Burning Mud

1902

Nowadays everything that will burn is interesting. A fuel works at Stangflorden, in Norway, where peat is made into a useful fuel, should be of especial interest to Massachusetts, which is said to be talking of opening up its extensive peat beds. The factory at Stangflorden is run by electricity generated by water power, and has been in operation since 1898. The chief difficulty in manufacturing fuel from peat is getting rid of the water with which it is always soaked. About eighty-five per cent, by bulk is water, and practically all of this must be removed before a satisfactory fuel is obtained. At Stangflorden the wet peat is brought to the factory in boats, from which it is removed by electric conveyors and submitted to a preliminary rough drying and pressing. The briquettes thus formed are placed in chambers, through which warm, dry air is driven, and are finally placed in electrically heated retorts, where the drying is completed.

The peat yields, besides these briquettes, tar, charcoal, creosote, sulphate of ammonia and other by products. The electric power is obtained from five eighty-kilowatt dynamos. The plant is capable of turning out 1000 centners (a centner is about 110 pounds) of air-dried peat a day. The fuel is said to burn well, yields little soot and ash and is really salable in Bergen and other towns.

An Asphalt Lake In Venezuela

1901

Huge Deposit of Pitch — Foreigners Not Welcome

To the people of Venezuela this great deposit of asphalt is known as Largo la Brea, or the Lake of Pitch, says the Chicago News.

The aborigines used its output for pitching the seams of their canoes and a variety of other purposes, but it was comparatively unknown to the outside world until about 20 years ago, and no attempt was ever made to develop its resources until some 13 years ago, when the New York and Bermudez company purchased a concession covering a part of this valuable deposit from Horatio R. Hamilton, an American citizen then residing in Venezuela, and by marriage related to the late President Guzman Blanco.

After years of toil this American company succeeded in establishing a small plant at a place now called Guanoco, where a little pile wharf was built and subsequently an insignificant industrial railway was constructed which connected it with the pitch lake. The settlement of Guanoco, the headquarters of the New York and Bermudez company, is a little over 100 miles to the westward of Port of Spain, on the Island of Trinidad.

A narrow-gauge railroad, with 22-pound rails, connects the settlement of Guanoco with the asphalt lake, a scant six miles north. This railway, dignified by the name of the Guanoco & La Brea railway, passes through a virgin forest which has grown up on top of an unfathomable morass of swamp, and is constantly being reballasted to keep the rails in sight above the mud.

There are a few native huts at the lake, and the ordinary plant for asphalt mining. The lake stretches out for a distance of about five miles, and, say, three miles in width; but is divided by a narrow ridge of dry land with a few stunted trees on it.

The asphalt from the wonderful lake is the finest and purest in the world. The refining of this class of asphalt is simply heating it until the water is evaporated, for there is no scum, dirt or foreign matter in it. The supply is practically inexhaustible, and should last until the end of the world or the bottom drops out of it.

At certain seasons of the year this vast deposit is covered with a tall grass often six or eight feet high, and when it takes fire, as it often does, owing to the Indians being careless with their camp-fires, the grass will burn for days at a time, and when burned over leaves no mark save crusting the asphalt for perhaps an inch in thickness.

Very few white men have ever visited this wonderful lake, as it has always been the policy of the resident manager to keep his treasure-trove a sealed book. It is doubtful if one hundred foreigners, outside of the employes of the company and the poor Indians who trail across the great deposit, have ever set foot upon it.

It is impossible to estimate its actual value as a merchantable commodity, and to say at hazard that it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars is not putting the figures too high. It is a huge black sea of wealth, stretching out as far as the eye can reach, and dig and dig all the year around, the excavations fill up as rapidly as the workmen leave them. No amount of reasonable work in taking out asphalt can produce a visible diminution of the supply. It is a well of wealth that never overflows and is always filled to the brim. Never, under the broiling sun of the dry season or the teeming torrents of the rainy season, is its character or chemical properties changed or its commercial value altered. Its upcoming is wrapped in mystery, its birth time is unknown, nor can any man in the present time tell what its future will be for the use of mankind.

Although located in a swamp and only some four or five feet above sea level, it has proved to have been a very healthy locality. Death is practically unknown among the workmen at these mines. In 12 years only two graves are in the burying ground of the company. With the amateur doctors at headquarters the "sick list" seldom exceeds 4 per cent, and comprises for the most part mild intermittent fevers, easily cared for with mild cathartics and quinine.

The natives are gentle, kind hearted and most hospitable, are quick to learn, especially fond of mechanical work and are good, faithful workers. They are not inclined to be fractious or quarrelsome, and with a kindly disposed superintendent no trouble is ever experienced in working them in large gangs.

"No Period" McGee Prophesies Revolution

1908

Railways, Navigation, Rights Granted

Dr. W J McGee, the distinguished ethnologist and geologist, who is the secretary and mainspring of the inland waterways commission, predicts a revolution within a few years, if the railways are allowed to continue grabbing riparian rights, throttling navigation and depriving the country of its greatest single source of wealth, its waterways.

And Dr. McGee is no wild sensationalist, but a cool-headed scientist and investigator. He points out that, with the exception of Vicksburg, there is not a single town between St. Paul and New Orleans whose river fronts and bridges have not been grabbed by the railways with the kind assistance of the legislatures. The doctor's idea is that by redeeming the river fronts and developing waste water power, the whole cost of improving the rivers would be paid for in a few years.

Dr. McGee is a self-taught scientist. While he was working on a farm he was studying Latin, higher mathematics, astronomy and surveying. He had charge of the bureau of ethnology from 1893 to 1903, resigning to become chief of the department of anthropology at the St. Louis exposition. He was the first president of the American Anthropological society, and later was president of the National Geographical society. He has done some valuable exploring work himself, his topographic survey of northwestern Iowa being the most extensive ever made in America without public aid. He is now secretary of the inland waterways commission, which has in charge the deepening and improving of our inland navigation, together with the reclamation of land and the development of water power.

Dr. McGee was born in Iowa in 1853. He is known among his friends as "No Period" McGee, for he never uses periods after his initials. He maintains that everyone calls him "W J," and that that has become his name and ceased to be initials.