A MOUNTAIN OF IRON.
It is situated in Washington County, and is easily reached by railway from St. Louis. Properly speaking, it is not a mountain, but a hill. Its elevation above the valleys around it is less than four hundred feet. It is a low cone, with gently-sloping sides, and covered with a forest of oak trees. The soil where these trees grow consists of peroxide of iron, some of it being pulverized, and some of it in small lumps. On the sides of the mountain there are loose lumps of ore scattered about, and before the workings began there were large masses of iron on and near the summit, some of them weighing many tons. Though the character of the mountain has been known for many years, no attempt was made to work this immense mass of ore until 1845.
A cutting was made in one side of the mountain, and the ore was found to be of excellent quality. In the valleys surrounding the mountain there is an abundance of ore, and for all practical purposes the iron mines of Missouri are inexhaustible. The ore contains nearly seventy per cent. of iron, though its yield, owing to the manner of working, rarely exceeds sixty per cent. About six miles south of Iron Mountain is Pilot Knob, which covers an area of three hundred and sixty acres, and is nearly six hundred feet high. It contains great quantities of iron, but is not as rich proportionally as the mountain which bears the name of the metal.
About two thirds the way up the side of Pilot Knob, there is one bed of ore about twenty feet thick, and estimated to cover more than fifty acres. Other mountains of the same character are in the vicinity, and all that is required to make the Missouri iron mines the best in the world is the discovery of a mountain or two of coal suitable for reducing the ore and refining the metal.
Iron is applied to a greater number of purposes, and consumed in larger quantities, than all other metals combined. There is no other metal which increases so much in value by the process of manipulation as this. A bar of iron worth five dollars is worth ten dollars when made into horse-shoes, fifty-five dollars when made into needles, four thousand dollars when made into penknife blades, and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars when made into balance springs of watches. In the form of wrought iron it is soft when heated. It can be hammered into any desired shape, rolled into plates, or drawn into fine wire. Plates can be rolled no thicker than a sheet of letter paper. The wires can be drawn so small as to be almost invisible to the naked eye. Combined with a certain quantity of carbon, it can be melted and cast into any desired shape, and with another proportion of carbon, it takes the form of steel. As before stated, it enters in a thousand ways into our daily life, and if all the iron in the world were destroyed, mankind would suffer greatly.
IRON AS MONEY.
The antiquity of iron is not exactly known, but it is supposed that the metal has been in use more than four thousand years. The catacombs of Thebes and the tombs around Memphis, some of them more than four thousand years old, represent butchers sharpening their knives on round bars of metal, and the color of the knife and metal indicates that they were of iron or steel. Homer has alluded to iron in the poems which have descended from him to us. History tells us that the Spartans were required to use this metal as money; probably it was more valuable at that day than now. If our money were made of iron it would be rather a serious matter for a man to carry cash enough about him to make himself comfortable for twenty-four hours. Imagine a New Yorker, starting on a journey where there were no banks, and he were required to carry a thousand dollars or so in coin. He would need a pair of horses to transport enough for buying his railway ticket to Washington, and for handling the loose change required on the road, he would need the assistance of half a dozen porters.
During the first seven centuries of the Christian era, the manufacture of iron attracted little attention. In the early part of the eighth century, mines were opened in the south of Europe, and from there, in the ninth and tenth centuries, the manufacture of iron spread northward. Improvements in the process of manufacture were steady, but slow. Small furnaces were made by which cast iron was produced, and after them came the invention of the blast furnace, which is said to have occurred about the middle of the sixteenth century. Other improvements were made in the following centuries, and in the eighteenth century a blast was forced into the furnace by means of a steam engine. Up to 1827 the blast was cold; but in that year a Scotch inventor patented a system by which hot air was thrown into the furnace, instead of cold. The invention was regarded of so much importance that the patentee obtained damages of nearly a million of dollars from a single company that had infringed upon his rights.
IRON MINING IN AMERICA.
Iron mining in America belongs almost entirely to the present century. The existence of the ore was known before that time, but very little use was made of it. A History of Virginia says that the settlers of that colony started an iron work on the banks of the James River in the year 1622, but before anything was done, the people were killed by the Indians, and the works were abandoned for more than a hundred years. A few forges and furnaces were set up in various parts of New England, one of them as early as 1702.