Polytechnic Association. 609 



three deep, and mounted on small cast-iron wheels, this car being on 

 the elevator. "When the car is filled, it is let down to the floor and run 

 out along the track in front of the boilers, the furnaces of which, 

 from the immediate contiguity of the fall, are thus very conveniently 

 fed. Formerly the wood was simply thrown down into the building 

 from the freight cars, and the amount of kindling material produced 

 thereby is spoken of as something amazing. At some little distance 

 from the boilers is an apparatus comprising a wooden tank, two feet 

 wide, two deep and twenty long, with a drum at each end about 

 twenty-four inches in diameter. This is used in an operation to 

 which the wire ropes are subjected once a month, for the double 

 purpose of preventing corrosion and of keeping them in a supple and 

 flexile condition. The rope, when under treatment, is wound upon 

 one drum, with one end-portion extending through the trough and 

 attached to the other drum. The latter being rotated, draws the 

 rope longitudinally through the trough, the rope unwinding from 

 the first drum as fast as wound upon the second. The trough is half 

 or two-thirds filled with hot tar, with which has been incorporated 

 about five per cent, by volume, of tallow. While the rope is passing 

 through the mixture, an operator scrubs it thoroughly with a wire- 

 brush, thus forcing the material well among the strands or metal 

 fibers. Of course, this provides an air-and- water-proof coating, the 

 lubricating character of which, furthermore, enables the strands to 

 move more easily when bent upon each other, thereby very much 

 reducing the wear and abrasion incident to use. Near by, also, is 

 the blacksmith shop, devoted to the making and repair of the iron 

 work required about the establishment, and employing six men in 

 the daytime and two at night. Being above ground, it differed little 

 from any ordinary smithy, and I mentally remarked the contrast, in 

 point of picturesqueness, between it and the blacksmith shop I saw a 

 year or two since in the New Almader quicksilver mine, in Cali- 

 fornia. That was two hundred and fifty feet below the surface, and 

 was approached through five times that length of subterranean ways. 

 The fires of two forges lit with a dull glow the gray rock, veined 

 with crimson cinnabar streaks, and the sparks from two anvils 

 showered around the brawny smiths, until they seemed veritable 

 sons of Vulcan. In this as in that of the Yellow Jacket, and indeed 

 of almost all well conducted mines, the smiths work in alternate 

 parties, the fire on the forges being seldom extinguished from one 

 month's end to another. 



The stamp-mill, to which I have already referred, is about three 

 [Inst.] 39 



