blind alleys which are beneath the Rue du Cadran. While they were
taking their candle to the bottom of these blind alleys, Jean Valjean
had come to the entrance of the gallery upon his way, had found it
narrower than the principal passage, and had not entered it. He had
passed beyond. The policemen, on coming out from the Cadran gallery,
had thought they heard the sound of steps in the direction of the belt
sewer. It was, in fact, Jean Valjean’s steps. The sergeant in command
of the patrol lifted his lantern, and the squad began to look into the
mist in the direction whence the sound came.
“Jean Valjean saw these goblins form a kind of circle. These mastiffs’
heads drew near each other and whispered.
“The result of this council held by the watch-dogs was, that they had
been mistaken, that there had been no noise, that there was nobody
there, that it was needless to trouble themselves with the belt sewer.
[Sidenote: NARROW ESCAPE FROM CAPTURE.]
“The sergeant gave the order to file left towards the descent to the
Seine. If they had conceived the idea of dividing into two squads
and going in both directions, Jean Valjean would have been caught.
That hung by this thread. It is probable that the instructions from
the prefecture, foreseeing the possibility of a combat and that the
insurgents might be numerous, forbade the patrol to separate. The
patrol resumed its march, leaving Jean Valjean behind. Of all these
movements Jean Valjean perceived nothing except the eclipse of the
lantern, which suddenly turned back.
“Slow and measured steps resounded upon the floor for some time, more
and more deadened by the progressive increase of the distance; the
group of black forms sank away; a glimmer oscillated and floated,
making a ruddy circle in the vault, which decreased, then disappeared;
the silence became deep again; the obscurity became again complete;
blindness and deafness resumed possession of the darkness; and Jean
Valjean, not yet daring to stir, stood for a long time with his back
to the wall, his ear intent and eye dilated, watching the vanishing of
that phantom patrol.
“He resumed his march, and after a time felt that he was entering
water, and that he had under his feet pavement no longer, but mud.
[Sidenote: CAUGHT IN A QUICKSAND.]
“It sometimes happens, on certain coasts of Brittany or Scotland,
that a man, traveller or fisherman, walking on the beach at low tide
far from the bank, suddenly notices that for several minutes he has
been walking with some difficulty. The strand beneath his feet is
like pitch; his soles stick to it; it is sand no longer, it is glue.
The beach is perfectly dry, but at every step he takes, as soon as
he lifts his foot, the print which it leaves fills with water. The
eye, however, has noticed no change; the immense strand is smooth and
tranquil, all the sand has the same appearance, nothing distinguishes
the surface which is solid from the surface which is no longer so;
the joyous little cloud of sand-fleas continues to leap tumultuously
over the wayfarer’s feet. The man pursues his way, goes forward,
inclines towards the land, endeavors to get nearer the upland. He
is not anxious. Anxious about what? Only he feels somehow as if the
weight of his feet increased with every step which he takes. Suddenly
he sinks in. He sinks in two or three inches. Decidedly he is not on
the right road; he stops to take his bearings. All at once he looks at
his feet. His feet have disappeared. The sand covers them. He draws
his feet out of the sand; he will retrace his steps, he turns back,
he sinks in deeper. The sand comes up to his ankles; he pulls himself
out, and throws himself to the left; the sand is half leg deep ; he
throws himself to the right; the sand comes up to his shins. Then he
recognizes with unspeakable terror that he is caught in the quicksand,
and that he has beneath him the fearful medium in which man can no
more walk than the fish can swim. He throws off his load if he has
one, he lightens himself like a ship in distress; it is already too
late; the sand is above his knees.
[Sidenote: QUICKSANDS ON THE COAST OF BRITTANY.]
“He calls, he waves his hat or his handkerchief; the sand gains on
him more and more; if the beach is deserted, if the land is too far
off, if the sand-bank is of too ill repute, if there is no hero in
sight, it is all over; he is condemned to enlizement. He is condemned
to that appalling interment, long, infallible, implacable, impossible
to slacken or to hasten, which endures for hours, which will not end,
which seizes you erect, free and in full health, which draws you by
the feet, which, at every effort that you attempt, at every shout
that you utter, drags you a little deeper, which appears to punish
you for your resistance by a redoubling of its grasp, which sinks the
man slowly into the earth while it leaves him all the time to look at
the horizon, the trees, the green fields, the smoke of the villages
in the plain, the sails of the ships upon the sea, the birds flying
and singing, the sunshine, the sky. Enlizement is the grave become a
tide and rising from the depths of the earth towards a living man.
