, 302
Guatemala, volcanoes near the town of, 61
Guadiana, engulfment of the river, 150
Gunpowder, amount of, used in blasting in mines, 260
Gwennap, copper mines of, 317
Gypsum, origin of, 4
Haggar Silsilis, in Egypt, quarries of, 475
Haiti, upheaval of the land at, 34
Hann, Professor, a coal-hewer in early life, 419
Hanover, iron manufacture of, 357
Harmattan, animated dust of the, 156
Hartlepool, export of coal from, 413
Hartley Colliery, accident in the, 253
Harz Mountains, subterranean flora of the, 158
ice-caves of the, 197
great adit levels of the mines in the, 270
Haussmann, Professor, his visit to the Norwegian copper mine of Röraas,
324
Hawaii, effect of the eruption of Mauna Loa in 1840, 76
effects of an earthquake sea-wave at, 109
Heat, subterranean, 31
zone of invariable temperature, 31, 32
increasing temperature at a greater depth, 32
rate of increase, 32
proof everywhere of a subterranean source of heat, 32
Heaton, accident at the colliery of, 273
Herculaneum, destruction of the town of, 81-85
the mud-stream which caused the destruction, 85
discovery of the buried town, 86
Hermits, caves of, 178
Hermits, numbers of, in rock-caves and huts in the East, 179
Herodotus, his mention of the Cassiterides, 333
Hetton Colliery, ventilation of the, 278
Hiera, volcanic island of, 60
Hilda, St., colliery and galleries of, 410
Himmelfürst, in Saxony, silver-fields of, 299
Hindostan, coal-fields of, 424
Hoffmann, G. F., his description of the subterranean flora of the Harz
Mountains, 158
Holland, earthquakes felt in, 101
effects of the great earthquake of 1755 in, 118
Homer, tin ornaments mentioned by, 332
Honduras, coal-fields of, 424
Horses used in mines, 262
Hot-springs in the frozen lands as well as in the tropics, 33
as a vent of subterranean heat, 33
Houel, M., his dangerous exploration of the crater of Mount Etna, 55
Howitt, William, his description of shipping coal on the Tyne, 412
Huancayo, the Franciscan monk of, 313
Huatulco, fountains of marine caverns in, 146
Huel Wherry, rise and fall of the tin-mine of, 339
Humboldt, M., his visit to the volcano of Rucu-Pinchincha, 55
his treatise on subterranean fungi, 158
Huancavelica, quicksilver mine of, 378
Hungary, ice-caves of, 197
salt mines of, 436
Hutton, Dr., a coal-hewer in early life, 419
Hydrostatic laws regarding the flow of springs, 40, 41
Hyena, remains of, found in caves, 213,214
Ibarra, supposed causes of a fever at, 70
Iberian peninsula, auriferous land of, 288
Ice, effect of the meeting of a lava-stream with, 74
Ice-caves and their phenomena, 193-201
Iceland, volcanic formation of, 4
Iceland, geysirs of, 45-48
Bunsen’s theory of the causes of the geysirs of, 47, 48
volcanoes of, 61
mud-volcanoes of, 93
ice-caves of, 198
Ichthyosaurus communis, characteristics and size of the, 20, 21
where found, 22
Idria, fungi of the mines of, 158
quicksilver mines of, 373-378
Iktis, island of, mentioned by Diodorus Siculus, 333
Iguanodon, size and characteristics of the, 22
Ilezk, rock-salt deposit of, 438
Illinois, coal-fields of, 424
India, mud-volcanoes of, 93
rock-temples of, 181
Indiana, coal-fields of, 424
Indies, West, earthquakes of, 100, 101
Insects enclosed in amber, 452-455
Ipsamboul, rock-temple of, 184
Warburton’s description of it, 184-186
Ireland, effects of the great earthquake of 1755 in, 118
coal-fields of, 404
why they are so little worked, 404
Iron, its value, 345
its wide diffusion, 345
meteoric iron, 347
ancient knowledge of, 347
extension of its uses in modern times, 348
British iron production, 348
smelting, 349
the hot blast, 353
the Cleveland district and the trade of Middlesborough, 364
amount and value of the British iron trade, 355
other statistics of the trade, 356
production of foreign countries, 357-363
Irtysch, copper and coal near the, 326
Isalco, formation of the volcano of, 59
in a constant state of eruption, 62
Iscalonga, in Basilicata, cave-dwellings of, 234
Iserlohn, in Westphalia, discovery of a cavern at, 135
Ispica, Val d’, cave-dwellings in the, 232
Istria, subterranean water-courses of, 150
Italy, mud-volcanoes of, 93
earthquakes of, 100
effects of the earthquake of 1755 in, 118
maare, or crateriform hollows, of, 132
cave-dwellings of Southern, 234
iron industry of, 362
Iwogasima, or Sulphur Island, of Japan, 444
Japan, sulphur of, 444
Java, number of active volcanoes of, 61
the ‘Valley of Death,’ or Poison Valley, of, 89
mud-volcanoes of, 93
maare, or crateriform hollows, of, 132
sulphur of, 445, 446
Jesuits, their intrigues during the earthquake at Lisbon, 116
Jet, formation of, 429
found at Whitby, 429
manufacture of jet ornaments, 430
John the Evangelist, St., his cave in the Isle of Patmos, 188
the cave converted into a chapel, 188
Jorullo, formation of the volcano of, 58
length of time the heat was retained in the lava-stream of 1759, 74
Judd, Dr., his dangerous visit to the crater of Kilauea, 56
Jura Mountains, cauldron-shaped depressions in the, 130
Kab, El, in Upper Egypt, rock-hewn cemeteries of, 205
Kamtschatka, energy of the volcanoes of, 61
earthquakes in, in 1737, 79
Kan, rock-hewn cemeteries of, 205
Kanara, rock-temples of, 181-183
Kaolin, or china-clay, how formed, and where, 460-462
Karli, rock-temples of, 183
Kea, Mount, tranquillity of the eruption of, in 1843, 76
Kentucky, coal-fields of, 424
Kertsch, mud-volcanoes near, 93
Kilauea, the lava lakes of, 64
length of the lava-stream in the eruption of 1840, 70
amount of lava thrown out by the eruption of 1840, 76
Killingworth Colliery, 410
Kingston, in Jamaica, effects of an earthquake sea-wave at, 107
Kinsale, effect of an earthquake sea-wave in the harbour of, 118
Kirghise hordes, their salt-works, 438
Kirkdale, Dr. Buckland’s account of the ossiferous cave of, 214, 215
Klaproth, his discovery of uranium, 385
works at Joachimsthal, 385
his discovery of rutile, or titanium, 386
Klîutschewskaja Skopa, eruption of the volcano of, 79
Koh-i-Noor, or Mountain of Light, diamond and its history, 486
Kohl, uses of, 383
Kongsberg, in Norway, silver mines of, 299
nuggets found at, 299
Kopperberg, iron manufacture of, 360
Kötlingia, effects of the eruption of, in 1758, 69
Kremnitz, discovery of the gold mines of, 248
Krisuvick, in Iceland, solfatara of, 444
Kupferschiefer, or copper-slate, of Thuringia, fossils of the, 15
Labuan, coal-fields of, 424
Lacustrine dwellings of Switzerland, 315
discovery of the, 223
ancient iron weapons found in the, 347
Laibach, Upper, river traversing the caves of, 150
Lalibala, rock-churches of, 186
town of, and country round, 187
Landslips, effects of earthquakes in producing, 110
that of Putley, in Hertfordshire, 110
igneous and aqueous causes of landslips, 121
cases of landslips, 121-128
caused by the falling in of cavern-roofs, 129
Lanuto volcano, lake formed in the extinct crater of the, 57
Lapis lazuli, 494
Lapland, auriferous veins in, 293
Laureacum, on the Danube, Roman iron manufactures at, 358
Laurentian rocks, 2, 3
their thickness, 2
the only fossil found in the, 10
Laurium, ancient silver mines of, 298
amount of lead in the scoriæ of the ancient silver mines of, 367
