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by a table corresponding to the number of charges used in precipitating the chloride.

The bullion having been thus assayed, is then delivered to the melter and refiner, to be refined, and made of the legal standard for coinage.

Native gold being more or less alloyed with silver, and the latter metal being almost unnecessary in gold coin, it is customary to free the gold from the greater part of it. This operation is termed refining. California gold contains on an average eleven per cent. silver-the covering power, however, of gold is such, that nitric acid, a ready solvent of silver, will only remove the smallest fraction of it. One pound of the gold is therefore melted up with two pounds of pure silver, which being thoroughly mixed, is ladled out into cold water, whereby the mixed metal is divided into small pieces, termed granulations. Each particle of gold is thus surrounded by two particles of silver, and in this shape presents a large amount of surface, so that when heated in porcelain jars with nitric acid, all the silver, except about one per cent., is dissolved out of the gold. The nitric acid, holding the silver in solution, is then drawn off from the pots by a large gold siphon, and passed into a large vat, partly filled with a strong solution of common salt, when the silver falls down as a white powder, called chloride of silver, insoluble in water. It is next run on filters, which hold the chloride, and let the liquid pass through. The chloride, after being washed for many hours by hot water until perfectly clean, is thrown into leaden lined vats together with granulated metallic zinc, where a violent action takes place, the zinc forcibly seizing the chlorine, and making a solution of chloride of zinc, while metallic silver is left in the form of a gray powder, which, after being washed and filtered, is pressed into large cakes by a hydraulic press, dried by fire, and is again used to refine more gold.

The pure gold, transferred from the bottom of the porcelain pots to a filter, is thoroughly washed from every trace of nitrate of silver, and from its state of fine division, has no metallic appearance, but closely resembles mahogany sawdust. It is then pressed, dried, melted with a sufficient amount of copper to bring it to the legal standard, and cast into ingots or bars, suitable for the manufacture of coin.

The ingots are then passed to the coining department, where they are annealed or heated to redness, to soften them for rolling. They are then rolled out in the "Rolling Presses," in long and thin slips, in which form they are carried to the drawing bench, where they are drawn through plates of the hardest steel, accurately set to reduce the slips to their proper thickness. In the next place, they are passed through the cutting process, and planchets or blancs of the proper size are cut. This operation is carried on with great rapidity, one hundred and sixty planchets being cut out, on an average, per minute. The clippings (as the strips after being thus cut are called) are then folded up and sent back to the melter and refiner, to be again melted up and made into ingots. The planchets are then accurately adjusted and passed through the milling machine. The latter operation is done to raise the edges

of the planchets, to afford protection to the surface of the coin.

The planchets, after being thoroughly cleaned, are ready for stamping. The coining presses are moved by steam-power; each press receives the planchets in a tube from the hand of a workman, and itself slides them, one by one, to a point exactly between the coining dies. There each piece is powerfully impressed and instantly carried away a perfect coin, to be followed as instantly by another. The coins are then counted, weighed and packed, and delivered to the Treasurer of the Mint.

AMOUNT OF AMERICAN COINAGE.

The increase in the coinage of the country has fully kept pace with, if, indeed, it has not exceeded its extraordinary progress in all other respects. The total value of the coinage of the United States, for the first twenty-four years after the establishment of the Mint, from 1793 to 1817, was but $14,198,593 53, while the coinage of 1856 alone amounted to $64,567,142 80 The total amount of the coinage of the United States, to the close of 1856, is as follows:

100.

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THE VOICE-TELEGRAPHS OF MON- avant courier had been I had no idea; but

THE

TENEGRO.

HE electric telegraph is, unquestionably, the most wonderful invention of modern days; and we have reason to feel thankfulness as well as admiration at a triumph of science which enables us to communicate, almost instantaneously, with friends who are separated from us by hundreds or even thousands of miles. We believe, however, it is not generally known that in the art of sending messages with extraordinary celerity and accuracy, the semi-barbarous inhabitants of Montenegro, and some of their Slavonic brethren in the neighboring countries, are in advance of the most civilized nations of Europe, as this mode of conveying intelligence was in use there for ages before the electric telegraph was thought of.

