Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/515

Rh said to me after a visit to a still, "I feel braced up." There is no better sanitarium than the pineries of the South, and the turpentine workers are as strong and healthy a set of fellows as you can find anywhere.

The manner in which naval stores are obtained may be briefly described as follows: The dip, or crude turpentine, is emptied into a big copper still and boiled. The steam is passed through a "worm"—a coil of pipe similar to that used in a liquor distillery



and on reaching a certain point the condensation drops into a tank, and is the spirits of turpentine of commerce.

The residuum left after the spirit of turpentine has distilled over is the rosin of trade. This is drawn off by a tap at the bottom of the still, and strained first through a wire cloth and then through a coarse cotton cloth, and run into a trough, from which it is ladled into barrels.

In the several turpentine States, so called, there are laws regulating the inspection of turpentine, defining its grades, the size and kind of barrel, and the manner of branding. The chief points of these regulations, which are more or less the same in the several Southern States, are: turpentine must be branded "S," or "H," for soft or hard; the soft turpentine barrels to weigh two