Lava, formation of fiery streams of, during volcanic eruptions, 70
phenomena attending the flow of a lava-stream, 72
effect of the meeting of a lava-stream with the sea, 73
and with ice, 74
vast dimensions of lava-streams, 74-76
waste of desolation of lava-fields, 77
progress of lava-streams, 77
Laxey lead mine, in the Isle of Man, 366
Lead, mine of, in Cardiganshire, section of a, 252
its property and uses, 364
its antiquity, 364
the mines of, in Europe, 365
production of, in foreign countries, 366-368
preparation of the ores, 368
Pattinson’s process, 368
Leadhills, in Lanarkshire, lead mines of, 366
Lebadeia, in Bœotia, cave of Trophonios near, 187
Lepidodendron elegans, 392
Leptodirus Hochenwartii, of the Cave of Adelsberg, 163
Levant, Cornish copper mine of, 319
Levels, in mining, 251
extent of the works in some cases, 251
drainage by adit levels, 269, 270
Lias, fossils of the, 19
Liège, depth of the coal mines of, 247
accident in a colliery at, 263
Life, organic, progress of, on earth, 28, 29
everywhere present on the earth, 156
Lignite, or wood-coal, 401
Lima, frequency of earthquakes at, 105
displacement of stones of obelisks by earthquake shocks, 105
effects of the earthquake sea-wave of 1746, 108
indifference of the inhabitants of, to earthquakes, 113
Limestone, magnesian, or Permian group, animal remains of the, 15
Limestone caves, 136
causes of their excavation, 136
stalactites and stalagmites, 139, 140
origin and slow formation of limestone, 141
Lisbon, great earthquake of, 114
effect of the shock, 114
fire and thieves in the city, 115, 116
total loss of life from all causes, 116
effects of this earthquake in various parts of the world, 117-119
Little Bounds, copper mine of, 319
Livres, St., ice-caves of, 192
lower glacière of, 193
upper glacière of, 195
ice-streams of the upper glacière, 195, 196
Lizards, oldest known fossils of, 14, 15
the enormous species of the Mesozoic ocean, 20, 21
Llandegui, slate quarries of, 469, 470
Locke, his remark respecting iron, 345
Lomond, Loch, sea-shells found on the banks of, 34
effects of the great earthquake of 1755 in, 118
London shaken by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, 118
subterranean wonders of, 237, 238
Long, Major, his report on the copper mines of Lake Superior, 328
Longara, Cave of, massacre by the French in the, 170
Lorca, sulphur mine of, 444
Lowerz, destruction of the village of, by a landslip, 124
Luganure, lead mines of, 366
Luna, Pope, waterspout of, 146
Lycopolis, rock-hewn cemeteries of, 205
Maare, or crateriform hollows, of the Eifel, 131
in other places, 132
Macaluba, mud volcano of, 94
known to the ancients, 94
Madana, in Santa Cruz, height of the volcano of, 54
Madeira, volcanic formation of, 4
Madfuneh, rock-hewn cemeteries of, 205
Magdalena Grotto, or ‘Black Grotto,’ Protei of the, 165, 166
visit of the Archduke Ferdinand to the, 166
Magnesium, discovery and uses of, 387
Magnetic mountain in Russia, 367
Maina, marble of, 467
Malacca, tinstone of, 335
Malaga, effects of the earthquake of 1755 at, 118
Malmesbury, section of the coal-field south of, 398
Malta, troglodytes of, 234
Malwah, rock-temples of, 184
Mammalia, geological period of its prominence in life, 23
Mammoth, or primitive elephant, size and characteristics of the, 26
Professor Owen’s skeleton of the, 217
Gray’s Inn Lane an ancient hunting-ground for, 231
Mammoth Cave, in Kentucky, vast dimensions of the, 135, 138
Professor Silliman on the, 139
clusters of bats in the, 159
animals of the, 167
Man, Isle of, lead mines of, 366
zinc produced in, 382
Man, prehistoric, subterranean relics of, in Denmark, 221
in Switzerland, 223
age of human relics in caves, 225
Manchester Coal-field, 403
Manganese, ores of, 386
Mansfeldt, in Prussia, silver and copper mines of, 325
Marble of Derbyshire and Devonshire, 465
that of Carrara, 4, 465
that of Pentelikon and Parian, 466
Rosso antico and Verde antico, 467
Marennes, upheaval of the chalk cliffs at, 36
Marpena, Mount, in Paros, marble of, 466
Marquette, American town of, its iron industry, 362
Marshall, James, his discovery of gold in California, 288
his subsequent life, 289
Marsupites ornatus, fossil, 18
Martinique, Island of, destructive earthquake in the, 101
Maryland, copper mines of, 328
Masaya, volcanoes of, constant eruption of the, 63
Massachusetts, copper mines of, 328
Master-borers in the North of England, 250
their charges per fathom, 250
Mastodon, where the fossils of, are mostly found, 27
size and characteristics of the, 27
Matlock, thermal springs of, 43
Mauna Loa, in Hawaii, shape of the volcano of, 53, 54
Dr. Judd’s visit to, 56
growth of ferns on, 63
the lava-lakes of, 64
length of the lava-stream of an eruption of, 70
parasitic cones of, 71
volume of the lava-stream of 1840, 75
Maunch Chunk (or Bear Mountain), in Pennsylvania, enormous coal-field
of, 425
Mauritius, fountains of marine caverns in, 146
Mediterranean Sea, upheaval of the land on the shores of the, 34
marine caverns of the coasts of the, 144
Medellin, the proprietor of the mine of Dolores, 303
Meerfeld, crateriform hollow and lake of, 132
Megatherium, size and characteristics of the, 24, 25
Melidoni, cave of, Turkish massacre in the, 175
Mequinez, effects of the earthquake of 1755 at, 118
Mercado, Cerro del, of Mexico, 363
Mercury, its properties and uses, 370, 371
known to the Greeks and Romans, 370
mines of Almaden, 371
those of Idria, 373
diseases to which the miners are liable, 373
mines of America, 378
Metallic veins, how generally found in mines, 246
how ores collected or precipitated in, 247
Metamorphic rocks, origin of, 4, 5
Meteoric iron, 347
the mass found at Otumpa, 347 _note_
Mettler, Bläsi, story of the escape of him and his wife, 124
Mettler, Sebastian Meinhardt, his escape from destruction, 125
Meuse, ossiferous caverns of the valley of the, 226
Mexico, silver mines of, 300-308
iron ores of, 363
Michael’s Mount, St., in Cornwall, 333
Middlesborough, its rapid rise, 354
its iron manufacture, 355
Miguel, Island of, the Punta Delgada of the, 147
Milagros, his silver mine in San Luis de Potosi, 308
Miller, Hugh, his account of a coal forest, 393
Milo, Island of, mud volcanoes of, 98
sulphur caves of the island of, 446
Mina Grande, lead mine of, 367
Minardo, Monte, near Bronte, volcanic formation of, 67
height of, 71
Mines, in general, 244
labours and perils of the miner, 244, 245
casualties in mines, 245
life in a mine, 245, 246
length and depth of mines, 247
discoveries of lodes, 248
the divining-rod, 248
boring, 249
divisions in coal mines, 255
long-wall working, 257
general view of mining operations, 257
tools employed in Cornwall, 258
mode of blasting, 258
heroism of miners, 259, 274
mode of loosening hard stones, 260, 261
tramways underground, and the conveyance of minerals, 261, 262
methods of descending, 263-266
man-engines for ascending or descending, 267
timbering and draining, 268-272
inundation, or drowning of mines, 273
evolution of foul gases, 276, 277
ventilation, 277
choke-damp, fire-damp, and blowers, 278, 279
the safety-lamp, 280
burning mines, 283
habits of the Mexican miners, 302
