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Show 580 WESTERN WILDS. which they use on occasion as a Buddhist temple. One dry- goods house sold $ 350,000 worth in twelve months, and a grocery firm over $ 400,000 worth in the same time. There are two planing mills and four foundries and machine shops. The smelters ship over $ 1,000,000 in bullion every month. And as this is the test of a mining region, let us finish our chapter on Leadville by a visit to the Grant Smelter, which is among the largest in the world. The first objects of interest, after you pass through the yard gate, are the great piles of dirt and stone, as you would call them, but which are really piles of valuable ore from the mines. Every load is driven on the scales and weighed as it comes in, and then assigned a place according to its value, which has been carefully ascertained by an assay made by the experts in the employ of the smelting com-pany. Passing into the building, you observe long rows of large bins full of ore, each properly numbered the number indicating the qual-ity of the ore. Passing these bins, you encounter an army of men wheeling ore, limestone, coal, coke, and slag ( which is the cooled refuse of the smelted ore), in all directions, without any seeming order or plan. Further on you observe men shoveling the ore into a sort of hopper, and on the other side of the hopper wheeling away fine dirt, or ore that looks like sand. These hoppers, with huge iron rollers underneath, are called crushers, and the ore is passed through these crushers to pulverize it so it will smelt more easily. There are three of these crushers. We now see that the men who were wheeling various materials about the buildings, leave their loaded wheelbarrows in front of these furnaces. They are just now charging or filling this one, and we will watch the process. On the first is charcoal ; on the second, limestone ; on the third, ore; on the fourth, coke; and on the fifth, slag. Ob-serve he dumps the coal in first, then the limestone, and so on. Other wheelbarrow loads are brought and dumped into the furnace until it is full ; then the door is shut, and the whole mass begins to melt. You ask why all these different materials are used? Well, the coal and coke are of course put in to furnish the heat required ; the lime-stone and slag are put in to act as a flux. ( This word literally means a flow.) These substances assist in the fusion or melting, and also in separating the different metallic substances that are combined in the ore. The silica or sand in the ore unites with the lime, and thus frees the silver and lead which are contained in the, ore. Other min-eral substances also unite with the flux, leaving the silver and lead free from the baser metals. At the bottom of the furnace you see several |
