On the National Importance of Mineral Possessions, and the Cultivation
of Geological Inquiry.
The importance of the metallic ores and other mineral substances,
considered as instrumental in the advancement of national prosperity,
is obvious to every one. In announcing that a certain country
possesses extensive and skilfully worked mines, either of coal, of
iron, copper, tin, lead, or other of the numerous ores, we at once
proclaim her wealth in terms that all must understand. They are
readily perceived to be essential to the prosecution of the various
arts and manufactures that flourish in the present age, and to form a
fruitful source of wealth to the country in which they happen to
abound.
The facility, however, with which one nation can procure these from
another, owing to the free intercourse and system of exchange
subsisting between them, which thus enables a country, barren itself
in mineral treasures, to attain a respectable rank among the wealthy
nations of the earth, occasions us to assign to the possession of them
within our own soil, an importance infinitely less than is due. We are
disposed to consider them too much in the light of mere articles of
export, and valuable, chiefly as commodities of exchange: or, if we do
not bestow too much consequence on their exchangeable value, we at
least allow too little to their intrinsic worth. Yet, when we assign
to the products of the mineral kingdom their proper rank in the scale
of national blessings, they take their place beside that of a fertile
soil, or a salubrious climate,--blessings we may still enjoy, though
we adopt the exclusive and selfish policy of ancient Egypt, or of
modern China. In short, we should value these mineral productions, not
as we value one of our great staple commodities, tobacco, on account
of its nominal price, but on their own account--not by the gain
derived from parting with, but that derived from keeping them. Nor
should we confine our solicitude to procuring now, on the easiest
terms, the means of supplying our immediate wants; but with a more
comprehensive view, look forward and provide for the period, when the
growing wants of the unborn millions destined to people our almost
boundless territory, will create a demand for these substances, in
quantities which either foreign nations, with comparatively exhausted
mines, will be unable to supply, or to purchase which, we must
appropriate that produce (the produce of a large portion of the
surface of the soil,) which should be devoted to the more legitimate
purpose of furnishing to its inhabitants the means of subsistence and
employment.
We are apt too to forget, that were it possible, with or without the
intervention of war, for a people to be cut off from all intercourse
with other nations, and to be destitute themselves of mineral
resources, that their very existence, at least as a civilized people,
would be next to impossible. That the different degrees of refinement
attained by the human race in different periods of antiquity, are
marked with a precision sufficiently distinct, by their acquaintance
with the metals, and the uses to which they are susceptible of being
applied: and, that nearer our own times, the aboriginal inhabitants of
our own continent were found existing in a higher or lower stage of
progress towards civilization, in proportion to their knowledge or
their ignorance of these substances.
To trace a little further, the connection of mineral wealth with
national prosperity, we may observe, that the wants of a people may be
said to be mainly supplied, when they are provided with food, clothing
and habitation, and they are better or worse supplied, according to
the nature and abundance of the materials they possess for the
fabrication of these, and the perfection of the instruments they may
have, proper for fashioning them into convenient forms. The nation
which can command for its subsistence, in greatest profusion, the
varied vegetable and animal productions, of whatever clime, that
constitute the necessaries and luxuries of life; whose well stored
magazines of merchandize furnish, for its apparel, the finest fabrics
and the richest stuffs; and which can boast, for its places of
dwelling, the most commodious, splendid and durable edifices, with the
various conveniences that necessarily keep pace with improvements in
these, may be said, physically considered, to have well nigh attained
the pinnacle of prosperity. Let us observe in what manner the mineral
substances to which we have alluded, contribute to accomplish this
end. Let us suppose man rude and barbarous, for the first time, to be
presented with that best of gifts--iron; and for the sake of
proceeding, let us anticipate the slow progress of events, and give it
to him in the form into which he would soon convert it--that of the
simplest implements. Instantly his habits are changed: his wandering
mode of life is abandoned: his abode becomes fixed, and he himself
devoted to labor. In a little time, the rugged face of nature is made
to assume a softened and a brightened aspect, and to smile upon him
with a novel beauty. The ample and ancient forest, his former range,
falls with continued crash, day after day, beneath the repeated stroke
of his axe: on all sides, broad and sunny plains open around him: the
broken soil heaved up to the influence of the atmosphere by his
plough, or stirred with his hoe, begins to yield in abundance the
fruits of the earth; the prostrate timber rent asunder by his wedge,
and hewed, sawed, or chiseled into appropriate shapes, furnishes
materials of building: these, arranged and secured by means of pins or
nails of the same material, rise in orderly succession one above
another, till there is erected for his habitation a comfortable and
commodious dwelling:--while the surrounding fields, now that he has
ample food in store for their support, are overspread with the flocks
he has domesticated, to provide for his use unfailing supplies of
clothing and subsistence. Already he has made himself acquainted with
the rudiments of agriculture, architecture and manufactures, and has
laid the foundation of the useful arts.