Minnesota mine, copper of, 327, 328
enormous nugget of copper found near, 328
Miocene period, animals of the, 23
Mirrors of silver among the Romans, 298
substance used for making, 335
Mississippi, ancient mounds in the valley of the, 224
Missouri, ‘iron-mountains’ of, 362
Moa, the great extinct bird of New Zealand, 216, 217
the cave of the Moa, 219
Moeris, Lake, hermits near the, 179
Molinos of the silver mines of Mexico, 306
Molybdenum, discovery and uses of, 387
Monarchs, vast treasures of, in ancient times, 286
Monkeys, fossil, of South America, characteristics of the, 24
small species of, on the Rock of Gibraltar, 24
Monk Wearmouth Colliery, 408
Montaño, Francisco, his descent into the crater of Popocatepetl, 446
Monte, Real del, silver mines of, 304
present yield of, 305
Monte Video, upheaval of the land at, 34
Montgomeryshire, lead mines of, 366
Montmartre, gypsum and alabaster of, 468
Montrouge, artificial mushroom-beds at, 158
Moors of Granada, destruction of, by Philip II. of Spain, 173
Moran, silver mines of, 304
Morocco, earthquakes of, 100
effects of the earthquake of 1755 at, 118
Morran, in Algeria, Artesian well in the desert of, 51
Mososaurus, size and characteristics of the, 23
skull of the, found, 473, 474
Moulin de la Roche, artificial mushroom-beds at, 158
Mountain Ash, in South Wales, coal workings of the New Navigation Pit
at, 406
Mud-streams caused by volcanic eruptions, 69
destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii by, 85
those of Obu, 95
Mud-volcanoes, 93-96
in various places, 93-95
origin of, 95, 96
Murchison, Sir Roderick, his surmises respecting gold in Australia, 289
Mürtschenstock, tunnel in the, 134
Mushrooms, subterranean, 157
the artificial mushroom-beds near Paris, 158
Musk-ox, food of the, 26
Mylodon, size and characteristics of the, 24, 25
Professor Owen’s skeleton of the, 217
Naples, earthquake in, in 1857, 98
catacombs of, 210
Nassau, iron manufacture of, 357
Nativity, grotto of the, at Bethlehem, 188
church of the, 188
Nauheim, carbonic acid gas spring of, 88
Naxos, consecrated caves to Dionysos in, 187
Naxos, emery of the island of, 463
Neilson, Mr., his discovery of the hot blast for iron furnaces, 353
Nemi, Lake of, the crateriform hollow forming the, 132
Nent Force Level, great drain of, 270
Nertschinsk, in Transbaikalia, copper mines of, 326
lead mines of, 367
Nettuno, Antro di, in Sardinia, 144
Nettuno, Grotta di, in Sicily, 145
Neusalzwerk, temperature of the well of, at various depths, 32
Nevada, state of silver mines of the, 314
Newcastle, coal-fields of, 407
their extent, 408
the various seams of coal, 408
human activity of the coal-fields, 411, 412
appearance of the town, 413
first licence to dig coals given to the town, 419
Newfoundland, gradual upheaval of the land of, 36
fountains of marine caverns in, 146
Niagara, carburetted hydrogen evolved near the falls of, 93
Nicaragua, Lake of, volcanoes near the, 61
Nicaragua, mud-volcanoes of, 93
earthquakes of, 100
Nicholas, St., rock-chapel of, in Crete, 189
legend of, 190
Nickel, name of, 384
uses of, and whence obtained, 384
Nicolas d’Aliermont, St., aquiferous layers or beds of stone at, 40
Noises, subterranean, accompanying earthquakes, 103
Normandy, traces of depression of the land on the coast of, 37
Norr Lake, emptied by a landslip, 130
Northumberland, coal-fields of, 403
Northwich, salt mines of, 431
Norway, copper mines of, 324
Noss, islet of, its marine caves, 142
Notornis, Professor Owen’s reconstruction of the, 217
Nuovo, Monte, in the Bay of Baiæ, volcanic formation of the, 67
Oberstein, rock-chapel of, 190
legend of the chapel, 190, 191
Obregon works the silver mine of Guanaxuato, 301, 302
his title and urbanity of character, 302
Obu, eruption of the, 95
mud-streams of, 95
Oche, Dent d’, landslip of the, 127
Oesterby, iron-works of, 360
Ohio, ancient mounds in the valley of the, 224
‘Oil harvest’ of Caripe, 161
Olm, or Proteus, discovery of the, 164, 165
various places in which it has been found, 166
description of the animal, 165-167
Olonne, Island of, upheaval of the land round the, 36
Onyx, the, 497
Ontanagon district, in America, ancient copper mines, 327
Oolite rocks, their thickness, 2
Oolitic period, fossils of the, 19, 22
Opal, precious, 495
mines of, in Hungary, 495
Ophir, seat of, 287
Ores, how generally found in mines, 246
how they have been collected or precipitated, 247
‘Orkneyman’s Harbour, The,’ the marine cavern so called, 143
Oroomiah, Lake, in Persia, salt of the hills and plains of, 437
Orthoceratites of the primitive seas, 18
extinction of the, 18
Oscillatory movements of the earth, 34-37
probable causes of, 38
Otero, a shopkeeper, joins in working the mine of Guanaxuato, 302
Owen, Professor, his memoir and skeleton of the great Moa of New
Zealand, 217
Owls, cave-haunting, 160
Pachuca, silver mines of, 304
Pachyderms, remains of large extinct, 26, 27
Palæotheriums, size and characteristics of, 23
Palæopteryx, Professor Owen’s reconstruction of the, 217
Palladium, discovery and uses of, 388
Palestine, Southern, hermits in, 179
Palomba, Fossa della, on Etna, 147
Papalardo, Baron, his efforts to divert the lava-stream from Catania,
72, 73
Parian marble, or Lychnites, 466
Paris, artificial mushroom-beds near, 168
catacombs of, 210, 211
old cemeteries of, 211
plaster of, 468
Parsees, their worship of fire, 91
their legend of the devil, 91
their occupation and abandonment of Baku, 92
Pasco, Cerro di, silver mines of, 309
Pasco, mining town of, 310
mines of, 310, 311
Patmos, cave and church of St. John the Evangelist, 188
Paul, St., of Thebes, the first hermit, his cave, 178
Pausilippo, Grotto of, 241
origin of the, 242
Paviland, ossiferous caves of, 215
Peak, in the Island of Timor, blown up and replaced by a cavity, 68
Pecopteris adiantoides, 391
Peniscola, fountains of marine caverns in, 146
Pennsylvania, copper mines of, 328
coal-fields of, 425
petroleum springs of, 427
Pentacrinus briareus, fossil, 17, 18
Pentelikon, or Mount Penteles, marble of, 466
Pepandajan, in Java, the volcanic cone of, blown to pieces, 67
Percy, Dr. John, his discovery of aluminium-bronze, 387
Perdix, Bartholomew, his manufacture of alum, 458
Permian period, fishes of the, 13
fossils of the, 15
Peroxide of tin, or tinstone, 335
richest deposits of, 335
Perticara di Talamella in Italy, sulphur mines of, 444
Peru, active volcanoes of, 61
earthquakes of, 100
indifference of man in, to earthquakes, 113
silver mines of, 300
iron furnaces of, 353
Peter’s Mount, St., near Maestricht, quarries of, 470
visit of Faujas de Saint-Fond, 472
Petroleum, formation of, 426
old springs of, in Europe, 426, 427
production of the springs of America, 427
Petrospongidæ, or stone sponges, 17
Pfeiffer, Ida, her visit to the diamond mines of Borneo, 480
Pharaohs, rock-tombs of the, in Thebes, 202-204
Philip II. of Spain, his destruction of the Moors of Granada, 173
Philip, Port, town of, 290
Philotheus, St., his cave on Mount Penteles, 466
Phœnicians, their tin-trade, 333
their traffic in and uses of lead, 364
Pietra Mala, burning springs of, 90
Pigeons, cave-haunting, 160
