Show A CHEMICAL laboratory of THE GODS iquique aquique chile july 30 1898 for the past three weeks I 1 have been traveling through a vast chemical laboratory of the gods I 1 have ridden over miles of elal plains covered with salt have visited lakes of the whitest borax have wound in and out among mountains rich in tin copper and silver and now write almost in the midst of the vast nitrate fields of chile like unto which there is ia nothing on the face of the earth leaving the silver mining town ot of oruro bolivia I 1 came down the mountains on the little latue narrow connects that town with the seaport of antofagasta Antof agasta the distance Is miles or about as great as that between new york and cleveland the track is only two feet six inches wide and the road is I 1 believe the longest one of this guage in the world the cars are of the Ameri american caly style having been built in massachusetts the seats on one side of the car are not wider that a kitchen chair and on the other where they are supposed to hold two not more than thirty inches it was in fact more like riding in a toy car than on the through trunk line which forms the only rail connection between two great countries still the road la Is smooth and well laid its ties are ot of oregon pine and the stations upon it are as a rule built of corrugated iron from europe the fares are exceedingly high I 1 paid 51 silver do dollars I 1 lars for my ticket tacket and in addition 36 extra baggage as nothing whatever Is allowed free my meals at the dining stations each cost me in silver and when I 1 stopped at night as I 1 was forced to do twice on the road the hotel rates were 4 per day the chief purpose of the road is to carry the silver and other metals to the seacoast the most of the cars of our train were loaded with little chunks of silver ore and we passed train loads of tin on its way to the pacific it was a ride through a desert shortly after leaving oruro we entered the salt plains of bolivia these are of vast extent lining the roads for hund few places between oruro and th sea where the gro ground und is not more or less lees mixed with salt and in some districts it covers the land like a sheet of dirty white snow along some parts bf the line it looks hard and icy and you feel like jumping off the cars for a skate at others it lies like gullies and again it only sprinkles the ground and a ragged growth of shrubbery vegetation struggles up through it the road runs for nearly the whole of its length through a desert valley and this salt rea reaches ches away on each side to the hills here and there along the road are lakes upon which seem to be floating great cakes of ice fee the eakes cakes are not ice fee however they are borax and in the great borax lake of As cotan bolivia there is enough borax to wash the heads of all humanity this lake has it is estimated more than tons of pure borax ready to be shipped to the markets of the world I 1 saw it on my left as an I 1 rode over the railroad on the way to the coast it is about six miles square and the borax in it lies in great masses masseff which when taken out look for all the world like the finest of pure white spun silk wadded up or woven into lumps the stuff if ia borax of lime lim amal abid Is not so BO good I 1 am told as the borax that comes from similar lakes in california still it is i of considerable value for the lake naff has just been sold to a syndicate of ger mans for pounds sterling this lake however is not a drop in the ocean comp compared axed with the enormous enor mout value of the nitrate fields through which I 1 crossed as I 1 neared the pacific these fields extend north and south through this part of chile for a distance of more than three hundred miles and their product is so valuable that they almost pave the desert of chile with gold they have produced millions upon millions of tons of nitrate of soda and it is estimated baat more than twelve hundred thousand tons of nitrate will be shipped from them this year the th value of these nitrate deposits runa high into the millions of dollars when they were in the hands of the peruvians they were rich and now they to chile as a result of her war with peru she gets more than half her revenue from the export duty which she collects from them the working of the fields Is in the hands of foreigners and more than one hundred million dollars worth of english capital is invested in the great oficinas inas or factories by means of which the nitrate is taken from the earth and prepared forthe for the markets of the world vast fortunes have been made out of these nitrate fields I 1 met in england some years ago the late col north the nitrate king and visited him at his magnificent country place at eltham near london he lived there like a prince and was at the time fairly rolling in wealth all of his money tooney was made in this region and his champagne which he had at dinner though its taste showed no evidence of the fact was effervescent with nitrate of soda the nitrate which the united states imported from this iquique aquique district alone in 1897 cost more than haree million gold doll arsand the amount was more than two hundred and thirty four million pounds the greater part of this has gone into the making of powder and high explosives and much of it has already been used in the war with spain another part of it has been sold as fertilizers and is now enriching the soil of american farms it Is as a fertilizer that the chief demand for the nitrate comes the bulk of the product going to germany where it is used tn in the growing of the sugar beet just now however the nitrate business is not as prosperous as it has been A number of the factories are idle and the markets are overstocked over stocked my first view of the nitrate fields was on the railroad going to antofagasta Antof agasta the deposits in that part of chill chili however are not so good as those further north and I 1 have taken ship and come to aquique iquique which is the chief shipping port t of the best nitrate fields of the world I 1 have traveled from here to some of the richest fields and have spent a day at the great nitrate I 1 of the agua santa company haa a capital of and which produces millions of pounds of nitrate a month but before I 1 describe the method of getting this product out of the earth let me show you where these wonderful fields are in the first place the word fields Is misleading in conveys the idea of fences and fixed bound arles the nitrate fields ate are scattered over the desert and their only boundaries es axe are white posts at the corners of the different properties outside ot of these there are no marks there is not enough waste wood in the whole desert to make a line fence about a city lot there to is not a blade of grass and the exception of here and there 9 a scrubby tree all Is bare gray desolate de solute sand with here and there a rock has caught the rays of the sun am there are few more barren places in the world than the chilean desert the boasts of the upper part of at the country are as bleak as the most barren parts parta of f the rocky mountains and this sand and d rook rode extend inland almost to the tops tope of the andes andea along the coast there 1 Is a low range of foot hills rising in places to the height of a mile or move above the aea beyond this athla there to