A MENTAL FORECAST OF A BUSY SCENE. 39
myself
how it would appear a few months hence, when all these uninteresting
preliminaries were finished. I saw, in mental vision, the
crushing-house built of iron and wood; the solid iron pillars
supporting the roof, constructed in England and sent out so as to be
erected with as little delay as possible. Behind the house, again,
upon the bank above, are the stone-crushers, from which the broken
quartz is conducted into the stamping machinery by a series of shoots.
The ore, the picture shows me, is being rapidly delivered into the
stone-crushers along two different inclined tramways ; the one from the
north, from the South Indian mines, a mile and three-quarters away; the
other from the south, bringing down the Glenrock quartz. Although
reduction will be proceeding under one roof, that roof covers two
completely distinct sets of machinery, each consisting of two batteries
of ten heads of stamps each. I can therefore imagine them in full work,
with the thunder of forty heavy stamps incessantly pounding upon their
ponderous anvils. Then I could fancy the two powerful turbines, driven
by the column of water falling from a height of 120 feet, and capable
of working either independently or together as may be necessary. On
the lower platform are the four buddies. In these the semi-liquid mass
is being churned and manipulated, so that the heavy particles may be
deposited, and the light earthy matter allowed to pass away. What
Flickr
Stumbleupon
Scribd