Pilot Knob ‘iron mountain,‘ 362
Pines, black, of Trinidad, 429
Pitt, or Regent, diamond, 485
Pittasphalte, formation of, 426
Piuka Jama, cave of, 154, 155
the River Poik flowing below the, 154
Piz Mountain, destructive effects of a landslip of the, 127
Planina, river traversing the Cave of, 150
explored by Adolph Schmidl, 151
abundance of Protei in the, 166
Platinum, discovery of, 382
where obtained, 382
its qualities, 383
Playfair, his observations as to the rise of the land in Sweden, 35
Plesiosaurus, size and characteristics of the, 21
where found, 22
Pleurotomaria carinata, fossils of, 15
Pliny the Elder, death of, as described by his nephew, 82-84
Pliocene period, animals of the, 24
Plumbago, graphite, or black lead, former trade in, in Cumberland, 462
the mine exhausted, 462
places where found at present, 462
Plürs, town of, buried by a landslip, 127
Polistena, effects of an earthquake at, 98
Poik River, engulfment and re-appearance of the, 150
a subterranean canoe voyage on the, 151-154
the river flowing beneath the Piuka Jama, 154
Pombal, Marquis of, his conduct in the great earthquake of Lisbon, 116,
117
Pompeii, destruction of the town of, 81-85
the mud-stream which effected the destruction, 85
present state of the Roman town of, 87
Pontus, hermits in, 179
Popocatepetl, depth of the crater of, 54
Montaño’s visit to the crater of, 446
Porphyry of Elfdal, 467
of the Altai, 468
Portugal earthquakes of, 100
Potosi, San Luis de, silver mines of, 303, 309
Precious stones, 477
Proteus anguinus, discovery of the, 164, 165
description of the animal, 165-167
its abundance in the Cave of Planina, 166
different caverns in which it has been found, 166
Prussia, iron manufacture of, 357
production of zinc in, 381
salt-works of, 438
Pterichthys Milleri of the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland, 13, 14
Pterodactyli, size and characteristics of the, 21
Pterygotus acuminatus, 12
Pulvermaar of Grillenfeld, lake or maare of, 132
Puzzuoli, solfatara of, 444
Quarries, celebrated, 464
those of France, 464
those of England and Germany, 464
of Carrara and the Pentelikon, 465, 466
porphyry, 467, 468
alabaster and plaster of Paris, 468
slate, 469
of St. Peter’s Mount, near Maestricht, 470
of Egypt, 474
Quicksilver. _See_ Mercury.
Quito, active volcanoes of, 61
tradition respecting them, 67
earthquakes of, 100
Radoboy, sulphur mines of, 444
Rain-prints of former ages, preservation of, 29
Rammelsberg, in the Hartz—silver mines of the, 299
discovery of the lode of the, 248
burning hard mineral stone in, 260, 261
copper found in, 325
Rat, blind cavern, of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, 167
Rathlin, island of, massacre by the English under Sir John Norris in
the, 172
Ravinazzo Mountain, landslip of the, 127
Red-lead, how made, 365
Redruth, copper mines of, 317
Regla, Conde de la. _See_ Terreros.
Reptiles, oldest known fossils of, 14, 15
enormous marine fossil reptiles of the Mesozoic ocean, 20
footprints of reptiles of the Cambrian formation, 20
Rhodium, discovery and uses of, 388
Rhosdale, iron manufacture of, 355
Riobamba, destruction of the town of, 78, 79
destroyed by an earthquake, 104
remarkable displacement of objects during the shocks, 104
silence during the shocks, 104
Ripple-marks of former ages, preservation of, 28, 29
Rivers, cave, 149-151
explorations of Adolph Schmidl in the Cave of Planina, 151
Rochelle, La, upheaval of the land at, 36
Rock-tombs and catacombs, 202
Rock-crystal, 498
the grotto of the Galenstock, 499
Roebuck, Dr. John, his improvements in iron manufacture, 350
Romanus, the monk, feeds St. Benedict in his cave, 180
Rome, wealth of, after the third Punic war and in the time of the
Cæsars, 286, 298
gold coins of, 287
Ronciglione, Lake of, formed in the extinct crater of a volcano, 57
Roquefort cheese, 198
Röraas Mountains, copper mines of, in Norway, 324
Rosa, Sierra de Santa, 301
silver mines of the, 301
Rosalia, St., rock-church of, in Sicily, 188, 189
story of, and of the discovery of her bones, 188, 189
Rossberg, or Rufi, landslip of the, 123
causes of the catastrophe, 124
Rossi, Monte, height and area of, 71
Rossi, Cavaliere de, his researches in the catacombs of Rome, 210
Rosso antico, 467
Roth, natural ice-cave of, 198
Röthen, villages of Upper and Lower, destroyed by a landslip, 124
Royale, Isle, ancient copper mines of, 327
Ruby, the oriental, 489
in the crown of England, 490
Rucu-Pinchincha, Humboldt’s view down the volcano of, 55
Russia, copper mines of, 326
iron manufacture of, 357, 358
salt-works of, 437, 438
amber ornaments of, 457
the Imperial diamond of, 485
Rutile, or Titanium, discovery and uses of, 386, 387
Saarbrück, oldest known reptiles found in the coal-field of, 14
other wonders of the coal-field of, 15
vast time required for the formation of the coal-fields of the, 397
Sable, in Anjou, the Fontaine-sans-fond near, 149
Sabrina, island of, volcanic formation of the, 59
its disappearance, 59
Sacrée Madame, near Charleroi, depth of the colliery of, 247
mode of ventilation in the mine of, 277 _note_
Sacro, Monte, marble mountain of, 465
Safety-cages, used in descending mines, 264, 265
Safety-lamp, Davy’s, 280
improvements in the, 281
Sahara, wells of the inhabitants of the, 48, 50
future importance of Artesian wells to, 51
Salamis, fleet which gained the battle of, 298
Salcedo, silver mine of, 311
tragical end of its proprietor, Don José Salcedo, 312
Sallee, effects of an earthquake sea-wave at, 118
Sallenches, fall of a mountain near, 122
Salt, geological position of, 431
the mines of Northwich, 431
those of Droitwich and Stoke, 432
that of Wieliczka, 433-436
in other places, 436-439
method of preparing it, 439
origin of rock-salt, 440
Salza, manufacture of salt at, 439
Salzburg, salt mines of, 436
San Francisco, its rapid rise, 289
Santorin, submarine volcano of, 60, 61
Sapphire, red, 489
oriental, 490
Sardinia, cave-dwellers of, 234
the dwellings of the Sarde shepherds of the present day, 234
lead mines of, 366
Saviour’s, Our, tomb at Jerusalem, church built over the, 188
Saxony, tin mines of, 336
coal-fields of, 404
Schafloch, ice-cave of, 194, 195
Schmerling, Dr., his investigations respecting the antiquity of man,
226
Schemnitz, fungi of the mines of, 158
discovery of the rich mines of, 248
produce of silver in the mines of, 300
Schmidl, Adolph, his explorations of the subterranean river Poik and
Cave of Planina, 151
Schneeberg, large block of silver found at, 299
use made of the burning vapours, 283
bismuth of, 383
Scilano, village of, buried by a landslip, 127
Scilla, Prince of, his death, 107, 108
Scopoli, his description of subterranean fungi, 157
Scoriæ, length of time the liquid fire is retained in the interior of a
lava-stream, 73
Scotland, lead mines of, 366
coal-fields of, 403
Scott, Sir Walter, his visit to ‘The Orkneyman’s Harbour,’ 143
and to Fingal’s Cave, 143
Scrope, Mr. Poulett, his description of the Volcano of Stromboli, 62
Sea-shells found on the Andes and Alps, 34, 37
and in other places at present removed from the sea, 34
Sea, movements of the, in earthquakes, 106, 107
