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 75,000l. 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.’
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 20,000l. 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 80,000l., 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.