2. Argental mercury, or native silver amalgam.—It has a silver-white colour, and is more or less soft, according to the proportion which the mercury bears to the silver. Its density is sometimes so high as 14. A moderate heat dissipates the mercury, and leaves the silver. Klaproth states its constituents at silver 36, and mercury 64, in 100; but Cordier makes them to be, 271⁄2 silver, and 721⁄2 mercury. It occurs crystallized in a variety of forms. It has been found in the territory of Deux-Ponts, at Rozenau and Niderstana, in Hungary, in a canton of Tyrol, at Sahlberg in Sweden, at Kolyvan in Siberia, and at Allémont in Dauphiny; in small quantity at Almaden in Spain, and at Idria in Carniola. By the chemical union of the mercury with the silver, the amalgam, which should by calculation have a spec. grav. of only 12·5, acquires that of 14·11, according to M. Cordier.
3. Sulphuret of mercury, commonly called Cinnabar, is a red mineral of various shades; burning at the blowpipe with a blue flame, volatilizing entirely with the smell of burning sulphur, and giving a quicksilver coating to a plate of copper held in the fumes. Even the powder of cinnabar rubbed on copper whitens it. Its density varies from 6·9 to 10·2. It becomes negatively electrical by friction. Analysed by Klaproth, it was found to consist of mercury 84·5, sulphur 14·75. Its composition, viewed as a bisulphuret of mercury, is, mercury 86·2, sulphur 13·8. The finest crystals of sulphuret of mercury come from China, and Almaden in Spain. These contain, according to Klaproth, 85 per cent. of mercury.
A bituminous sulphuret of mercury appears to be the base of the great exploration of Idria; it is of a dark liver-red hue; and of a slaty texture, with straight or twisted plates. It exists in large masses in the bituminous schists of Idria. M. Beurard mentions also the locality of Munster-Appel, in the duchy of Deux-Ponts, where the ore includes impressions of fishes, curiously spotted with cinnabar.
The compact variety of the Idria ore seems very complex in composition, according to the following analysis of Klaproth:—Mercury, 81·8; sulphur, 13·75; carbon, 2·3; silica, 0·65; alumina, 0·55; oxide of iron, 0·20; copper, 0·02; water, 0·73; in 100 parts. M. Beurard mentions another variety from the Palatinate, which yields a large quantity of bitumen by distillation; and it was present in all the specimens of these ores analyzed by me for the German Mines Company. At Idria and Almaden the sulphurets are extremely rich in mercury.
4. Muriated mercury, or the Chloride of mercury, commonly called Horn mercury. This ore occurs in very small crystals of a pearl-gray or greenish-gray colour, or in small nipples which stud, like crystals, the cavities, fissures, or geodes among the ferruginous gangues of the other ores of mercury. It is brittle, and entirely volatile at the blowpipe, characters which distinguish it from horn silver.
The geological position of the mercurial ores, in all parts of the world, is in the strata which commence the series of secondary formations. Sometimes they are found in the red sandstone above the coal, as at Menildot, in the old dutchy of Deux-Ponts, at Durasno in Mexico, at Cuença in New Granada, at Cerros de Gauzan and Upar in Peru; in the subordinate porphyries, as at Deux-Ponts, San Juan de la Chica in Peru, and at Cerro-del-Fraile, near the town of San-Felipe, they occur also among the strata below, or subordinate to the calcareous formation, called zechstein, in Germany, or among the accompanying bituminous schists, as at Idria in Carniola; and, lastly, they form masses in the zechstein itself. Thus, it appears that the mercurial deposits are confined within very narrow geological limits, between the calcareous beds of zechstein, and the red sandstone. They occur at times in carbonaceous nodules, derived from the decomposition of mosses of various kinds; and the whole mercurial deposit is occasionally covered with beds of charcoal, as at Durasno.
They are even sometimes accompanied with the remains of organic bodies, such as casts of fishes, fossil shells, silicified wood, and true coal. The last fact has been observed at Potzberg, in the works of Drey-Koenigszug, by M. Brongniart. These sandstones, bituminous schists, and indurated clays, contain mercury both in the state of sulphuret and in the native form. They are more or less penetrated with the ore, forming sometimes numerous beds of very great thickness; while, in the more antient or the primitive formations, these ores exist only in very small quantity associated with tin. Mercury is, generally speaking, a metal sparingly distributed in nature, and its mines are very rare.
The great exploitations of Idria in Friuli, in the county of Goritz, were discovered in 1497, and the principal ore mined there is the bituminous sulphuret. The workings of this mine have been pushed to the depth of 280 yards. The product in quicksilver might easily amount annually to 6000 metric quintals = 600 tons British; but, in order to uphold the price of the metal, the Austrian government has restricted the production to 150 tons. The memorable fire of 1803 was most disastrous to these mines. It was extinguished only by drowning all the underground workings. The sublimed mercury in this catastrophe occasioned diseases and nervous tremblings to more than 900 persons in the neighbourhood.
Pliny has recorded two interesting facts: 1. that the Greeks imported red cinnabar from Almaden 700 years before the Christian era; and 2. that Rome, in his time, annually received 700,000 pounds from the same mines. Since 1827, they have produced 22,000 cwts. of mercury every year, with a corps of 700 miners and 200 smelters; and, indeed, 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 330 yards, or something less than 1000 feet. The lode actually under exploration is from 14 to 16 yards thick, and it becomes thicker still at the crossing of the veins. The totality of the ore is extracted. It yields in their smelting works only 10 per cent. upon an average, but there is no doubt, from the analysis of the ores, that nearly one half of the quicksilver is lost, and dispersed in the air, to the great injury of the workmen’s health, in consequence of the barbarous apparatus of aludels employed in its sublimation; an apparatus which has remained without any material change for the better since the days of the Moorish dominion in Spain. M. Le Play, the eminent Ingenieur des Mines, who published, in a recent volume of the Annales des Mines, his Itinéraire to Almaden, says, that the mercurial contents of the ores are notablement plus elevées than the product.
These veins extend all the way from the town of Chillon to Almadenejos. Upon the borders of the streamlet Balde Azogues, a black slate is also mined which is abundantly impregnated with metallic mercury. The ores are treated in 13 double furnaces, which I shall presently describe. “Le mercure,” says M. Le Play, “a sur la santé des ouvriers la plus funeste influence, et l’on ne peut se défendre d’un sentiment pénible en voyant l’empressement avec lequel des jeunes gens, pleins de force et de santé, se disputent la faveur d’aller chercher dans les mines, des maladies cruelles, et souvent une mort prématurée. La population des mineurs d’Almaden méritent le plus haut interêt.” These victims of a deplorable mismanagement are described as being a laborious, simple-minded, virtuous race of beings, who are thus condemned to breathe an atmosphere impregnated far and near with the fumes of a volatile poison, which the lessons of science, as I shall presently demonstrate, might readily repress, with the effect of not only protecting the health of the population, but of vastly augmenting the revenues of the state.