extent of the wave-motion, 105, 106
cases of the destructive effects of the earthquake waves, 107-109,
117-119
Segeberg, deposit of salt at, 439
Senegal, deposits of the Arca senilis on the banks of the river inland,
34
Sequoia, gigantic trees of the, 28
Seven Pagodas, rock-temples near Madras so called, 184
Seville, effects of the earthquakes of 1755 at, 118
Shelas, cave of, Colonel St. Arnaud’s massacre in the, 176
‘Shell-mounds’ of Denmark, 222
those of the Fuegians, 222
Shetland, marine caves of, 142
Shields inlaid with silver in Homer’s time, 298
Siberia, auriferous land of, 288
lead mines of, 367
emeralds of, 491
Sicanians, cave-dwellings of the ancient, 232
Sicily, earthquakes of, 100
marine grottoes of, 145
sulphur mines of, 441
Sickingen, Count, his experiments with platinum, 382
Sidi Rascheed, in Algeria, Artesian well of, 51
Sigillaria oculata, 392
Silurian period, crustacea of the, 10-12
brachiopods of the, 12, 13
fishes of the, 13
Silver, discoveries of lodes of, 248
antiquity of the discovery of, 297
most ancient silver mines, 298
European silver-fields, 299, 300
mines of Mexico and Peru, 300-314
mode of crushing and decomposing the ores, 306-307
law of Peru respecting the silver mines, 311
mines of Chili and Nevada, 313, 314
Singapore, antimony of, 383
Siphnos, ancient silver mines of, 298
Siphon, principle of a, 44 _note_
Siphonia costata, fossil, 16
Sioa, constant state of eruption of the volcano of, 63
Sivatherium giganteum, size and characteristics of, 27, 28
Skaptar Jökul, in Iceland, lava-stream of the eruption of, in 1783, 70
that of 1787, 75
Skerries, water-spouts or fountains of the, 146
Slate quarries of North Wales, 469
Smeaton, John, his improvements in iron manufacture, 350
Sodium, discovery and uses of, 388
Solway Moss, appearance and area of the, 130
bursting of the, 130, 131
Sommatino, conflagration of the solfatera of, 443
Somme, flint implements of the Valley of the, 230, 231
Spain, gold coins of the Visigoths of, 287
auriferous land of, 288
ancient silver mines of, 298
tin mines of, 336
iron industry of, 361
lead mines of, 365
coal-fields of, 423
cupriferous pyrites of, 447
Spartacus, revolt of, 82
his defeat of Clodius at Vesuvius, 82
Speerenberg, deposit of salt at, 439
Sphenopteris affinis, 391
Spider, eyeless, of the Cave of Adelsberg, 163
Spinel, the, 490
Spirifer princeps, 12
Spiriferidæ, 13
Sponges, fossil, of the primitive seas, 16
Springs, always warmer than the air in the locality where they gush
forth, 32
hydrostatic laws regarding the flow of, 40-42
temperature of the water of, 43
geological phenomena favouring the production of thermal springs, 43
mineral particles in springs, 43, 44
intermittent springs, 44
geysirs of Iceland, 45-48
Artesian wells, 48-52
carbonic acid gas springs, 88-90
of carburetted hydrogen, 90-93
Staffordshire, burning mines of, 283
the Burning Hill of, 283, 284
Stag, Professor Owen’s skeleton of the primeval, 217
Stalactites and stalagmites, formation of, 139, 140
their varieties of form and slow formation, 140
Dr. Schmidl’s ‘Stalactital Paradise,’ 152
in the Cave of Guacharo, 162
of the Cave of Melidoni, 176
in the Norwegian copper mine of Röraas, 325
Stalita tænaria, the eyeless cavern spider, 163, 164
Stamping-mill in the silver mines of Mexico, 306
Star fish, of the Chalk group, 18
Stassfurt, mines of, 438
Steam, important part played by, in volcanic phenomena, 41
Steam-jets, or fumaroles, of volcanoes, 63
those of the eruption of Jorullo in 1759, seen in 1803, 74
Stephenson, George, a coal-trapper in life, 419
Stikeen, gold-fields of, 293
Stockton-on-Tees, export of coal from, 413
Stoke, in Worcestershire, salt mines of, 432
Stone implements of Denmark, 222
of the Brixham caverns, 227
of the Valley of the Somme, 230
Stromboli, diameter of the crater of, 54
constant activity of the volcano of, 62
Mr. Poulett Scrope’s description of it, 62
Stromeyer, his discovery of cadmium, 386
Strontian, in Argyleshire, lead mines of, 366
Styria, iron of, 358
Subiaco, St. Benedict’s Cave near, 180
Suffioni of the Florentine lagoons, 460
Sulphur of the mines of Sicily, 441
exports of, 443
conflagration of a sulphur mine, 443
mines of Ternel and Lorca, 444
combinations of sulphur with metals, 447
Sumatra, deposits of tinstone in, 335
Sunderland, export of coal from, 413
Superior, Lake, copper scattered near the shore of, 325, 327
ancient copper mines near, 327
Surtshellir, in Iceland, formation of the, 148
Sutherland, gold-fields of, 293
Swallows, cave-haunting, 160
Swansea, copper-works of, 320, 321
Sweden, effect of the great earthquake of 1755 in, 118
mode of descending mines in, 264
copper mines of, 322
Swifts, cave-haunting, 160
Switzerland, subterranean relics of prehistoric man in, 223
ancient iron implements found in, 347
Swoszwice, sulphur mines of, 444
Syene, rock-hewn cemeteries of, 205
Syracuse, catacombs of, 210
city of, 475
the Latomiæ of, 475
Syria, earthquakes of, in the reign of Tiberius, 97, 100
Syout, in Upper Egypt, rock-hewn cemeteries of, 205
Tagilsk, Nishne, platinum of, 382
Taman, mud-volcanoes of the peninsula of, 93, 95
Tamelhat, in Algeria, Artesian well at, 51
Tangiers, effects of an earthquake sea-wave in, 118
Tap cinders of the iron puddling furnaces, 355
Tasmania, coal-fields of, 424
Tauretunum, Roman town of, destroyed by a landslip, 127
Tees, importance of the river, 407
Teir, Djebel, height of the volcano of, 54
Temboro, cone of the volcano of, blown to pieces, 67
Temenitz, engulfment and reappearance of the river, 150
Temples, rock, of India, 181
Teneriffe, Peak of, shape of the, 53
ice-caves of, 198
solfatara of the, 445
Tenger, Gunong, in Java, diameter of the crater of the volcano of, 54
Terebratulæ of the Silurian seas, 13
hastata, fossils of, 15
Ternel, sulphur mine of, 444
Terni, Æolian caverns of, 198
Terranuova, effects of an earthquake at, 98
Terreros, Don Pedro, his silver mine of La Regla, 304
Tertiary period, mammalia of the, 23
Thallium, discovery and uses of, 388
Thaur, Mount, Mahomet’s refuge in a cave of, 169
Moslem miracle of, 169
Thebes, hermits in the desert of, 179
the royal tombs of, 202-204
Themud, rock city of the, 236
legendary tale respecting the, 236
Thomson, Dr., his cave explorations in New Zealand, 218-220
Tin, antiquity of the knowledge of, 332
mentioned in the Bible, 332
Phœnician trade in, 333
uses and importance of, 334
the two ores of tin, 335
lodes of Cornwall, 337
number of mines in Devon and Cornwall at work, 338
smelting of tin, 342
number and wages of the miners, 343
nature of the miner’s work, 343
Tin-foil, 334
Tino, island of, Rosso antico, 467
Titanium, or rutile, discovery and uses of, 386, 387
Titus, the Emperor, his benevolence to the survivors of Herculaneum and
Pompeii, 85
Tjerimai, Gunong, in Java, extinct volcano of, 55
its height and depth, 55
Tlalpujahua, silver mine of, 305
Toeplitz, hot springs of, 43
Tofua, constant activity of the volcano of, 63
lake formed in the crater of the extinct volcano of, 57
Tolfa, manufacture of alum at, 458
Tombs, rock-hewn, 202
Topaz, the, 493
Töplitz, effect of the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 on the mineral waters
