prase from Belmont's Lead Mine, in St. Lawrence County, N. Y.
The
compact quartzite of Sioux Falls, So. Dak., has been quarried and
polished for ornamental purposes. It is known and sold as " Sioux Falls
Jasper," and is the stone referred to by Longfellow in his " Hiawatha"
as being used for arrow-heads, when he says:
"
At the doorway of his wigwam Sat the ancient Arrow-maker; In the land
of the Dacotahs, Making arrow-heads of jasper, Arrow-heads of
chalcedony."
This
stone is susceptible of a very high polish and is found in a variety of
pleasing tints, such as chocolate, cinnamon, brownish-red, brick-red,
peach-blow, and yellowish. Polishing works run by water-power have been
erected at Sioux Falls, So. Dak., and so ingeniously are they contrived
that pillars, pilasters, mantels, and table-tops are now made here as
cheaply as abroad. Probably $30,000 worth of the polished material was
sold during the year of 1887. The pilasters of the German American Bank
and the columns in the doorway of the Chamber of Commerce building, in
St. Paul, Minn., are of this beautiful jasper. It is likely to become
one of our choicest ornamental stones, and is especially effective in
combination with the Minnesota red granite. Its great tensile strength,
its high, almost mirror-like polish, the facts that when polished, if
used for tiling, the stone is not slippery, one of the properties that
quartz possesses, and that large pieces can be quarried out, and its
pleasing variety of colors, all combine to render it one of the most
desirable of building stones. The mills are of sufficient capacity to
polish $100,000 worth a year. In view of the unequaled facility with
which it can be prepared for use, it could be employed to advantage for
tablets, blocks, columns, tiles for fine interior and monumental work,
and in the more artistic branches of stone-work. Some good results have
been obtained with the sand-blast on polished surfaces. The material
exists in almost unlimited quantities ; the quarries already opened are
450 feet long, 100 feet wide, and 60 feet deep at the lowest point.
More than 1,200 carloads were shipped from one quarry alone during the
year of 1887, and the