Some years ago I had occasion to pass through the wild mountain region of Montenegro, or the Black Mountains, so named from the dark pine forests that once covered them. This country, though no more than sixty miles in length and thirtyfive in breadth, has preserved its independence for centuries against the subjugators of the neighboring districts, and though, when I visited it, the inhabitants recognized the protectorate of the Russian power, they were not brought to do so by force of arms. They belong to the Greek Church, live in a rude style, and have not attained any high degree of mental cultivation. Even the arts of reading and writing are an unusual accomplishment among them; but, as I have already intimated, they have one peculiarity which must produce a strange effect upon a foreigner traveling in their country, and of which, as witnessed by myself, I am about to give some account.

in one respect this mysterious attendant was very useful, as the best lodging and provisions which the place afforded were always ready for me when I got there. Little did I imagine that the indistinct sounds which I had heard floating about me on the mountain winds, were conveying to distant localities a signalement of myself more exact than that of many a written passport.

On one occasion I had been obliged to send a messenger to a village for the purpose of ordering a mule, as a relay on which to continue my journey. When I arrived there the following morning I found, to my utter dismay, that the animal had been sent to pastures several miles up in the mountains. I am ashamed to say that this piece of information disturbed the equanimity of my temper so much that I spoke too sharply to the owner, telling him that, as it would be quite impossible to send a messenger, and get the mule back from so great a distance before it would be too late to prosecute the journey for that day, I should be obliged to remain for the night where I was, at a serious inconvenience, all in consequence of his inexcusable neglect. He bore the rebuke quite unmoved, and, with a smile assuring me that the mule should be ready at the very hour I had appointed, went into the open air. I followed, and immediately heard the murmur of the wind-voices which had so often before excited my surprise. At first the low moaning sound, of which I could not distinguish one word, seemed to come from a distance; but, on closer examination, I discovered that the tones were emitted by the lips of my host. I was now in possession of a clew to what had so much puzzled me, and with some investigation the mystery was unraveled.

These people possess the power of making their voices, and the words they utter, distinctly audible at distances which, to those who have not witnessed it, must seem perfectly incredible, and thus they carry on conversations from mountain to mountain, as we do face to face. The voice, in this singular method of communication, is not elevated, but, on the contrary, is low, and the words are pro

In traveling over the mountains, or crossing the valleys of Montenegro, I frequently heard mysterious sounds floating around me in the air. They seemed to be a kind of suppressed howl; and what they were, or where they came from, I could not discover. It also frequently happened that when I arrived at one of their villages, I found the whole population prepared to meet me, and coming out to see the stranger, though I had not sentnounced slowly, and with a peculiarly the slightest intimation of my visit; nor would it have been possible, owing to the rapidity of my movements. Who my

drawling accent. Thus they fall distinctly on the ear of the distant interlocutor, although to those standing near the person

speaking, the sounds seem to come from afar. Thus my host, while to me, who stood at his elbow, unintelligible, was saying to the inhabitants of the next village, "Listen to me, friends. High up on the mountain, close to the great beach-tree with the withered branch, my little boy, Janko, is tending my white-footed mule. Tell him to bring it home without delay." The people of the village took up the message; and thus it was transmitted from mouth to mouth till it reached Janko. The white-footed mule was accordingly with me at the proper time.

This method of vocal communication is used for many purposes. If a shepherd feel lonely in the mountain where his flock is feeding, he conveys his voice in the way I have indicated to the air, sure that the winds or echoes will carry it to the ear of some other herdsman, who responds, and then they carry on a conversation across vale and hill, which solaces the solitude of both. Should a traveler be seen passing by of suspicious appearance, who might be an enemy of the country, he is described by the minutest details, in all directions, the winged messengers of the air transmitting the accounts of him from mountain peak to mountain peak, till the whole counry is alive with the news.

This system of throwing their words upon the winds is, above all, important on the frontiers, particularly those toward Turkey, whence acts of aggression often take place. Here, therefore, the shepherds are always on the look-out, and when a troop of Turkish marauders passes the boundaries, and perhaps invades a secluded valley for the purpose of carrying off the cattle, the alarm is instantly given. In a short time the valley swarms with armed men, who hurry down the mountain slopes in pursuit of the enemy, whom they generally overtake and slay, and return in triumph, probably with a few Turks' heads on their spikes. The barbarous custom of cutting off the heads of their foes, and keeping them as trophies of victory, shows the uncivilized, I may say the unchristianized state of these Montenegrins, though they belong to the Greek Church. How often have I wished, in witnessing the wonders effected by the power of the wind-voices, that they might yet be made the means of conveying the Gospel of peace to these valorous but reckless mountaineers!

