SULPHUR AND ITS EXTRACTION. 483 



Gunong Api, in the Banda Islands, and attempts have been made to 

 collect it for exportation. It is said, however, that the labor of as- 

 cending the mountain is too great to render the speculation profitable. 



Sulphur is one of the most important products of Formosa. 

 When taken from the mine, the ore is boiled in iron pans till it as- 

 sumes a treacly consistence. This is constantly stirred till every im- 

 purity is separated from the sulphur, which is then ladled out into 

 wooden tubs, shaped like sugar-loaves. In these it is left to cool, and 

 the conical cakes are freed from the tubs by the simple process of 

 knocking out the bottoms of the latter. 



Sulphur is procurable in salable quantities from the mountains 

 around Ta-chien-la, in Western China ; the inhabitants of the ravines 

 may often be seen engaged in the manufacture of matches of the Guy 

 Fawkes pattern, which they split from a pine plank with a spokeshave, 

 and tip with sulphur. During his penniless residence at Na-erh-pa, 

 Baber generally used these sulphur chips to procure a flame. 



Near the hamlet of Tappets, about three miles northeast of Apt, 

 in the department of Vaucluse, France, is a bed of sulphur-ore yield- 

 ing about twenty to twenty-five per cent. It consists of a sulphur- 

 impregnated, marly limestone, and accompanies the lignite-beds of 

 the tertiary system. The deposit is neither very extensive nor very 

 thick. 



The sulphur-deposits of Krisuvik, in the south of Iceland, belong 

 to the recent solfataric group, and, though often compared with the 

 Sicilian mines, bear very little analogy to them. The sulphur occurs 

 in a fine state, intimately associated with earthy impurities, as a super- 

 ficial layer of no great depth, but having recuperative powers that 

 render them practically inexhaustible. They are now the property of 

 an English company, and give promise of being worked to advantage 

 in the future. 



The sulphur-deposits of India, according to Professor V. Ball,* 

 are unimportant, and inconveniently situated. Near a village called 

 Sura-Sany-Yanam, between the mouths of the Godaveri, in Madras, 

 small heaps of sulphur are occasionally collected in the dried-up mar- 

 gin of a tidal swamp, where the mineral appears to result from deoxi- 

 dation of gypsum by contact with organic matter. Another trifling 

 deposit is reported to occur at Ghizri Bandar, near Karachi. A con- 

 siderable mine, worked by adits and chambers, exists at Sunnee in 

 Cutchi, Beloochistan, and affords the chief supply for Candahar. Sul- 

 phur is obtained in some abundance from near a hot spring called Pir 

 Zinda, in the Soree Pass of the Suleiman Hills, Afghanistan. A " vast 

 quantity " of sulphur is said to occur at Hazara, North Afghanistan. 

 On the southern flanks of the Gunjully Hills, in the Kohat district of 

 the Punjaub, a large amount of sulphur is constantly being deposited 

 as a result of the decomposition of pyritiferous alum-shales. As much 



■* " Economic Geology of India." 