of, 118
Torgatten, in Norway, natural tunnel of the grotto of, 134
Trajan, the Emperor, in an earthquake at Antioch, 97
Transbaikalia, iron of, 357
Transgariep country, cannibal caverns of the, 234
Transylvania, iron of, 358
salt mines of, 436
Travers, Val de, asphalte mine of the, 428
Trebich Cave, near Trieste, 134
Tresavean Copper Mine, wealth of, 329
tin mine, 337
Treviso, three villages of, buried by a landslip of the Piz Mountain,
127
Triassic rocks, their thickness, 2
fossils of the, 22
Trilobites, 10, 11
eye of, magnified, 11
gradually vanish in the Carboniferous period, 14
Trinidad, mud volcanoes of, 93, 94
Trinidad, the great Pitch Lake of, 428
the black pines of, 429
Tripolite, its composition and uses, 463
Troglodytes, or dwellers in caves, 232
Trophonios, Cave of, 187
visitors to the cave for information, 188
Trou-aux-Moutons, vast ice-cave of the Rothhorn, 194, 195
Tschudi, silver ornaments of the, 298
Tuileries, principle on which the grand fountain of the, is supplied,
42
Tungstate of soda, uses of, 385
Tungsten, discovery of, 384
uses of, 385
Tunnels, natural, 113, 34
Turks, their atrocities in modern warfare, 176
their use of amber in pipes, 456
Turquoise, the, 493
Turrilites tuberculatus, 19
Tuscany, suffioni of the lagoons of, 460
Tyne, importance of the river, 407
shipping coal on the banks of the, 411, 412
Tynemouth Priory, view from the, 414
Ubes, St., nearly destroyed by an earthquake sea-wave, 117
United States of America, copper mines of, 328, 329
Upheavals, subterranean, 34
taking place at the present day, 34
slow elevation of the land in Sweden, 35
and in other places, 35, 36
marks chiselled on the Swedish rocks, 37
probable causes of, 38
Upsala, iron manufacture of, 360
the old city of, and the burial-places of Odin, Thor, and Freya, 360
Ural, or Oural, Mountains, the iron of the, 357
copper mines of the, 326
Uranium, discovery and uses of, 385
Valenciana, Conde de, his silver mine and fortune, 302, 304
Valenciennes, depth of the coal mines of, 247
Valentinus, Basilius, his mention of antimony, 383
Valdivia, extent of wave-motion of an earthquake at, 105, 106
Valparaiso, upheaval of the land at, 34
Valparaiso, copper mines of, 326
Vaucluse, celebrated fountain of, 149
Vegetation, subterranean, 157
mushrooms or fungi, 157
Velleja, Roman town of, buried by a landslip, 127
Venetian gold coins, 287
Ventriculites, fossil, 16
Verde antico, 467
Vesuvius, its long period of rest, and resumption of its activity, 58
the lava-stream of the eruption of 1822, 70
lava-fountains of the eruption of 1794, 72
advance of a lava-stream into the sea near Torre del Greco, 73
vast dimensions of the lava-stream of, 75
state of the volcano previous to the eruption of 79 A.C., 81
first indication of the catastrophe, 82
account of Pliny the Younger, 85
Veta madre, silver mine of, 247, 301
Victoria, colony of, 290
gold-fields of, 294
Villaroel Don José, his silver mine of the Cerro di Potosi, 309
Vincent, Island of, volcanic eruption on the, 66
disappearance of a mountain at, 68
Virgil, tomb of, 242
belief in his incantations, 242
Visigoths of Spain, their gold coins, 287
Vivarrais, carbonic acid gas springs of the, 88
Vivian’s copper-works at Swansea, 321
Volcanoes, heat required for the production of the lava of, 33
extent of the action of, 33
important part played by steam in volcanic phenomena, 41
extinct and active volcanoes, 53
their shapes and heights, 53, 54
their craters, 54
desolation near them, 54
dimensions and depths of various craters, 54
dangers of crater explorations, 55, 56
lakes in the craters of extinct volcanoes, 57
line of demarcation between active and extinct volcanoes, 58
volcanoes still constantly forming, 58
submarine volcanoes, 59
formation of volcanic islands, 59
number of known volcanoes, 60
unequal distribution of, 61
in a constant state of activity, 61, 62
steam-jets, or fumaroles, 63, 74
phenomena of volcanic eruption, 65
stones and ashes thrown out, 66
explosion of cones, 67
disastrous effects of showers of sand, pumice, and lapilli, 68
mud-streams formed, 69
torrents formed by melted snow, 69
formation of fiery streams of liquid lava, 70
parasitic cones of eruption, 70
wooded volcanic craters, 71
phenomena attending the flow of a lava-stream, 72, 73
effect of the meeting of lava and the sea, 73
and of lava and ice, 74
vast dimensions of lava-streams, 75, 76
waste of desolation in lava-fields, 77
considered as safety-valves, 78, 79
probable causes of, 79, 80
destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii, 81-87
mud-volcanoes, 93-96
formation of volcanic caves, 146-148
Volterra, alabaster of, 468
Vultur, Mount, beauty of the forest scenery around the extinct craters
of, 57
Wales, auriferous veins found in, 293
lead mines of, 366
time required for the formation of the coal-fields of South, 397
their superficial extent, 405
the coal-fields of North, 403
total number of pits in the South, 406
slate quarries of North, 469
New South, copper mines of, 329
coal-fields of, 424
Walker colliery, on the Tyne, disaster in, prevented, 282
Wallsend colliery, drowned, 273
attempt made to work a part of it, 278
Wanlockhead, lead mines at, 366
Warburton, his description of the rock-temple of Ipsamboul, 184-186
his visit to the tombs of the Pharaohs at Thebes, 202-204
Wash, evidences of subsidence of the land on the shores of the, 37
Washoe silver mine, 314
Water, its eternal strife with fire, 1, 2
the waters of the Cambrian or Silurian ocean, 11
filtered and made pure by the earth, 40
temperature of the water of springs, 43
subterranean distribution of the waters, 39
hydrostatic laws regarding the flow of springs, 40, 41
Bunsen’s theory of the Geysirs, 47
geological phenomena favouring the production of thermal springs, 43
geysirs of Iceland, 45-48
Artesian wells, 48-52
effect of the meeting of a lava-stream and the sea, 73
movements of the sea in earthquakes, 107
action of water in limestone caves, 138, 139
and in forming marine caves, 142
Water-spouts of caverns in the Skerries, 146
in mines, 269
modes of draining, 269
Waterfall, a subterranean, 153
Watt, James, his invention and its importance in iron manufacture, 351
Wear, importance of the river, 407
Wermland, iron manufacture of, 360
Westphalia, coal-fields of, 405
Wheal Cock, copper mine of, 319
Wheal, Edward, Cornish copper mine of, 319
Wheal Vor, rise and fall of the tin mine of, 339
Whitehaven coal-basin, extent of the, 407
excavations under the sea at the, 410
White-lead manufacture of the Brohl, 89
White-lead, how made, 365
Wicklow, lead mines of, 366
iron pyrites of, 447
Wielitzka, salt mines of, 262, 433-435
method of descending the, 263
accident in the, 435
Wiesbaden, hot springs of, 43
Wind-grottoes, 198-200
fables respecting, 199
Wirksworth, ossiferous caves of, 215, 216
Wissokaja Gora, the magnetic mountain of, 357
Wolfram, discovery of, 384
Wollaston, his discovery of palladium, 388
and of rhodium, 388
Wood, Colonel, his discovery of a bone-cave at Gower, 228
Workington Colliery, drowned, 274
Worship, subterranean places of, 181-183
