Here are heaps of scoria—stacks of piglead, wood, coke, limestone and waste earth, everything, indeed, but silver; although we are emphatically in a silver mining district, silver is by no means the material which presents itself in the greatest bulk. Having placed ourselves under the direction of one of the workmen, we are led into some newly built brick buildings, where force-pumps and other water appliances, erected at great cost by the Saxon government, are gratefully pointed out to us. These water-works are equally applicable to the extinction of fire, as to the preparation of ores.
Into what an incomprehensible maze of words should we be betrayed, were we to attempt a description of the multifarious operations for the extraction and refining of metals! Every description of ore, or metalliferous deposit, requires a different treatment: each suggested and verified by laborious experience and vigilant attention. In some cases the pure silver is separated by mechanical means; in others the ore is roasted, in order to throw off the sulphur, arsenic, and other volatile matters, which are separately collected and form no inconsiderable portion of the valuable produce of the mine. These roastings again are smelted with a variety of fluxes, and in different states of purification, until they are ready for refining.
Here are roasting furnaces, dull and black; huge brick tubes with swollen ends; others built in, and ready for ignition. Everywhere, we see pigs of lead, sometimes lying about in reckless confusion, at others, neatly packed in square stacks. Now, they bring us to a
huge circular oven, with at least half-a-dozen firmly closed iron doors, and as many glowing caves; and a swarthy man, armed with an iron rake, swinging open one of the iron doors with a ring and a clatter, we look in upon a small lake of molten silver, fuming, and steaming, and bubbling. The iron rake is thrust in, and scrapes off the crumbling crust—the oxide of lead, which has formed upon its surface. The silver fumes and flashes, and a white vapour swims in the air. The swarthy man swings the iron door to with a clang, takes us by the arm, and bids us look through into a dark cavity, and watch the white drops which fall at intervals like tiny stars from above. This is the quicksilver evaporated from the heated silver in the furnace, which passes through the chimney into a kind of still, and is restored to its original condition.
And what is the result of all this skill and labour? We find that the average produce of the Saxon mines is from three to four ounces of silver to the hundred pounds’ weight of ore; and that the mines about Freiberg yield annually nearly four hundred and fifty thousand ounces of silver. We find further that the total mines of the Erzgebirge-Kreis—“circle of ore mountains”—of which those of Freiberg form a portion, produce a total of seven hundred and twenty thousand ounces of silver every year; besides from four hundred to five hundred tons of lead, one hundred and forty tons of tin, about thirty tons of copper, from three thousand five hundred to four thousand tons of iron, and six hundred tons of cobalt. They are rich also in arsenic, brimstone, and vitriol, and contain, in no inconsiderable quantities, quicksilver, antimony, calamites, bismuth, and manganese. Even precious stones are not wanting; garnets, topazes, tourmalines, amethysts, beryls, jaspers, and chalcedonies having been found.
A shrewd old workman tells us, with a proud satisfaction, that when Napoleon’s power was crushed, and Saxony had to pay the penalty of her adhesion to the French conqueror, in the shape of various parings and loppings of her already narrow territories—that Prussia gloated with greedy eyes, and half stretched out an eager hand to grasp the Erzgebirge and their mineral riches. “Aber,” exclaims he with a chuckle, “die sind noch Sächische, Gott sey dank!” “But they are still Saxon, thanks be to God!”
All things considered (the Australian diggins included), we came to the conclusion, from our small experience of Saxon mines, that
there are more profitable, and even more agreeable occupations in the world than mining—pleasanter ways, in short, of getting a living, than digging for silver in Saxony, or even for gold in Australia.
CHAPTER XV.
a lift in a cart.