METALS AND THEIR ORES. 63 
high westerly dip, and the vein is six feet wide. The ores are galenite 
and blende, of which only the former is utilized at present. There isa 
force of twenty-five men employed to mine, raise, sort, and crush the 
ore, which is sent to New York to be smelted and to be resolved into 
lead and silver. Prof. Seely’s assay of the galenite shows that it contains 
of silver to the ton of 2000 lbs., ninety-four ounces, eleven pennyweights, 
and five grains, or nearly eight pounds. 
This mine was first worked in 1826. It has been occasionally worked, 
but never so energetically as at present (1870). There is machinery on 
the ground worth $50,000, including one steam-engine of eighty horse- 
power, a second of fifteen, a twenty-four stamp mill and Cornish crushing 
rolls, capable of crushing a ton of rock in ten minutes. During the past 
winter the amount of ore dressed to seventy per cent. of lead has aver- 
aged one barrel per day. In the spring, and at present, this rate of pro- 
duction has been doubled. The actual selling price is $113 per ton, or 
$55 for the silver and $58 for the lead. 
This mine has also supplied zinc-blende in abundance. No use could 
be made of it, as, until recently, there were no furnaces in the country 
capable of reducing it. Not long since 100 barrels of this zinc ore were 
sold to parties in New Jersey for $6 each, whereas they should have 
brought as much as $20. Those who have zinc-blende in abundance 
would do well to save it, and watch the market prices given for it. 
A mile east of Madison station, on the Portsmouth, Great Falls & Conway Railroad, 
not far from the north-east corner of Silver lake, galena has been exploited at several 
points upon the same mineral belt. This has been proved for as much as three eighths 
of a mile, within which distance three openings have been made upon it by as many 
different parties. At the northernmost, known as the ‘‘ Burke property,” the most 
work has been done, two shafts having been sunk to the depths of 30 and go feet 
respectively. The next opening, going southward, is known as the ‘‘ Banks shaft,” 
and is 45 feet deep. The next, called the ‘‘ Hoyt shaft,” is down 27 feet. The ground 
occupied by these three companies is no more than should have been consolidated 
into one mining property. The vein, so called, is a mineralized band in the ferrugi- 
nous gneiss of the country, evidently persistent in its occurrence, and believed by some 
to be the extension of that at the well-known Madison lead mine, which lies four miles 
to the south-west. The vein strikes N. 15° E., and, like most bedded veins, has a varia- 
ble dip, ranging in this from 45° to go° W., at most points nearer the latter. Its sub- 
stance is quartz, white and gray, spotted frequently with a soft greenish-yellow magne- 
sian mineral. The ores are galenite, blende, and pyrites, preponderating apparently 