Worsley, in Lancashire, subterranean canals in, 263
Yeermalik, massacre by Genghis Khan in the cave of, 172, 173
visit to the cave, 173
as a natural ice-cave, 197
York, New, copper mines of, 328
Yorkshire, lead mines of, 366
Zacatecas, silver mine of, 302
Zealand, New, effects of the earthquake of 1855 in upraising land, 111
maare, or crateriform hollows of, 132
the Apteryx australis of, 216
the gigantic Moa of, 216, 217
Professor Owen’s memoir and skeleton of the bird, 217
ossiferous caves of the country, 218
gold-fields of, 293
vegetation of, similar to that of the coal-fields, 395
coal-fields of, 424
Zellerfeld, great adit levels of the mines of, 270
Zepeda, Don Barnebé de, his discovery of the silver vein of Catorce,
303
Zeus, Olympian, Phidias’ ivory and gold statue of, 286
Zinc, not known to the ancients, 380
production of, 380, 381
the chief zinc-producing countries, 381, 382
Zircon, the, 492
Zoroaster, religion of, restored by the Sassanides of Persia, 92
Zwickau, in Saxony, burning mine at, 283
Footnotes
_Works by the same Author._
--------------
THE SEA AND ITS LIVING WONDERS. With several hundred Wood Engravings;
and an entirely New Series of Illustrations in Chromoxylography,
representing the most Interesting Objects described in the Work, from
Original Drawings by Henry Noel Humphreys. Third English Copyright
Edition. 8vo. price 21_s._
-----------------------
‘Dr. HARTWIG’S volume is a perfect model of the popular treatment of a
large subject. It is at once full, clear, concise, and attractive; and
it possesses the merit, absolutely unique as far as our experience goes
in works of this kind, of being readable from end to end. Though closely
packed with details—sufficiently so indeed to be a good, though of
course not an exhaustive, book of reference for practical use—these are
so well selected and arranged, so concisely related, and so carefully
subordinated to general views, that they never produce any sensation of
weariness, monotony, or confusion. There are some admirable
chromoxylographs, and an infinitude of excellent woodcuts scattered up
and down the pages with a profuse hand. In short, _the Sea_ has received
from Dr. HARTWIG a recommendation to public attention which can scarcely
perhaps increase its popularity, but which will certainly enable many of
its admirers to regard it with a more enlarged and intelligent
admiration. The title, large as it is, does the work some injustice, for
we are apt to forget the _Sea_ itself in the _Living Wonders_ which it
nourishes; and we scarcely include, in our conception of life, the
vegetation of the ocean. This, however, is no fault of Dr. HARTWIG’S;
for he fairly exhausts his subject. The first seventy pages are devoted
to a very clear account of the general features of the sea. Its extent
and depth and colour, its coast-line and currents, the height and
velocity of its waves, the theory of its tides, the mighty circulation
whereby the life-currents of the earth rise in evaporation from the
ocean surface, are dispersed through the upper regions of the air, are
condensed in rain, and, trickling through the soil, return in rivers to
their native reservoir, are all set forth with great skill and beauty of
language. Dr. HARTWIG then passes on to the inhabitants of the sea.
First come the “hugest of living things,” the _Cetaceans_, with their
kindred the seals and walruses—animals which in their anatomy and habits
form a curious link between the tribes of earth and water, and in their
vast size and outlandish forms seem, at least in fancy, to connect the
present age with distant geological periods.... Penguins and auks and
albatrosses next come under our notice: then turtles, the only modern
representatives of the ancient saurians; then follows a description of
many of the more curious fishes—among which we notice some singular
creatures with fins and tails and gills, which can not only live for
days out of water, but actually creep up trees and catch insects. Crabs
and barnacles, worms and molluscs, star-fishes, sea-urchins, coral-
polyps, and our familiar friends the sea-anemones, all come in for their
fair share of attention. Even the microscopic foraminifera and
diatomaceæ are included: one chapter is given to marine plants, and
another to the primitive ocean; while the whole is appropriately closed
with a brief sketch of the progress of maritime discovery. And all this
is packed into an elegant volume of 400 pages. Never, surely, was such a
mine of information presented in so pleasing a shape. Dr. HARTWIG has
skimmed the very cream of marine science, and thrown all its daintiest
morsels into a single attractive dish.’
GUARDIAN, First Notice.
‘This is the third edition, considerably enlarged, of the first and best
of Dr. HARTWIG’S beautiful and popular volumes on natural history. The
size of the book is increased by a hundred pages; a good deal of it is
remoulded; two whole new chapters have been added, one on Marine Caves,
the other on Marine Constructions, such as Lighthouses and Breakwaters;
some of the old illustrations have disappeared, but their place has been
supplied by more and better; so that the new edition really amounts to a
recasting of the entire book. It was a very good book before; it is
better and more complete now. Whether we regard the letterpress or the
numerous illustrations, it takes a rank second to none among ornamental
and popular books of science.’ GUARDIAN, Second Notice.
THE TROPICAL WORLD: a Popular Scientific Account of the Natural History
of the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms and the Equatorial Regions. With
8 Chromoxylographic Plates and about 800 Woodcuts. 8vo. price 21_s._
-------------------------
‘This work well deserves popularity, and is just the book to interest
young persons who have the sense to perceive that the truths of nature
are not only stranger but far more profitable than some fictions. All
that intelligent women and children desire to know about the tropics
will be found here—the aspects of nature, the rivers and coasts, the
great sandy deserts, the gigantic vegetation, and the animal denizens
from insects to apes; but excluding the tropical varieties of man.’
MEDICAL TIMES _and_ GAZETTE.
‘Dr. HARTWIG has followed up his admirable book on the SEA by another,
not less admirable, on the _Tropical World_. The same wide erudition,
vivid powers of description, and happy intermixture of popular and
scientific treatment are displayed in it; and its pages are adorned by
the same profusion of elegant illustration. Within the tropics Nature
revels in her wildest luxuriance: bird, beast, reptile, and plant take
there strange forms and colours, or attain unusual magnitude. Dr.
HARTWIG has steeped his pen in the glowing atmosphere of the tropics;
and with it, as with a wand, he leads us through successive regions of a
sunny fairyland teeming with beautiful natural objects in inexhaustible
variety, changeful and brilliant as the effulgent landscapes amid which
they flourish.’
GUARDIAN.
‘The tropics give us something like a picture of the antediluvian world.
