Mining Mercury.

Progress, Volume II, Issue 3, 2 January 1907, Page 84

Mining Mercury.

Probably the largest exposed deposit of cinnabar, or quicksilver ore, is that forming the mountain from which the town of Black Butte, Oregon, derives its name. There a vein 400 feet wide has been opened for more than a mile along the mountain, at a depth of 1000 feet below the crest. In Europe the chief mines are at Almaden in Spam, and at Idna m Austria, a town twenty-eight miles from Trieste The process of obtaining the mercury is called distillation Atter being crushed, the ore is sub jected to intense heat (1200° F.) When the ore lias reached the temperature of 6SO°, the mercury is driven off in the form of vapour. This vapour is rassed into large wooden or brick chambers called " condensers," which are «urrounded by water jackets and other devices designed to reduce the temperature, in these chambers the vapour is condensed, the quicksilver resuming a metallic form, and being deposited in fine globules on the walls and floors. These globules, as they increase in size, merge together, and run out in troughs, leady to be marketed. The product is shipped in wi ought-iron flasks weighing fouiteen pounds each, and holding 76J- pounds of the metal, for which the present wholesale price is nfty three cents a pound.

One day of fret and worry may blight a whole week. Every man is sometimes what he should be all the time.