Each minute is an inexorable enshroudress. The victim attempts to sit
down, to lie down, to creep; every movement he makes inters him; he
straightens up, he sinks in; he feels that he is being swallowed up;
he howls, implores, cries to the clouds, wrings his hands, despairs.
Behold him waist deep in the sand; the sand reaches his breast; he is
now only a bust. He raises his arms, utters furious groans, clutches
the beach with his nails, would hold by that straw, leans upon his
elbows to pull himself out of this soft sheath, sobs frenziedly; the
sand rises. The sand reaches his shoulders, the sand reaches his neck;
the face alone is visible now. The mouth cries, the sand fills it;
silence. The eyes still gaze, the sand shuts them; night. Then the
forehead decreases, a little hair flutters above the sand; a hand
protrudes, comes through the surface of the beach, moves and shakes,
and disappears. Sinister effacement of a man.
“This fatal mishap, always possible upon one or another coast of the
sea, was also possible, thirty years ago, in the sewer of Paris.
[Sidenote: QUICKSAND IN THE SEWER.]
“The water filtered into certain underlying, particularly friable
soils; the floor, which was of paving-stones, as in the old sewers,
or of hydraulic cement upon concrete, as in the new galleries,
having lost its support, bent. A bend in a floor of that kind is a
crack, is a crumbling. The floor gave way over a certain space. This
crevasse, a hiatus in a gulf of mud, was called technically _fontis_.
What is a fontis? It is the quicksand of the sea-shore suddenly
encountered under ground; it is the beach of Mont St. Michel in a
sewer. The diluted soil is, as it were, in fusion; all its molecules
are in suspension in a soft medium; it is not land, and it is not
water. Depth sometimes very great. Nothing more fearful than such
a mischance. If the water predominates, death is prompt, there is
swallowing up; if the earth predominates, death is slow, there is
enlizement.
“Can you picture to yourself such a death? If enlizement is terrible
on the shore of the sea, what is it in the cloaca? Instead of the
open air, the full light, the broad day, that clear horizon, those
vast sounds, those free clouds whence rains life, those barks seen in
the distance, that hope under every form, probable passers, succor
possible until the last moment; instead of all that, deafness,
blindness, a black arch, an interior of a tomb already prepared, death
in the mire under a cover! the slow stifling by the filth, a stone box
in which asphyxia opens its claw in the slime and takes you by the
throat; fetidness mingled with the death rattle; mire instead of sand,
sulphuretted hydrogen instead of the hurricane, ordure instead of the
ocean; and to call, and to gnash your teeth, and writhe, and struggle,
and agonize, with that huge city above your head knowing nothing of it
all!
“The depth of the fontis varied, as well as its length, and its
density by reason of the more or less yielding character of the
subsoil. Sometimes a fontis was three or four feet deep, sometimes
eight or ten; sometimes no bottom could be found. The mire was here
almost solid, there almost liquid. In the Lunière fontis, it would
have taken a man a day to disappear, while he would have been devoured
in five minutes by the Phélippeaux slough. The mire bears more or less
according to its greater or less density. A child escapes where a man
is lost. The first law of safety is to divest yourself of every kind
of burden. To throw away his bag of tools, or his basket, or his hod,
is the first thing that every sewer-man does when he feels the soil
giving way beneath him.
[Sidenote: PERIL OF JEAN VALJEAN.]
“Jean Valjean found himself in presence of a fontis. A yielding of the
pavement, imperfectly upheld by the underlying sand, had occasioned a
damming of the rain-water. Infiltration having taken place, sinking
had followed. The floor, broken up, had disappeared in the mire.
For what distance? Impossible to say. The obscurity was deeper than
anywhere else. It was a mud-hole in the cavern of night.
“Jean Valjean felt the pavement slipping away under him. He entered
into this slime. It was water on the surface, mire at the bottom. He
must surely pass through. To retrace his steps was impossible. Marius
was expiring, and Jean Valjean exhausted. Where else could he go? Jean
Valjean advanced. Moreover, the quagmire appeared not very deep for
a few steps. But in proportion as he advanced, his feet sank in. He
very soon had the mire half-knee deep, and water above his knees. He
walked on, holding Marius with both arms as high above the water as he
could. The mud now came up to his knees, and the water to his waist.
