NATURAL SCIENCE NEWS. 



83 



for the benefit of the community. 



In the fifteenth century the Teu- 

 tonic Knights received the right to 

 collect the fragrant gum, and it 

 was they who first conceived the 

 idea that the veins must run under 

 the land, and so commenced to 

 mine for it, as well as to fish for it. 

 Then the Government eventually 

 took hold of it, and today the priv- 

 ilege is leased to the firm of Stan- 

 tien & Becker, who pay the Gov- 

 ernment about $250,000 a year for 

 the privilege. 



With the progress of modern 

 times the old-time worker waiting 

 for storms disappeared, and in his 

 place came large boats, equipped 

 with experienced divers, who could 

 go to the bottom and detatch the 

 rich deposits. The reef was found 

 to extend 600 feet in length and 

 400 feet in width, and to be a mass 

 of almost solid chunks of amber. 

 What had furnished the richest 

 finds of other days was seen to be 

 only the fringe of the great mass. 

 Storms let the divers work only 

 about nine months in the year. 



The diver's dress differed from 

 the regular suit because the amber 

 seeker had to work in a recumbent 

 position. The helmet was fiixed 

 sloping forward, instead of erect 

 upon the shoulders, and the gog- 

 les were placed at an angle look- 

 * ing downward instead of straight 

 ahead. On his back he carried a 

 curious reservoir or box which was 

 supplied with air by the pumps in 

 the boat, and was fitted with a 

 valve arrangement to give just one 

 respiration of air at a time. An- 

 other special pipe carried off the 

 carbonic acid gas as exhaled. 

 This reservoir and its attachments 

 were rendered necessary by the 

 hard breathing produced by the 

 heavy work, and the necessity for 

 the diver to stay below and carry 

 away whatever pieces of amber he 

 might start to loosen, because, if 

 left, the sea would possibly carry 

 the amber away. Some of the 

 lumps obtained required four di- 

 vers to loosen them and get them 

 to the surface. The work was so 

 hard that even in the depth of 

 winter, when the water is very 

 cold, the men would come to the 

 surface bathed in prespiration. 



Then came the day of steam 

 dredges. In 1891 the product of 

 the reef was 201,500 kilograms of 

 amber. In that year the opera- 

 tions on the reef were discontinu- 

 ed, because of the exhaustion of 

 the supply under the water, and 

 the land mines, which had only 

 been partially worked, received 

 closer attention. 



In the early days of the mines, 

 fifty years ago, there were endless 

 troubles among the men, and dis- 

 putes over the rights to certain 

 patches between the Government 

 and the landowners. -'Moonlight" 

 amber was then as omniprest a 

 fact as "moonlight" whiskey in 

 Tennessee. Then the Govern- 

 ment passed a very stringent law 

 against digging for amber under 

 any circumstances until the forma- 

 tion of the present company, with 

 its modern methods and appli- 

 ances. 



In the mines were encountered 

 greater dangers than those of the 

 storm and undertow. All the veins 

 ran out toward the sea; presuma- 

 bly to the reef. The amber was 

 found mixed with heavy grey-blue 

 clay, and above and around this 

 clay was sand, so that a miscalcu- 

 lation of position, a chance blow 

 with a pickaxe or spade, or the 

 clearing away of a rock either by 

 the men in the tunnel, or at the 

 bottom of the ocean by a heavy 

 storm, might at any moment pro- 

 duce a weak spot into which the 

 water might soak and soak, then 

 drip and drip, until suddenly the 

 corridors would be flooded from 

 end to end. The corridors were 

 shored up with timbers, Govern- 

 ment inspectors were appointed, 

 and great pumps were kept going 

 day and night, for as the men were 

 always working at the far ends of 

 each corridor, on new ground, it 

 was only eternal watchfulness 

 which gave even the promise of 

 safety. 



In spite of all vigilance, in Feb- 

 ruary, 1 89 1, just such a fissure 

 was made in the ocean bed, and a 

 flood poured in beyond the power 

 of the pumps to cope with. It oc- 

 cured at night. If it had taken 

 place during the working hours 

 not a man in the corridors could 

 have escaped. Search proved that 

 the main fissure was above the us- 

 ual high-water mark, and that an 

 unusually high storm had driven 

 the water up to it after a three 

 days' gale. This fortunately is the 

 only recorded disaster in the mine 

 up to date. 



The miners go down into the cor- 

 ridors carrying a pickaxe. Strap- 

 ped at their belt is a curiously 

 shaped basin, in which the small- 

 er pieces are piled, the large pieces 

 and the drift being carried away 

 on small trucks similar to the "jen- 

 ny truck" in a coal mine. The 

 contents are hoisted to the surface 

 by elevators. When a miner leaves 

 the corridor, he is as thoroughly 



searched as the workers in the dia- 

 mond mines at Kimberly. 



When the amber has been wash- 

 ed and the pebbles have been pick- 

 ed out it is passed into revolving 

 drums with a certain amount of 

 sand, which scrubs off the outer 

 surface or matrix. It is then sort- 

 ed into about 100 varieties, accord- 

 ing to color, shape, cloudiness or 

 texture. Flat pieces are for smok- 

 ers' goods, round pieces for beads 

 and fragments for varnish. The 

 classification has been in a meas- 

 ure changed of recent years. 



An American has discovered a 

 process by which the small pieces 

 of amber may be welded together 

 and made into slabs, so that the 

 size of a piece is no longer a great 

 commercial factor. The size used 

 to be an important element in the 

 price. Now it is as easy to make 

 a pipe mouth-pieee ten yards long, 

 (as it was formerly to make one one 

 or two inches long. At the World's 

 Fair a cigarette mouth-piece was 

 shown that was a spiral over 

 50 inches in length; its price pre- 

 vious to the discovery of the new 

 mode of manipulating the gum 

 would have been simply fabulous, 

 if, indeed, it could have been pro- 

 cured at all. 



The pale pieces of amber go to 

 the pipe makers of^ Turkey, Egypt 

 and the Levant; the light, whitish- 

 colored to the ornament makers of 

 Italy, the full yellow to the traders 

 in Africa and the South Seas, while 

 the finest grades of clear, clouded, 

 green (rarest of all), gray and blue 

 are distributed among the United 

 States, England, France and Ger- 

 many. In the old days all clear 

 amber was from the sea, and all 

 clouded from the mines, but now 

 both vaiieties come from the mine. 



In 1893 there was harvested 

 about 405,000 pounds of amber, 

 valued at $500,000. The Prussian 

 expert, Herr Van Muden, is on 

 record as stating that the supply 

 is nearly at an end, and that the 

 mine may become unworkable at 

 any time. In the history of the 

 mine only one foreigner is known 

 to have received permission to in- 

 spect the workings and he was an 

 American, from whom much of the 

 information given in this article 

 was obtained. 



The question remains, what is 

 amber? Men of science say that 

 ages ago, long before the time 

 when children were baptized with 

 the cross of the Hammer of Thor; 

 long before King Olaf carried the 

 Gospel of the White Christ into 

 the Norseland, and Earl Eric car- 

 ried at his side the mighty sword 