T

FATHER LE MOINE AND THE

IROQUOIS INDIANS.

HE middle of the seventeenth century

was distinguished for events that foreshadowed a state of things in the civilized world which had no prototype in the history of former ages. These symptomatic elements of revolution and change, however, were not sufficiently developed to excite the alarm of tyrants, and induce them to relinquish their usurpations of the rights of humanity. The divine right of kings to rule the nations, and of popes to rule kings and their subjects, asserted and maintained by each, severally, began to be questioned in high places; and though authority suppressed the free discussion of this monstrous pretension, the conviction of its absurdity was not quenched in the bosoms of the masses, whose enlightened understandings and manly instincts told them that civil freedom and religious liberty are the rightful inheritance of man.

Although the suppressed elements of civil and religious freedom broke forth under the reign of the complaisant Elizabeth, as they were developed in the principles and conduct of the Puritans, Nonconformists, Dissenters, and Independents, until the fabric of the civil and ecclesiastical government was shaken to its center, and its forms changed under the dictator, Cromwell, tyranny did not despair of recovering its dominion, and more effectually subduing the spirit of liberty. The persecutions of the Puritans by Elizabeth and the Stuarts drove many of them from the country, which it was vainly hoped would dishearten those that remained, and subdue them into a spirit of submission to the rule of their oppressors, which became more intolerant and cruel as they saw toleration tended to multiply the number and increase the boldness of the friends of freedom.

Meanwhile the reign of Louis XIV., surnamed "the Great," was in the highest tide of its prosperity in France. Here Charles, the royal fugitive, found protection, and ample means to nurse his wrath against the men and the principles that had caused the tragical death of his father and his own uncomfortable exile. The whole career of the ambitious Louis indicated his designs to strangle freedom in his dominions, and throw the entire weight of

his powerful influence on the side of popery and civil despotism. His own views and expectations with respect to the probable decay of republican principles, and the final subjugation of the spirit of freedom, was manifest in his revocation of the Edict of Nantes, thereby banishing fifty thousand of the best families from his dominions.

This state of things in the two great powers of Europe was neither unknown nor unheeded by the watchful emissaries of Rome, who were skilled in the art of turning to the account of their own ambitious designs whatever might promise to favor their advancement in the political changes that occurred, or seemed likely to occur, in the world.

England and France both had colonial possessions in America. The former on the coast of the Atlantic, the latter north and west of the great lakes. In the former, particularly New England and New York, the spirit of civil and religious freedom, or at least of hostility to the mummeries and intolerance of Rome, was too deeply rooted to be eradicated, or subverted to the purposes of civil and ecclesiastical despotism, except by such artifices as Jesuits only can employ, aided by the most favorable conjunction of political commotions. And such a conjunction they never failed to seize upon and improve.

New France, as the Canadas were then called, had attracted but little attention from the government at home. The city of Quebec was not fifty years old. Montreal and Three Rivers were in their infancy. These were the only settlements of any consequence in the colony of New France, and they were little more than respectable trading posts, at which a traffic was carried on with the Indians for their furs. The whole of the upper province was an unbroken wilderness, known only to the native tribes who were scattered abroad.over its vast surface.

Neglected by the mother country as not promising to contribute anything to the national splendor, for which Frenchmen never fail to look forward in every enterprise in which they engage, the affairs of the colony were managed and cared for principally by merchants of fortune, who found means to bring into it many of their countrymen, from the advantages the fur trade with the Indians afforded. The

chief object with them was to preserve the good will of the Indians, and attach them by every possible means to their interests, in order to secure their trade. This object governed all their transactions with the surrounding tribes, and molded their internal policy as a commercial community.

But there was another class in the colony who were less conspicuous in the commercial and civil affairs of the colony than the secular adventurers with whom they were associated, but wère by no means less intent and determined to render every advantage the new colonial enterprise might furnish subservient to their ambitious designs. At Quebec the Jesuits planted their standard side by side with that of the merchants and other colonists. A writer in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia says:

"The province of New France very soon became as much a missionary station as a commercial settlement. A very general zeal for

the Christian instruction of the Indians was excited throughout the French empire, and many individuals of rank and property devoted their lives and their fortunes to the cause.

The Jesuits, however, soon engrossed the sole direction of this undertaking, and were greatly instrumental in obstructing the prosperity of the colony, both by their perpetual contentions, which they maintained with the governors, and by the pernicious effects which their labors produced upon the character of the natives."