The heat and moisture, with the consequent luxuriance of vegetation in
tangled overgrowth, the violence of the storms, and the ferocity and
hideousness of many animal forms, mark out these equatorial regions as
very striking, very picturesque, very interesting, but not very
agreeable as a residence. Unless we are young, robust, and adventurous,
it is pleasanter to read of such regions in our milder Europe, and to
visit them in imagination, following the adventures of others. And this
journey Dr. HARTWIG enables us to make through his excellent
compilation.... We have indicated the nature of Dr. HARTWIG’S book, and
have only to add that it is compiled with great skill, and written in a
clear and agreeable style. It is seldom that we have occasion to notice
a more satisfactory work of the class to which it belongs.’
SATURDAY REVIEW.
‘We ought not to conclude these gleanings without a brief notice of Dr.
HARTWIG’S popular book. There are those who look with contempt on
popular science of all kinds, and regard with undisguised aversion such
compilations as the one before us. We do not share these feelings in the
least degree; on the contrary, we welcome most heartily such
introductions to the study of natural history. True, they may be
sometimes of little scientific value, but they are very useful stepping-
stones to something more solid. They are more especially intended for
the young, but those of mature years may derive much profit by a perusal
of many of these works, and even the naturalist may read them with
pleasure and instruction. The numerous beautifully illustrated and
carefully compiled works on natural history, such as the _Tropical
World_, together with the _Sea and its Living Wonders_, by the same
writer, and several others which have appeared within the last few
years, are an encouraging sign of the growing interest which the rising
generation takes in the study of the great Creator’s works, and we
heartily wish them Godspeed.’
QUARTERLY REVIEW.
_Works by the same Author._
THE HARMONIES OF NATURE,
OR THE UNITY OF CREATION.
With 8 full-page Engravings on Wood, from Original Designs by
F. W. Keyl, and about 200 Woodcuts in the Text.
8vo. price 18_s._
‘As a sort of abridged KOSMOS brought down so as to include the latest
discoveries of science, Dr. HARTWIG’S _Harmonies of Nature_ is admirable
for the view it gives of the order of nature as we can at present
conceive it. Such a work enlarges and clears our conception of the
universe, and we can heartily commend both the ability with which the
facts are elucidated and the reverential spirit with which they are
treated.’
GLOBE.
‘Dr. HARTWIG’S book at first looks like a system of natural history: it
swarms with woodcuts of zoology and comparative anatomy. But it properly
belongs to general psychology; for its object is comparison and
deduction, and a view of the chain of being, which ... after some
general cosmogony, begins at the lowest phases of vegetable life and
ends with man.... The book is very interesting, and fills a very useful
place.’
ATHENÆUM.
‘The nature of Dr. HARTWIG’S _Harmonies of Nature_ will perhaps be
better understood if we call it a popularised KOSMOS. Beginning with the
starry heavens, the Author leads us through air and ocean, and shows in
broad outline how material nature is adapted to the organic life which
fills it. He then traces out the ascending grades of organic life itself
from plants to sponges and jelly-fishes, and from them up through
molluscs, insects, fishes, birds, and mammals, to man himself, the crown
of all. This great outline is filled up with sufficient detail to give
it substance and interest. It is traced with a flowing and expressive
pen, and illustrated by an elegant and abundant pencil. Those who have
seen Dr. HARTWIG’S former works will be satisfied to know that this is
no unworthy companion to them.’
GUARDIAN.
‘The _Harmonies of Nature_ will add to its Author’s well-deserved
reputation as the most correct and philosophic as well as the most
entertaining writer of the day on popular natural history. Unlike most
of the compilers of this class of works, Dr. HARTWIG has a very
extensive knowledge of his subject, a knowledge sufficient to enable him
to present to his readers a well-arranged work, that may be read with
profit as well as with pleasure. The object of the work is to point out
and illustrate the unity of plan which prevails throughout creation....
Compared with the popular natural histories current in France and
England, the works of Dr. HARTWIG are of much higher excellence; and for
those readers who desire to know something about physical science
without becoming painful and diligent students, no volume can be
recommended as more delightful than the _Harmonies of Nature_.’
_The_ FIELD.
--------------------------------------------------
THE POLAR WORLD;
A POPULAR DESCRIPTION OF MAN AND NATURE IN THE ARCTIC
AND ANTARCTIC REGIONS OF THE GLOBE.
With 8 Chromoxylographic Plates, 3 Maps, and 85 Woodcuts.
8vo. price 21_s._
‘The appearance of Dr. HARTWIG’S book at this time is very opportune.
There is every reason to believe that public attention will be directed
during the next ten or fifteen years to the Polar regions and the
contemplated expeditions to them. Whether or not the suggestions are
carried out which were made at the recent meeting of the Geographical
Society for an educating trial trip to the Arctic coast, there can be no
doubt that there will be an expedition in 1881-1882 for the purpose of
observing the transit of VENUS in the Antarctic Seas. Sabrina Land and
Possession Island are spoken of as suitable stations for the
observations. Most readers would have to refer to their maps, or to
almost forgotten books of Antarctic travel to make themselves acquainted
with those localities. Dr. HARTWIG’S volume gives maps, description, and
history of all that is known concerning these icy regions in a few
compendious pages.... Like Dr. HARTWIG’S former works, the _Polar World_
is a model of interesting and authentic compilation. Starting from
Iceland, he takes us round the lands which circle about the North Pole,
describing their natural features, the people who inhabit them, the
birds, beasts, and fishes, and the scanty vegetation, which is
frequently little more than varieties of mosses and lichens. The same
plan is followed in the regions of the South Pole. In his treatment of
all these subjects the Author combines the qualities of a clever
historian, a well-informed geographer, and a correct naturalist.
Gathering up all the information supplied by numerous explorers, he has
presented to us the result in a beautifully illustrated volume,
containing a clear, concise, and faithful description of man and nature
in high latitudes. The work will be exceedingly useful as well as
interesting to the naturalist, as nearly every chapter in it contains
careful accounts of the animals peculiar to the regions described....
The _Polar World_ will add greatly to the already well-deserved
reputation of the Author.’
LAND _and_ WATER.
London: LONGMANS and CO. Paternoster Row.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
At 370.16, the freezing point of mercury is given as ‘-39° Fahr.’, which
should be -39° Celsius.
At 198.9>, the paragraph ending ‘pillars supporting the roof’, includes
a single closing quote, the opening of which is either missing, or it is
itself a mistake. Given the wording of the paragraph, it is likely the
latter.
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and
are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original,
or where two columns were employed, the page, column, and line. Where
the spelling of index entries disagree with their references in the
text, they have been corrected.
xvii.24 [(]Green Added.
5.13 subterran[n]ean fires Removed.
98.34 were found clasped in each other’s arms.[’] Added.
105.10 valley of the Mississip[p]i Added.
109.10 a vest[a/i]ge remaining Replaced.
158.40 præsertim subterraneas exhibens.[’] Added.
164.28 communicating with [un/nu]merous subterranean Transposed.
198.9 pillars supporting the roof.[’] Removed.
217.10 forms one of the most conspic[u]ous ornaments Added.
282.2 with the ox[gy/yg]en of the air, Transposed.
341.16 more like a vast natural crater tha[t/n] a Replaced.
hollow
356.20 of North and[ and] South Wales Removed.
399.18 acc[c]ompanying Removed.
443.19 Sic[n/u]liana Replaced.
496.31 an ample i[m/n]demnity Replaced.
504.2.3 Canstadt, in Wurtemb[u/e]rg>, Replaced.
508.1.41 Estrell[o/a] do Sul, or Star of the South Replaced.
514.2.4 Mushrooms, subterran[n]ean Removed.
514.2.17 Na[n/u]heim, carbonic acid gas spring of, 88 Replaced.
517.2.45 S[c]haflock, ice-cave of, 194, 195 Added.
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