The new northland

by L. P. Gratacap

The defects of these diminutive people seemed increased by contrast with the taller race, who were well made, normal in every way, and whose women were most pleasing. And as regards the ladies of the small type, they were much bigger than the men—another fact to the disadvantage of their undersized partners—and often, as with Ziliah, they were superb. (The matrimonial question was already looming ominously prominent for King Bjornsen, and his counsellors, I knew, were solicitous for his royal appreciation of their daughters—“one, or several or all,” said Hopkins.)

And there was the great and glorious land of the Gold Makers. As we approached, its diversity and contrasts became excitingly apparent. And, as in myself dawned the scheme of making it the point of my departure, or ESCAPE, to that great outer world from which like thrown pebbles Chance—not in this case a blind goddess—had dropped us into this sealed and secluded lesser world, it assumed a veritable splendor. Far off the shimmering agitation of the broad stream that poured its accumulated flood down a long grade from the Canon of Promise, in a vast crosscut through the Pine Tree Gredin, sparkled in our view. Hills, low and sparsely wooded, rose from the floor of the Valley of Rasselas—we had already reached the latter’s northwestern limit—between them were flat and grassed interspaces, and in the foreground a savannah-like expanse, quite treeless, and then far to the right the clustering villages of the Gold Makers. Obviously the river dominated the scene, with that far distant background of indefinite elevations outlining the northern concentric bulwarks of Krocker Land, beyond which a good glass might detect the shroud of the Perpetual Nimbus, and yet farther, infinitely removed, but seen in presence if not in form, the snowy or ruddy pinnacles of Krocker Land Rim. The river before it reached the pastoral foreground had recovered its calm, and only in its full tide did the gliding patches of foam, and here and there a larger, more disquieted wave, indicate the turmoil and torture of its descent. The road drew near to its banks. Within our view it turned westward, and we could see that it again passed outward between the walls of a rugged and imposing defile. Could I trust myself to its impetuous current, and find over its boiling waters an avenue of escape? So I mused, as we jolted along and as, to me, the scenery brought back long forgotten pictures of the Vale of Llangollen in Wales.

Scarcely were we in sight of the villages than some of their occupants hurried to meet us. When they came closer, to our wonder, we found them, as Oogalah had described, of a different racial type from the rest of the Radiumopolites and very unmistakably Samoyedes, men from the vast Siberian uplands, physically distinguishable by the broad faces and pyramidal skulls of the Turanian family. These nomads of the treeless fringes of Siberia, so far as indications showed or inquiry elicited, had been in a small company, wrecked on the Arctic coast of Krocker Land in some dateless past. They had made their way into the Valley of Rasselas, had established themselves without molestation in this restricted corner, and had then—how, remained an unanswered or insoluble question—come under subjection of the Radiumopolites. When the peculiar industry which now engaged them had developed was as indefinite in its relations to what went before or followed after it as the advent of the supernatural(?) stranger who had taught Radiumopolis the process of gold manufacture itself.

It seemed however that at an early time these Samoyedes had been appropriated as workers in this singular art, because of their discovered immunity from the deleterious effects or influences of the hypostatic element.

I saw men and women fishing in the broad river, and to my amazement found their boats were literally rafts—wooden logs bound together by ropes or thongs of leather and fibre. Hardly had I perceived this before the thought and hope flashed through my mind that on some such vehicle of transit I could trust myself to the stream, and that it was most likely that these hardy highlanders could give me the information I now needed as to the channel, direction, debouchment, and navigableness of the noble water in its course to the coast.

