Page 38 Note * Professors Jameson, Fleming, Traill, and Dr. Hibbert have alike expressed themselves as having formed great expectations of this vein ; Professors Fleming and Traill who minutely inspected the workings, have also alike expressed themselves as having had reason to be utterly dissatisfied wig the mode in which it had been on every occasion wrought, and they alike assign the repeated ill-success which has attended the working of this mine to the incapacity and ignorance of the "captain of the mines."
Having examined this mine and its minerals on more than one occasion, having inspected the mode of working during a late attempt, and having had very special opportunities of testing the capacity of the management as regards the two points of following a vein, and recognising mineral species, I have to say that the opinion I had to form agrees with that of the afore-mentioned gentlemen, in at least the two first of the above three particulars. Having also had to come to the conclusion that the Cornish captains of mines who come to Scotland to exercise their function are, with hardly an exception, incapable, and so act a very detrimental part to all judicious mineral-enterpriset I conceive it to be fitting when such an opportunity as the present occurs, to direc, attention to the fact in its double bearings.
I shall therefore quote the opinions of Professors Fleming and Traill, and give my own experience.
Professor Traill, who visited the mine in 1803, during the time it was being wrought, writes :-" The miners had penetrated to a depth of about twenty-two fathoms, and were but little incommoded with water. At that time there were but two Cornish miners, besides a Cornish Captain of the Mines, engaged, and these were chiefly occupied in giving directions to the natives employed to work in the mine. The want of men sufficiently skilled in mining was certainly one cause of their failure. The principal manager was totally ignorant of the art of mining. There was iron in abundance all round. The roads near the mine were all paved with hematites, which the Cornish miners who were there did not seem to regard as of any value, or indeed almost to know. Some of them imagined it was a new kind of copper-ore. Some pieces of bog iron ore which I had collected, were called copper spume by one of them ; hence it is evident we cannot trust much to the mineralogical opinions of the generality of miners"
Dr. Fleming, who visited the mine in 1808, thus writes :-" The principal vein is said to be nearly fourteen feet broad ; none of the shafts have been sunk deeper than fifty fathoms. Brown hematite is found towards the surface in great quantity, and nearly occupies its whole breadth ; the sparry ironstone appeared in plenty towards the bottom of the mine, aud constituted the veinstone.
The copper-ore was sent to England, where the best of it, it was stated, was sold for £70 per ton. From the month of June, 1802, to tha month of June, 1804, four hundred and seventy tons of this iron-ore were sent from this mine to Swansea. Still it is said that the mining company sustained a very considerable loss. Nor ought this to be a matter of surprise. The persons who have been appointed to conduct the work have frequently been men ignorant of the art of working mines, and of the nature and vaIue of the ores which they met with. Many fruitless attempts have been made to find out new veins in the neighbouring rocks, even where no promising appearances presented themselves, whilst the depth and extent of the principal vein appear only to have been superficially examined. The manager or captain of the mine, who was still at Sandlodge, did not seem to be acquainted either with the composition or value of the starry ironstone or of the hematite, though by far the most common productions of the vein, The difficulty of working the sparry ironstone or veinstones of the copper-ore was stated to me as the reason for abandoning the mine.
Mining operations under such management must generally terminate in confusion and disappointment."
Doubtless !
" Considerably" more than £33,000 expended in two years on a mine, the deepest galleries of which are but twenty two fathoms, in which they have no water to raise,- sor an adit level carried it all off-and in which a fourteen foot vein is solidly plugged at furface with fine hematites, below with a "veinstone of sparry iron ore !"
How could they have done it ?
Only in the way in which they did do it ; by making roads of the fine hematites, and leaving the " veinstone" in sparry heaps at the pit mouth ; for, hear Hibbert, writing in 1842:-" Adjoining to the shore is a pavement strewed over with the produce of the veins. Hematites and bog iron ore have made the road as black as Erebus, and caused it to resemble the vicinity of a smelting furnace. The mineralogist will find some amusement in examining the ores which lie in heaps near the old shafts ; these have been by Mr. Bruce judiciously preserved ; they present satisfactory indications of the contents of the vein, and may afford a criterion of the hopes to be entertained from any future prosecution of the mining operations of Sondlodge." This peculiar phraseology is perhaps intended to be explained by his going on to tell us of the loss sustained during the drawing the £33,000 in two years.
Dr. Hibbert was not given to jokes.—that above is the only one in his book ; geology and mineralogy were to him alike full of seriousness ; but surely the staid writer inwardly smiled while making that-to him-unusual " find" among the heaps of ores ; and we cannot but speculate as to whether the "find " of a new mineral there would, in all respects, have entailed more gratifiaction.
It was certainly not amusement which the writer experienced when he first saw a great heap of that "sparry veinstone "—hand-dressed during the extraction of the chalcopyrite; but it is fitting that he should express his satisfaction in being able to say that the knowledge of Cornish captains of mines has taken a great stride since the day when the hematites and the sparry veinstone were first rejected. Seventy-four years is perhaps a long time for one stride, but it is a beginning ; on the second occasion on which he visited Sandlodge, he found that Mr. Bruce's judiciousness had been incontestably proved ; the mines were again being worked, and the heaps of "fine hematites" having been sold, as much thereof as could be grubbed up had been removed.
The average Cornish Captain has therefore now attained to a knowledge of Limonite, -but not of Chalybite-not two strides ! Chalybite is still above him ; and be seems determined to possess himself of it in no way, for he has buried it ; the tirring and rock from a new shaft having been thrown over it, leaving merely so much exposed as shows the heap still to be there.
When a freshly-broken characteristic specimen from the said heap was submitted to the person locally in charge of the late workings, it was with confidence, but seeming indifference, pronounced to be "a stuff called felspar."
I wish it to be distinctly understood, that in the above, I allude to such miners only as come to Scotland.