Such was the fruit of their labors upon the interests of the colony when that fruit had attained the strength of maturity. But in the incipiency of their operations, when there were no governors for them to contend with, and no settled form of government to regulate and direct the agencies which were at work at random in the colony, their inherent zeal and activity naturally thrust them forward, and gave them an influence in molding the elements and directing the forces which were maturing to be brought into requisition in forming a more permanent civil compact. The tribes of Indians who were most accessible, as the Hurons, near Quebec, and the Algonquins and Abenaquis, at the St. Lawrence, were soon brought under the control of the missionaries, and through their influence attached to the French interests. Thus was commenced a course of policy which contemplated the subjugation of the settlements in the New World to the Catholic powers of the Old, through the powerful agency of the warring tribes of American savages, controlled

and directed by the Jesuits. And to carry out this purpose of establishing papacy and Jesuitical rule and dominancy in North America, it was of the utmost importance to bring all the tribes to repudiate the English colonists and ally themselves to the French. To accomplish this object the Jesuits directed all their energies, under the profession of laboring solely for the spiritual good of the savage tribes. And it must be confessed that if zeal, and labor, and self-denial, and suffering for the cause, be taken as a test of pious concern for the salvation of these perishing pagans, they made a fair show of being imbued with the true missionary spirit.

Richelieu was at that period the leading spirit in France, if not in Europe. He had studied at Rome, been Bishop of Lucon, was made secretary of state by Mary de Medicis, and finally placed in the responsible office of prime minister of France, and afterward of superintendent of navigation and commerce. The intrigue by which he effected a reconciliation between the queen, who had elevated him to power, and her son, Louis XIII., the address by which he secured the favor of Louis and the applause of the nation, and the powerful influence he was enabled to exert to procure the banishment of the king's brother, and of Mary de Medicis, the queen to whom he owed his elevation, marked him as qualified by every requisite trait of character to act as prime leader in any device that the Jesuits might project. And they could not doubt his hearty good will to aid them by all the means in his power in their efforts to establish the supremacy of their order in the North American colonies, when they considered how he had distinguished himself by his zeal to annoy and distress the Protestant subjects of the government he controlled. Being raised to the dignity of a cardinal, he determined to reduce Rochelle, whose protection of the Protestants was offensive to his Catholic prejudices. Succeeding in this, he advanced to the subjection of the Protestants in other parts of the kingdom. His whole career was distinguished by his hatred of Protestants, and his efforts to extirpate them from the dominions of France and the world.

Thus supported and encouraged by the powerful influence of the home governVOL. XI.-31

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ment, the Jesuits in Canada renewed their diligence in establishing themselves among the surrounding tribes of Indians, many of whom embraced the faith and became zealous Catholics according to the strictest rules of the order. These all allied themselves to the French, and became the fast friends of the colony.

Their glowing prospects, however, were suddenly checked by adverse fortune. Charles I. of England, having entered into war with France, dispatched three vessels, under the command of Sir David Kerth, a French Calvinist, upon an expedition against Quebec. Sir David defeated the squadron sent to its relief, and, after reducing the colonists, compelled them to capitulate in the year 1629. But he treated the vanquished with so much humanity that the greater part of the settlers declined the privilege of being conveyed to old France, and remained under their conquerors in Canada. Charles, however, was not the prince, nor was England in a condition to turn this brief triumph of his arms in the New World to any permanent advantage to the British crown, and the colony was restored to France by the treaty of St. Germain in 1632.

Meantime the Jesuits, never disheartened by temporary reverses, continued to strengthen themselves among the Indian tribes, and to extend their missionary operations farther into the interior. While, on the one hand, their labors tended to forming a friendly alliance between the Indians and the colonists, on the other the influence they acquired with the former became troublesome to the latter in conducting the internal affairs of the colony. By this influence the Jesuits found themselves possessed of power to decide every matter of difference between the Indians and the colonists, as would best subserve their own interests and promote their ultimate designs. This power they exercised in various ways until it became a source of contention and strife between the priests and the governors, which greatly interrupted the harmony and retarded the progress of the colony.

The worst annoyance experienced by the Jesuits arose from the hostile spirit of the Iroquois nations south of the lakes, toward the tribes among whom they had established themselves as missionaries. These nations greatly harassed those tribes

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