One of the strange idiosyncracies of the Radiumopolites, in spite of their attested skill in workmanship, their intelligence and emotional liveliness, was their obtuseness in geographic matters, or better, numbness. I don’t think they ever questioned the fact of their absolute finality both in place and in existence. Outside of the distant Krocker Land Rim was nothing but that blockade of ice, of which they had heard—the gold belt found by Goritz was a token of an aeronautic (?) reconnaissance—and outside of that, if speculation in their minds suggested the query, was just nothing again. As the Professor said, “The centripetal tendency of many primitive cultures was well understood, but in this case it was pivotal on a new topographic conformation that forbade migration.” I don’t suppose it ever occurred to a Radiumopolite to even ask what might become of that river cutting across this corner of his Eden-like valley. They had become static, and what they knew and what they enjoyed never changed. In house building, in weaving, in a rude artistry of design, in agriculture, in brick and tile and pot making, in their religion, in their games, they had attained a development that gave them happiness. And that ended it. It was Inca-like, or Mayan, Toltecan, Aztecan, or any of the American cultures which inhabit one spot, flourishing within it and never exceeding it, like the phenomena of centralization in plants and animals. And yet what questions this same culture suggested to a less individualized student, that diminutive Semitic race, the tree and serpent survival, and this unique oligarchy of little magnates!

Arrived within the precincts of the Samoyedian village, there was a bustling reception from dogs and children. These were the first dogs we had seen. Then a slow emergence of women and older men from the low briquette abodes followed. Almost without noticing their salutations, Javan, Put, Hul, Peleg, Hadad, leading the way, took us through the scanty settlement to a series of barracks, also made of burned clay briquettes, and entered the first one. On long rude tables were heaped, in this armory, piles of galena (lead sulphide), and the glistening mineral was in nodules, free and clear, or enclosed in a pulverulent limestone. It was the duty here of the workmen to extract the mineral from its matrix, pound it into dust, and separate it in small wicker baskets. It was then carried away in these receptacles, by men, to other buildings. In another house or shed Sphalerite (zinc sulphide) was similarly treated. From these preparatory stages we passed to the radium storehouse. This was practically a cave dug in the side of the hill, where the material, gathered by Oogalah was kept, and which we were not permitted to enter. The radium masses were thrown into this place through an opening above, a sort of chimney, and removed below by an opening which permitted their extrication by stone hoes. As they were drawn out they were taken in baskets to the Mixing House. The critical work was effected here.

In every respect it was like the other workshops, but in it the workmen did not remain more than two hours at a time, the “shifts,” as we would say, being then changed. At one end of this building the radium nodules were cleared of their dull coatings of oxide. Instantly the metallic nuclei, which was malleable to a slight degree, but which soon developed brittleness, were pushed towards other workmen, who hammered them with stone mallets or hammers until they were broken or splintered into grains or small angular pieces. This triturated metal was pushed forward again with slate knives to the last group of workers to whom the basket of pulverized lead and zinc mineral had been brought.

These operators divided the broken radium into lots and poured over each lot the contents of a single basket. The heap thus formed of the commingled radium and sulphide was then drawn to the edge of the stone and brick table and carefully scraped into a leathern or woven apron or bag and tied up. From this house these bundles were carried away to a distant upland which furnished a favorable soil for their burial; they were deposited in holes, five to ten feet deep, the variation in depth having some reference to the size of the bundles. These burials were then not disturbed for a length of time which corresponded to about a year of our time. At the expiration of that period they were exhumed and examined. Fortunately we were enabled to see this stage of the process also. The bundle being taken out of its sepulture is opened on a table and its contents spread out in a thin layer. From the granular commixture the gold particles are carefully picked out, and are then collected for welding by pressure into larger pieces.

Certainly nothing could have been more amazing than the exhibition thus offered of the transmuting power of this wizard element. The transmutation is never complete, that is, the original mass of galena or sphalerite is never wholly converted into gold. The residues are reinterred with the almost unaltered radium, and after six months are again examined. The second crop of gold grains invariably is less, and after a third trial the mixture is carefully freed from the radium and the unaffected sulphide thrown out. The radium thus used is kept apart from the fresher supplies of radium whose potency is always stronger. But the partially exhausted reagent is saved, and used over and over again with fresh ores. For, just as the radium suffers a diminution of efficacy, so does the sulphide lose its susceptibility to its influence. This necessarily involves considerable sorting, parceling, labeling and adjustment. Superintendents watch the operations of each workhouse, and the new and old supplies of the radium and of the ores are successfully recorded and mutually apportioned, as experience dictates. The lead sulphide yields the larger percentage of transmuted gold.