He could no longer turn back. He sank in deeper and deeper. This mire,
dense enough for one man’s weight, evidently could not bear two.
Marius and Jean Valjean would have had a chance of escape separately.
Jean Valjean continued to advance, supporting this dying man, who was
perhaps a corpse.
“The water came up to his armpits; he felt that he was foundering; it
was with difficulty that he could move in the depth of mire in which
he was. The density, which was the support, was also the obstacle.
He still held Marius up, and with an unparalleled outlay of strength
he advanced; but he sank deeper. He now had only his head out of the
water, and his arms supporting Marius. There is in the old pictures of
the deluge a mother doing thus with her child.
“He sank still deeper, he threw his face back to escape the water, and
to be able to breathe; he who should have seen him in this obscurity
would have thought he saw a mask floating upon the darkness; he dimly
perceived Marius’s drooping head and livid face above him; he made
a desperate effort, and thrust his foot forward; his foot struck
something solid: a support. It was time.
[Sidenote: SAVED AT LAST.]
“He rose, and writhed, and rooted himself upon this support with a
sort of fury. It produced the effect upon him of the first step of a
staircase reascending towards life.
“This support, discovered in the mire at the last moment, was the
beginning of the other slope of the floor, which had bent without
breaking, and had curved beneath the water like a board, and in a
single piece. A well-constructed paving forms an arch, and has this
firmness. This fragment of the floor, partly submerged, but solid,
was a real slope, and, once upon this slope, they were saved. Jean
Valjean ascended this inclined plane, and reached the other side of
the quagmire.
“On coming out of the water, he struck against a stone, and fell upon
his knees. This seemed to him fitting, and he remained thus for some
time, his soul lost in unspoken prayer to God.
“He rose, shivering, chilled, infected, bending beneath this dying
man, whom he was dragging on, all dripping with slime, his soul filled
with a strange light.”
XXXVI.
MERCURY.
PROPERTIES AND PECULIARITIES OF MERCURY, OR
QUICKSILVER.—AMALGAMATION.—CINNABAR.—WHERE IT IS
FOUND.—ALMADEN AND OTHER MINES.—CURIOUS CUSTOMS AT
IDRIA.—MODES OF WORKING.—HUANCA VELICA.—QUICKSILVER MINES IN
CALIFORNIA.—CALIFORNIA LAWSUITS. - WONDERFUL PROPERTIES OF SPANISH
TITLES.—AN UNHAPPY ACCIDENT.—PRACTICAL VALUE OF AN EARTHQUAKE—AN
UNDERGROUND CHAPEL.
One of the most valuable mineral substances is the one which is known
as Mercury, or Quicksilver. It has many properties peculiar to no
other metal. At an ordinary temperature it is a fluid. At thirty-nine
or forty degrees below zero (Fahrenheit) it becomes solid, and
resembles lead. At six hundred and sixty-two degrees (Fahrenheit) it
boils, and is thrown out on an invisible, transparent vapor, like
steam. Before it reaches the boiling point, if it is exposed to the
air at a high temperature, it absorbs oxygen, and is converted into
red oxide. Strong nitric acid will absorb mercury. Acids affect it
somewhat, but not to any great extent. It mixes with lead, zinc, gold,
and silver, and it may be separated from them by a chemical process,
and be made perfectly pure. Sometimes the cheap metals are used to
adulterate mercury; but the effect of this mixture is to produce an
amalgam, whose adulterations can be easily detected. It is found
sometimes in a native or pure form, and sometimes amalgamated with
silver; but these instances are so rare that deposits of this sort
cannot be relied upon as sources of supply.
Sometimes mercury is found in its natural state in cavities in the
earth, so that it may be dug up in considerable quantities. The chief
source of supply, however, is in the form of cinnabar. Cinnabar is
said to be an East Indian name, originally given to the mixture of the
blood of the dragon with that of the elephant, and afterwards applied
to the common ore of mercury. On account of its beautiful red color,
known as vermilion, this ore has been worked in various parts of the
world for more than three thousand years. Some of the Roman historians
refer to the use of mercury in amalgamating gold; and the mines of
Almaden, in Spain, which still produce cinnabar, are known to have
been worked for thousands of years before the Christian era. Cinnabar
consists of eighty-six per cent. of mercury, and fourteen per cent. of
sulphur. It forms beds and veins in certain rocks, and in many places
the rocks near the veins will have cinnabar distributed through them.
