Note 2 — Chapter XIV · BARNAUL.

The processes of smelting are three. The mineral is first powdered, and a handful taken to the assaying house. Here we saw a man making small crucibles of clay, at the rate of 1,000 a day. In two cups, one having bone in its composition, is put an ascertained quantity of the mineral: both are placed in the furnace, and the result shows what proportion of pure metal the mineral will yield. The powdered mineral is then taken to furnace No. 1, which is like an iron furnace, and from 20 to 30 feet high. Into this the mineral is put with charcoal, and, after remaining there about 12 hours, there comes out of the furnace a black compound of lead and silver called ruststein. The ruststein is then placed in furnace No. 2 with lead, and, after remaining there for a short time (three tons, for instance, for an hour), the silver is extracted by the lead, and the compound which comes out is called werchblei. This is put into furnace No. 3, where 16 tons would remain three days, with the result that the lead oxydizes into glot, and is run off, whilst the silver remains and sinks to the bottom of the furnace. It is then taken out in round cakes from 12 to 15 inches in diameter, and sent to Petersburg. The cakes we saw had a dull hue, very much resembling lumps of newly molten lead, and were valued at £3 6s. 8d. per pound.

A simpler process is the smelting of gold, carried on in a room about 20 feet square, having a tall furnace in the centre, in which are fires not much larger than those in a laundry copper. The gold is brought to the usine in dust and small nuggets, tied up in leather bags, and begins to arrive from the mines at the end of June. The smelting goes on to the end of October. Some of the leathern bags were shown to us, duly sealed, and with particulars written thereon. One, about the size of a hen’s egg, was worth £36; and another, the size of a blackbird’s egg, was marked £5. When opened, the gold, just as it comes from the washings, with borax as a flux, is put into an earthenware pot, and then placed in the fire, after which it fuses, and is poured out into an iron mould in the shape of a flat bar. A bar we saw weighed 15 pounds.

In the season they sometimes have in the strong-room 250 poods—say from four to five tons—of gold, which the previous summer had been worth £2,000 a pood, making a total value of £500,000 for gold alone. At the end of the season the silver and gold are sent to the capital, under charge of a military escort.