Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/325

 COPPERMINE RIVER and of tail 3 inches ; greatest circumference 3 inches ; the abdominal plates were 150, and the subcaudal 42, with 4 pairs of bifid scales near the apex. It prefers dark and moist places, and feeds upon lizards, frogs, mice, and small birds. It is more dreaded than the rat- tlesnake, as it gives no warning of its prox- imity ; it never attacks man except in its own defence ; as with other venomous snakes, a very slight blow is sufficient to kill it. From its thick body and short tail, it is slow and clumsy in its motions, and it cannot ascend trees. It is also called " chunkhead " and " deaf adder." According to Dr. Holbrook, it is found from western New England to Florida, and from the Atlantic to the borders of the Alleghanies. COPPERMINE RIVER, in British America, rises in Lake Providence, about lat. 65 N., Ion. 112 W., flows a little W. of N. to just beyond the Arctic circle, when it bends ab- ruptly W., after which its course is a little E. of N. to its mouth in the Duke of York's archipelago, an inlet of the Arctic ocean, at lat. 67 40' N., Ion. 115 37' W. It flows through a very uneven region, and forms several lakes and many rapids and cataracts, but is navigable by canoes and boats. Its length is about 300 m. Fur-bearing animals, such as the bear, the fox, and the. ermine, abound along its banks. The river derives its name from a copper mine discovered near its mouth. The region through which the Cop- permine flows was first explored in 1821 by Sir John Franklin. Its mouth was the first point on the Arctic coast of America visited by Europeans. COPPER MINES. Copper occurs in nature both in the metallic slate, when it is known as native copper, and mineralized or combined with oxygen, sulphur, and various other for- eign substances, constituting what are called the ores of copper. (See COPPER. ) This metal and its ores occur, like most other metals, both disseminated in beds of various kinds of rock, and in veins or lodes, which are deposits in fissures intersecting previously formed rocks. Copper and copper ores are found in rocks of very various geological ages. The crystalline schists of the eozoic age contain in many places both interstratified ore beds and lodes carrying the ores of this metal. This is true of the rocks of the great Appalachian system, which abound in deposits of copper ores in various localities, from Newfoundland through Quebec and Ver- mont into Virginia, theCarolinas, Tennessee, and Georgia. The copper ores of the Rocky moun- tains and those of Cuba and Chili are also in crystalline rocks ; and the same is true of those of the Ural, of Norway, Sweden, Cornwall, and Devonshire. The great deposits of native copper found on the shores of Lake Superior, however, belong to a series of sandstones and conglomerates, interstratified with contempo- raneous bedded trappean rocks, which rest upon the crystalline Huronian schists, and, be- ing overlaid by the upper Cambrian rocks of COPPER MINES 321 the New York system, may be regarded as of the lower Cambrian age. Rich ores of copper occur in the palaeozoic series in the so-called Shawangunk grit of Ulster co., New York. In Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, deposits of copper ores are found in sand- stones of the mesozoic age, and somewhat sim- ilar deposits occur in various parts of Europe. The well known mines of Mansfeld in Ger- many, in which a sulphuretted ore is finely disseminated through black bituminous schists, are examples. There are important mines in Siberia and the Ural mountains. The pro- duct of Russia is estimated at 4,660 tons a year. The Swedish copper mine of Fahlun, in Dalecarlia, is supposed to have been worked for nearly 1,000 years. It was long extremely productive, yielding in the beginning of the 17th century nearly 4,000 tons annually, but it has since greatly declined. There are mines in other parts of Sweden, where in 1855 there were 15 smelting works, producing 1,990 metric tons (2,205 Ibs.) of pig copper; in 1863, 16 works, producing 2,222^ tons; in 1868, 12, producing 2,410 tons. The product for 1869 was 2,600 tons; for 1870, 2,193 tons. The exports of crude copper in 1867 amounted to 1,928 tons; in 1868, 2,320; in 1869, 2,076; and in 1870, 1,957. From Norway there were imported into Great Britain, in 1867, 6,007 tons of ore, worth 34,209, and 193 of mi- wrought or partly wrought copper; in 1868, 6,871 tons of ore, worth 66,995, and 216 of copper ; in 1869, 6,589 of ore, worth 154,508, and 105 of copper ; in 1870, 1,911 of ore, worth 9,110, and 100 of copper; in 1871, 4,299 tons of ore, worth 26,520, and 97 of copper. In the .German empire copper is mined at Hol- zappel and elsewhere in Nassau ; in the Eifel mountains, and at Eschweiler and Stolberg, near Aix-la-Chapelle ; in Westphalia, and in the Hartz mountains, as well as at Mansfeld, in Prussian Saxony. In 1869, 217,415 metric tons of ore were obtained in the Zollverein, valued at about $1,300,000 ; in 1870, 207,381 tons, worth $1,250,000. The product of the smelting works in 1869 was 5,129 tons of cop- per, valued at over $2,000,000, and 4,730 tons of brass of about the same value; in 1870, 4,797 tons of copper, worth about $1,800,000, and 4,411 of brass, of about the same value. The value of sulphate of copper in 1869 was about $270,000, and in 1870 about $285,000. In 1869 the imports of copper and manufac- tures of the same amounted to 12,240 tons; the exports were 7,413 tons. In Prussia alone 156 copper mines were in operation in 1869, employing 6,691 miners, and producing 214,507 tons of ore, valued at about $1,275,000; 13 smelting works, employing 1,408 hands, and producing 4,448 tons of crude copper, worth about $1,750,000 ; 23 establishments, with 658 hands, producing 3,713 tons of copper manufac- tures, valued at $1,775,000 ; 77 establishments, with 1,381 hands, producing 4,722 tons of brass, worth about $2,025,000 ; and 2 manufactories