When finely ground it makes a brilliant red paint, and, as before
stated, is known as vermilion; and it is said that the Indians of
California first called the attention of the Spanish settlers to the
presence of quicksilver by their use of cinnabar in ornamenting their
faces.
[Sidenote: CINNABAR MINES.]
The most important mines of mercury in the world are those of Almaden,
in Spain; New Almaden, in California; Idria, in Austria; and Huanca
Velica, in Peru. There are smaller mines in Hungary, Bohemia, Bavaria,
China, Japan, Brazil, and a few other countries. Formerly the Almaden
mines, in Spain, controlled the quicksilver market of the globe. The
owners of the mines could affect the price of the article just as they
pleased. If they raised or lowered it, the other mines were obliged to
lower or raise their prices.
Almaden is situated in New Castile, about fifty miles north of
Cordova. Apart from its mining peculiarities, it possesses no feature
of attraction, as it consists simply of one long street, built on a
ridge of rock, where the cinnabar ore is found. The town has a mining
school, half a dozen or more ordinary schools, three hospitals, and a
liberal supply of churches, and about ten thousand inhabitants. Until
about the beginning of the present century the mines were worked by
convicts, who were compelled to wear chains, and were kept at such
severe toil that they never lived long. Later, however, the mines have
been worked on a voluntary labor system, and employ about five or six
thousand persons. Each laborer is required to toil only six hours a
day. A longer exposure than this to the quicksilver is considered
injurious to the health. The annual production of the Almaden mines is
about two million pounds of pure metal.
[Sidenote: MINES IN AUSTRIA AND PERU.]
The mines of Idria, in Austria, are about thirty-two miles northeast
of Trieste. The town is a small one, its population being less than
five thousand. Its annual production is about three hundred thousand
pounds. A single shaft has been sunk to a depth of about one thousand
feet. The excavations are made through horizontal galleries extended
from this shaft. The descent into the mine is accomplished partly by
steps cut in the rock and partly by ladders. About five hundred miners
are employed. They preserved a peculiarity by wearing a uniform of
their own, and, though the occupation is unhealthy, the appointment
of a miner at Idria is greatly sought. The mines have been worked
about four hundred years, and are the property of the government. The
product of the other smaller mines of this metal throughout Europe
is so inconsiderable as to have no material effect on the market.
The same may be said of the quicksilver mines of China, Japan, and
Australia.
The Peruvian quicksilver mines have been worked since the beginning
of the sixteenth century. At the great mines of Huanca Velica the
ores are found in sandstone and shales along a belt of ground or rock
about four hundred feet thick. Most of the excavations are open ones,
and appear as if laid out without much plan or method. Accidents
frequently occur, and at one time two hundred workmen were buried by
the caving in of the earth. The total annual yield of the Peruvian
mines is about four hundred thousand pounds.
Mercury is found in many places in Mexico, but no mines of it are now
worked, the deposits not being sufficient to pay for the exploitation.
The quicksilver mines of California were first opened and worked in
1845, by one of the Spanish settlers. It was known that for a long
time the Indians had made use of cinnabar to ornament their faces, and
it was found that they had made pits fifty or sixty feet deep into
the mountain in search of it. The first attempt made by the Spaniards
in these Indian mines was to work the cinnabar ore for silver; but
no silver could be found. The war of 1846 stopped the working of the
mine, and nothing was done after that until 1848, when operations were
recommenced on a large scale. A company of Mexicans and English worked
the mines from 1850 to 1858, when they were stopped by the United
States court on account of a lawsuit about the title.
[Illustration: QUICKSILVER MINES OF NEW ALMADEN.]
[Illustration: BLASTING IN THE QUICKSILVER MINES.]
[Sidenote: NEW ALMADEN IN CALIFORNIA.]
The New Almaden mines are situated about twelve miles from San José,
an important town fifty miles south of San Francisco. It was my
pleasure to visit these mines several years ago, and learn something
of the mode of working them. A small party of us took the train from
San Francisco, and proceeded to San José, whence we travelled in
carriages over an excellent road, which undulated just enough to make
it interesting. Unfortunately for us, at the time of our visit, no
work was in progress in the lower mines in consequence of one of those
lawsuits for which the region is famous. Consequently we did not go
down into the mine itself, but were obliged to content ourselves with
an inspection of the reduction works.