Compare his condition now, with that in which he existed before his
acquaintance with the uses of iron: contrast the savage of the forest
with the cultivator of the field--the scanty and precarious sustenance
of the one, with the regular and abundant subsistence of the
other--the covering of skin, with the garment of wool--the hut, with
the commodious dwelling--the hardships attendant on one mode of life,
with the numerous conveniences that follow as a necessary train to the
other; and from this rough-drawn and very imperfect outline, there may
be formed some slight idea of the revolution effected in the condition
of man, even by a limited acquaintance with the simpler uses of this
single, though most important of all the mineral substances.
It is scarcely necessary to direct the reader's attention to the
accession to the comforts, the conveniences, the elegancies of life,
or to the vast acquisitions to the power of man, which, in successive
periods of time, have been gained by a more extended and familiar
acquaintance with the various properties of iron, and the innumerable
purposes to which, with increased advantage, human ingenuity has
discovered it to be applicable. It is sufficient to turn the eye on
some great and populous city--the seat of busy manufactures;--on a
Sheffield, a Manchester, or a Birmingham,--those nurseries of the
arts, and workshops of the world: to view its immense establishments
in active operation, and look on the tens of thousands of the
industrious they maintain and employ. It is sufficient to hear the
eternal din and incessant roar of stupendous machinery, laboring in
the service of man, in obedience to laws and impulses he has given to
it;--to see its multifarious and complicated parts performing each its
allotted movement;--swinging heavily, with measured time, and force,
or shooting to and fro with regulated rapidity; revolving slowly, and
lazily around, or flying with inconceivable velocity, and whirling
smoothly, each in its proper sphere,--moving, all in harmonious
cooperation, to effect some beneficial end, with a precision
unerring--as if impressed with the intelligence and volition of
animated being. It is sufficient, to be convinced of the great
acquisition we have in iron, to witness the wondrous effects of the
steam-engine,--that giant machine, which performs to our hands the
labor of countless hosts; which enables us to penetrate into the
secret recesses of the solid earth, and to master the ocean, and the
very elements themselves. "It rows, it pumps, it excavates, it
carries, it draws, it lifts, it hammers, it spins, it weaves, it
prints;"--that masterpiece of human skill, which, in the language of
the celebrated Doctor Black, is the most valuable present ever made by
philosophy to the arts.
Again, when we behold materials of every known description, in the
rude state in which nature presents them, before they have been
subjected to the first elementary process in their manufacture, and
look upon them, after they have undergone the various mechanical
operations to which they are successively submitted, and are produced
in a finished state, of every form and fashion that can minister to
the wants, or gratify the caprice of man, we almost doubt their
identity, and are at a loss which most to admire, the utility of the
substance by means of which so wonderful a change has been effected,
or the sagacity of him, who moulds and constructs it into complicated
machines, to which he gives motion and almost life, to work out his
own advantage. And, lastly, when there is displayed before us the
endless variety of manufactured goods and wares;---of instruments, and
implements, and utensils;--of machines, and engines, and mechanical
contrivances to abridge human labor; when we gaze on the immense
fleets that wait to receive them, in an hundred ports of some great
manufacturing country, or survey the seas whitened with the sails, and
heaving beneath the burthens of whole navies, busied in transporting
them to distant and expectant nations, and even piloted in their
course, through the wide and trackless waste of waters, with unerring
accuracy, by a property peculiar to iron,--we turn from the
contemplation more fully persuaded of the extent to which we are
indebted to this single metal, to which in truth, if we except the
spontaneous productions of nature, (of little comparative value
unwrought,) we owe every thing we possess.
We are enabled, perhaps, by this review, hasty though it has been, of
the numerous and varied uses of iron, better to estimate its real
worth, and we do not hesitate to assign to it, an importance among the
elements of national prosperity of the highest order, and to consider
it, what truly it is, the most valuable of all acquisitions. We look
upon the country rich in the possession of its ores, with feelings of
rivalry, and are prompted to emulate her in acquiring this true
species of substantial wealth. Our national ambition is excited to
grasp at this mighty instrument of power, and our energies should be
roused into ceaseless activity, until, by untiring assiduity in
surveying and exploring our own tempting regions, guided by the lights
borrowed from geological science, we succeed in enlarging our mineral
domain to at least an equal extent.
