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Updated: May 9, 2025
The accidental striking together of two flints produced a spark; observation taught men to obtain a similar result by the same process; a great step in advance was made, and the future of humanity was assured. M. Dupont picked up in the Chaleux Cave a kidney-shaped piece of iron pyrites, hollowed out in a peculiar manner, which had evidently been used to obtain the precious spark.
And to keep them from telling any of the villagers where they had found the pyrites, they were to be deprived of water all day long. By night their tongues would be too swollen for speech. For they had been sentenced to the No Shade torture, as well; their heads would be exposed all day long to the burning sun itself.
"And how I came bustin' into the cabin with a pan full of iron pyrites and black sand," chuckled Union Mills, continuing the reminiscences, "and how them big gray eyes of his nearly bulged out of his head. Well, it's some satisfaction to know we did our duty by the young fellow even in those little things."
Can these flames be attributed to the decomposition of water, entering into contact with the pyrites dispersed through the schistose marl? or is it inflamed hydrogen that issues from the cavern of Cuchivano?
But if we thus succeed to illustrate the theory of the earth by the natural history of those particular strata, we have but one step farther to make in order to bring all the other parts of the earth, whether stratified or not, into the most perfect consistence with the theory; now this step, it will be most easy to make; and I shall now mention it, that so the reader may keep it in his view: Pyrites is a sulphureo-metallic substance, which cannot be produced by means of water, a substance which the influences of the atmosphere decomposes or separates into its elements, and which even our imperfect art may be considered as able to produce, by means of fusion in our fires.
Accordingly, he had taken a preliminary Treatise on Mineralogy in hand, and puzzled his brains in order to converse learnedly. "My land," quoth he, "is Silesia, and has a great bed of sulphuret of pyrites."
Wall and Sawkins mention pyrites and gypsum as being found: but we saw none, as far as I recollect. All these must have been carried up from a considerable depth by the force of the same gases which make the little mud-volcanoes. Now and then this 'Salse, so quiet when we saw it, is said to be seized with a violent paroxysm.
But, from the connection of pyrites with mineral coal, it is to be proved that the origin of this metallic body had been fusion; and then it will appear, that all other mineral bodies must have been more or less in fusion, or that they must have been consolidated by means of heat, and not by any manner of solution or aqueous infiltration.
The methods of amalgamation differ very much, and a book might be filled with a description and discussion of the processes used at different quartz-mills in California. Sulphurets. Many auriferous quartz veins contain considerable quantities of sulphurets or pyrites of iron, copper and lead, and their presence prevents amalgamation, and thus causes a great loss of gold.
A porphyritic trap of this latter kind, passed in one of the dikes into a most curious hornstone, perfectly white, with a waxy fracture and pellucid edges, fusible, and containing many grains of quartz and specks of iron pyrites.
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