I may remark, by the by, in speaking of these lawsuits of the New
Almaden mine, that it is a peculiar dispensation of providential care
or human cupidity to afflict every valuable piece of property in
California with a lawsuit. I would not wish to assert that there is a
dishonest man in all California, as the assertion might be followed
by an assault on the writer by some enthusiastic resident of the
Golden State; but I do say that the result of my observation was, that
nothing could be found in California worth the having but that some
claimant under a previous title would be sure to present himself.
The New Almaden mines, as soon as their value became known, found
plenty of claimants under Spanish titles and Indian titles. A great
part of their revenue has been swallowed up in legal proceedings.
When all these questions shall have been settled finally, I presume
some claimant will turn up who holds a title given him by Columbus or
Queen Isabella, and possibly by the founder of the Christian religion.
Titles in California can go back to a wonderfully distant period, and
they are always so indefinite as to afford holding-ground for a legal
anchor.
[Sidenote: FRAUDULENT TITLES.]
I do not think a single mine or very valuable property in California
has ever escaped legal difficulties. A rocky island in San Francisco
Bay was pointed out to me as the locality of a Spanish claim. It had
stood very quietly unoccupied, and was not considered worth ten cents
for any practical purpose. By and by the government wished to use it
as the site of a fortification. Immediately there arose a claimant
under a Spanish title, and he came very near compelling the government
to pay him a handsome price for the property. I presume, if a volcanic
island should be thrown up in the middle of the bay, and somebody
should take possession of a piece of it, somebody else would have
a Spanish or Indian title to it, or would possibly produce a title
from his Satanic Majesty, who had caused the island to be made for
the especial benefit of the claimant, in return for valuable services
rendered in times past or present.
On reaching the mines, we proceeded at once to the Reduction Works,
and were politely shown around by Mr. Butterworth, the superintendent.
We amused ourselves trying to lift flasks of quicksilver, and were
nearly choked with the fumes arising from the places where the ore
was being reduced. The reduction works are very simple affairs. They
consist of piles of brick with furnaces beneath them, and with large
cavities, down which the ore is placed. The ore is roasted, and the
mercury rises in vapor, and is condensed. The furnaces are, most of
them, forty feet long, eight feet wide, and ten feet high, and fixed
near each other. Each furnace is divided into compartments, the fire
occupying one at the end and a little below the compartment, where the
ore is placed. The heat does not come in direct contact with the ore,
but is driven through it by means of flues.
[Sidenote: THE CONDENSING CHAMBERS.]
There are several Condensing Chambers, so called, each of them eight
feet long, four feet wide, and about six feet high. The chamber where
the ore is placed is connected with the condensing chambers by means
of a flue. Eight or ten tons of ore are placed in the furnace at one
time. Seven other condensing chambers succeed the first, and the fumes
are passed through one after the other, and finally into a tank, where
they are condensed in water. Each chamber is so constructed that the
mercury will flow into the iron tank, where it is collected and put in
flasks. About sixty hours are required to extract the mercury from a
charge of ore.
In spite of all precautions a great deal of mercury is lost. At the
time of our visit, new furnaces had been constructed to take the place
of some old ones, which had been torn down a year or two before.
They showed us an immense cavity in the earth, where the quicksilver
had accumulated and settled. Its weight had made places for it in
some instances, while in others the ground was thoroughly saturated.
These deposits were discovered quite by accident, and I was told that
several tons of quicksilver had been taken from them.
One of our party became aware of the peculiar properties of
quicksilver in a way that was not at all satisfactory. At the tank
where the material was waiting to be placed in the flasks there were
several gallons of mercury, and we amused ourselves by forcing our
hands beneath the surface. The sensation was peculiar, and to most of
us entirely new. Our friend was wearing a ring on one of the fingers
that he thrust into the metal. The quicksilver allied with the gold,
and suddenly it was discovered that the ring had turned white. His
attention was called to it by our guide, who suggested that the ring
must be removed instantly and heated. It was taken from the finger,
not without considerable difficulty, placed upon a shovel, and heated.
A goodly portion of the mercury, which had adhered to it, was driven
away; but I believe the ring subsequently tumbled to pieces, and
became valueless.