Before proceeding to the consideration of any other of the substances
we have proposed to treat of, it may not be improper, here, to annex
(more in the form of notes) a few facts illustrative of the history of
the very interesting mineral which has occupied our attention in the
preceding remarks.
Of all the metals, iron is the most widely and universally
distributed, being confined to no particular formation as its
repository, but discoverable in every class of rocks, from the oldest
granite to the newest alluvial deposit. It is also the most abundant
of the metallic ores: whole mountains composed of it occurring in the
northern parts of the globe. As instances of the great masses in which
it is found, it may be mentioned, that the sparry iron ore found in
the floetz limestone in Stiria, has been worked to an immense extent
and with great profit, for more than twelve hundred years: and, that
the Rio mountain in the island of Elba, five hundred feet in height
and three miles in circumference, known at an early day to the Romans,
(in which mines are still wrought,) is wholly composed of specular
iron ore. Though this metal, as we have stated, exists in every kind
of rock and soil, it has been remarked, that the dark oxides or its
richest ores are confined exclusively to primitive rocks. The ores are
generally, it has also been observed, of a purer quality, and more
abundant in northern regions. What are denominated iron-stones, or the
ores containing a larger proportion of earthy matter, are found in the
secondary strata, and exist commonly in great abundance in those
accompanying coal.
Although iron was known in the remotest ages, and was in use among
some particular nations even at a time anterior to the deluge,
according to Moses, (Gen. iv. 22) we are not to presume it was in
general use:
"Him Tubal nam'd, the Vulcan of old times
The sword and falchion their invention claim;
And the first smith was the first murderer's son."
Nor must we forget, that the useful arts, and among them the art of
working metals, were lost to the generality of mankind, in consequence
of that universal calamity. Gold, silver and copper seem to be the
metals of which the knowledge and uses were earliest recovered after
that period; owing, no doubt, to their being oftener found on the
surface of the earth, or in the beds of streams--to their more
frequent occurrence in the metallic state, and to the greater ease
with which they are separated from their ores. Copper, though greatly
inferior to iron, yet possesses considerable tenacity, and sufficient
hardness to furnish a substitute in the construction of cutting
instruments, and either pure, or alloyed with tin to increase its
hardness, constituted the materials of which were formed the swords,
hatchets, and artist's tools of many ancient nations. The arms and
tools of the American nations were similarly made, and by means of
this awkward substitute, the Mexicans and Peruvians made considerable
advances in manufactures and the arts--greater perhaps than any other
people unacquainted with the use of iron. The inconvenience
experienced by these nations from their ignorance of this metal, and
the awkward expedients to which in consequence they had recourse,
afford an important lesson in teaching us what estimate to make of the
value of a substance, which, its very requisiteness to every common
purpose of life so familiarizes us with, as to cause us daily to pass
by with little or no notice. The evils which we are taught would
inevitably follow its loss, make a deeper impression of its
importance, than all the advantages, manifold though they be, which in
heedless enjoyment, we are continually deriving from its possession.
With no better substitute for iron tools in cutting stone, than the
sharp edged fragments of flint,--without carriages, or machines of any
kind,--how tedious and laborious must have been the work of separating
from the quarry, of shaping, of transporting to a distance, and
elevating to a proper height, the huge blocks of stone with which the
Mexicans and Peruvians contrived to erect their temples and other
public edifices!--structures that have commanded the admiration of
more modern nations. What toil and what time must have been expended
in the operation of dividing a single block, by means of continued
rubbing of one rock against another! What pains and what efforts of
ingenuity must it have cost the artizans of Montezuma, without the aid
of nails, to form the ceilings of his palace, by an arrangement of the
planks so artificial, as mutually to sustain each other! With what
eagerness the Peruvian would have accepted nails of iron, to fasten
together the pieces of timber he employed in building, and have laid
aside as worthless, the cords of hemp his necessities compelled him to
apply to that purpose! What an acquisition would have been even a
common needle, in the place of the thorn, to which, in the fashioning
of their cotton garments, they were obliged to have recourse!
Iron differs from the metals we have mentioned as earliest known, by
its occurring rarely in a metallic state, and being then most
difficult of fusion: its uses were in consequence a later discovery.
The methods, besides, of disengaging it from the ores in which it is
usually found in nature, are far from being obvious, consisting of
various processes,--such as pounding, roasting, smelting in contact
with charcoal, to render it fusible; requiring too, additional
heatings and hammerings to render it malleable, and a still more
complicated process to convert it into steel. Yet it was in use, as
has been remarked, in very remote ages: Moses, in Deuteronomy, makes
frequent mention of it. He speaks of mines of iron, and alludes to
furnaces for melting it; and from the circumstance of swords, knives,
axes, and tools for cutting stone, constructed of that metal, being
mentioned by the same authority, we are entitled to conclude that the
art of tempering and converting it into steel was also known. The mode
of tempering it was certainly known to the Greeks as early as the days
of Homer; for that poet borrows from the art some of his similes. Thus
in the Oddyssey:
And as, when arm'rers temper in the ford
The keen-edged pole-axe, or the shining sword,
The red hot metal hisses in the lake,
So in his eye-ball hiss'd the plunging stake.
It is by its conversion into steel, that we are furnished with a
material retentive of an edge, and adapted to cutting the hardest
substances, and are enabled to fabricate that most important class of
implements, edge-tools, all of which, from the ponderous pit saw to
the finest lancet, are formed in part with this metal.
It was not, however, until very late in modern times, that we may be
said to have acquired absolute dominion over this individual of the
mineral kingdom, so as to be able at command, to press it into
service, whatever may be its locality, in relation to the surface of
the earth or its interior. For, before the improvements made in the
steam-engine by the discoveries of Watts, we were limited in the power
of availing ourselves of the known existence of iron, however abundant
in any particular spot, by the necessity of the concurrence of a
stream of water in the same location with that of the metal, as a
means of impelling the machinery for producing the blast requisite in
the operation of smelting. Since those improvements, steam power may
be employed wherever the ore and fuel is found in sufficient
quantities to authorize the erection of furnaces; and the manufacture
of iron has in consequence, especially in Great Britain, risen into
great importance. The annual produce of smelted ore in that kingdom,
is estimated now to be about seven hundred thousand tons.
We cannot avoid suggesting here, to the owners and workers of coal
property in Virginia, the propriety of investigating the strata
through which they necessarily pass in their mining operations, with
reference to the discovery of argillaceous iron-stone, with more
minuteness than hitherto they have done--if indeed, (which we are
inclined to doubt,) their attention has been in any degree directed to
such examination. It is from this species of iron-stone, accompanying
coal-strata, that Great Britain derives at least nineteen twentieths
of the metals which she possesses in such abundance, and to which, in
connection with its convenient location in the immediate vicinity of
the fuel necessary in its reduction, she owes her towering eminence as
a manufacturing country. The coal formation of Virginia contains the
same clays, shales, sandstones and slates, and these are characterized
by the same vegetable impressions that mark the series in other
countries. And may we not reasonably ask, why should we hastily
conclude this usual concomitant of the coal strata in England,
Scotland, France and Germany, to be wanting here; or rather, why may
not we hope to find it equally abundant in our own coal district. We
are induced to urge this suggestion the more, from the circumstance,
that this species of ore presents in its external characters, so
little indicative of its metallic nature or chemical composition, that
but for its greater weight, it might well escape the notice of an
inexperienced or unobservant eye, unless arrested by some such hope as
we have been induced to hold out. Even in England, where from its
great abundance it might have been expected to be generally better
known, instances have occurred in some districts, of its being
wastefully misapplied, through ignorance, to the common purpose of
mending the roads. The immense benefits that would result from success
attending a research directed to this object, as well to the city of
Richmond, as to a few fortunate individuals, are too obvious to
require comment. It is sufficient to remark, that it would prove an
abundant source of individual wealth, and would, in connection with
her other great advantages and increasing facilities of
transportation, be the means of elevating the metropolis of Virginia
to an exalted rank in the class of large cities, and enable her to vie
in importance with the proudest seat of manufactures, or the most
extensive emporium of commerce.
It was our intention, as our title announces, to have passed rapidly
on, and glanced at the history, uses, and national importance of coal,
and some of the most valuable of the other mineral substances, as well
as to have pointed out in a short series of remarks, some of the
advantages to be derived from the cultivation and pursuit of
mineralogical and geological inquiries in connection with this
subject; but we have loitered on the way, and the contracting limits
of our paper admonish us to hasten to a close. We may at another time,
if leisure permit, and if on reflection, we deem our endeavors at all
likely to attract attention to subjects which have too long been
almost universally neglected, again resume, after our own fashion, a
subject which under better management, could not fail to prove
interesting as well as instructive.