iss a rolling valley which runs from north to bo south and on the other side ade of this valley the foot hills bills of the andes begin R to Is along the western edge of this valley that the nitrate Is found in some places it is ie not more than fifteen miles and in others as far as ninety miles from the sea but the deposits dep OBits lie along the western edge of the valley forming forral ng a strip of an avei age width of about a mile and running irregularly as I 1 have said from north to south for a distance of more than three hundred miles in some places the deposit is tour four miles wide wade and in others it plays out altogether and crops out some distance further on in some fields the nitrate rock lies on the top of the ground in others athers lit it la ia found from thirty to forty feet below the surface with a strata of salt roex roca on oil top of it the nitrate nl itself is seldom found pure in nature though much of the rock contains from 40 to 60 per cent of nitrate and other fields vary with the nature of the deposit it is the getting the nitrate rock out of the earth and the abe extracting the pure nitrate salts from it that constitutes the immense industry of the pampas or nitrate fields As to where the nii wines comes are a number of theories one lathat is that the desert was once the bed of an inland sea and that the nitrate came caage from the decaying of the nitrogenous sea weed another theory is that the ammonia rising from the vast beds of guano on the islands off the coast was carried by the winds over the range of hills near the sea and there condensed settled and united with other chemicals of the soil to form the deposits and still a third is that the electrical discharges of the andes combine with the elements of the air to make nitric acid this acid was carried down through the ages in the floods of the andes and was de on of nit nitrate of soda none of these theories are entirely satisfactory and as yet no one has hais absolutely solved the problem as to whence the nitrate comes COMAS we shall see me how nitrate is mined by a visit to the great pampa sit alt tam rugal this pampa or field has sixty miles of oficinas ofie inas and nitrate fields A railroad has been built through it to carry the nitrate nit nate to the seacoast at iquique aquique and upon it has grown up vast factories towns of corrugated iron huts buts in which the tens of thousands of workmen employed in the business live and the homes of the scores of well educated europeans who live here and manage the properties leaving iquique aquique the railroad carries you up the hills bills and brings you right into the ni fields you are soon in a plain about twenty miles wide wade with low hills rising upward on the right and the left on the side of this plain nearest the sea as it had been plowed by giants and lit it lies iles in mammoth clods of all shapes and sizes this is the nitrate fields whiten which have been or are being worked the rest or fir the land Is bleak bare sand there Is TOO no vegetation and no sign of life of any kind all is sand salt rock and amid the clods nitrate rock which is id called caliche baliche ca liche it is a soluble rock of different colors in some places it Is almost white and looks like rock others it is yellow and in others all shades of gray lemon violet and green the strata of nitrate usually lies iles two feet or more under the earth and there is often a salt rock or conglomerate above it the method of getting it ft out Is to bore a round hole about a foot in diameter through the upper crust and to extend it down for a few inches into the soft earth below 11 it now into this we hole a boy bar is let down he scoops out a pocket for the blasting powder and arranges the fuse he Is then pulled out and the fuse Is lighted an explosion follows A great yellow cloud of smoke and dust dufft goes up into the air and the earth is broken up for a radius of about thirty feet about the hole the nitrate rock Is in now dug oft off with picks and crowbar crow bara ban it is broken into pieces of thirty pounds or less leaa and is loaded upon iron carts to be taken to the factory igdon of these carts win will hold three tons of rock and each is hauled by thre mules the driver sitting upon one of the animals the baliche caliche or nitrate rook rock Ls is taken in them carts from the fields to the or factory this usually stands in the midst of the fields it Is a collection of buildings with great smoke stacks rising above them it contains thousands of dollars worth of costly machinery vast tanks for boiling the nitrate rock crushers like those of a smelter to break it to pieces and settling vats in which the liquor containing the pure nitrate of soda is left until it has dropped its burden of valuable salt the nitrate rock of the agua santa fields as we saw it blasted out of the earth has only about 40 per cent of nitrate of soda in it the nitrate sent to the markets is from 95 too to 96 per cent pure and the rock must be so treated as to bring about this result this is done by bolling boiling the rock just so 90 much and no more the crushers reduce the baliche caliche to pieces about two inches thick and it is then taken to the boiling tanks which are situated in a building perhaps fifty feet above the ground these tanks are each big enough to form a bath tub for an elephant they are twenty four feet long nine feet wide and eight feet deep in i them there are coils of pipe into which steam is running raising the temperature of the fluid in the bank to any desired point the baliche caliche is carried in cars up an inclined railway and into the tanks then water is admitted and is allowed to flow from tank to tank in such a way as aa to act to the best beat advantage on the salts within the nitrate of soda will remain in solution at a lower temperature than other salts this fact and others of a scientific nature are taken advantage of everything being done greatest care and the result is that when the liquor is drawn off nearly all of the pure nitrate of soda in the rock goes bilth it it flows from I 1 the boiling tanks which lie ile in the open air at a lower level it now looks for all ajl the world like pale maple molasses or thick lemon syrup in a short time it begins to crystallize and the banic is half sugar which is really almott pure nitrate of soda this is now shoveled into piles whence it is bagged up in sacks of pounds each and hauled on the railroad to ho the seacoast to be shipped off to the united states sta tea or to europe after the salts have settled in the tanks the liquor which lies on top still conta contains Ans a large amount of nitrate it Is conveyed back to the bolling boiling tanks and is loaded with ore are nitrate by being flowed over the fresh rock I 1 shall not describe the technical details det alls of the process which is compili complicated i in the extreme they were explained 1 to me by mr james T humberstone ber stone the manager of the ague agua santa oficina Ina the man who is perhaps of all the nitrate managers the best posted upon such matters I 1 will only say bay that the greatest care is taken to get every atom of nitrate out of the rock at the lowest possible cost and that I 1 was again and again surprised at the careful study which has been taken to saw gave every cent in products product roan 1 and labor throughout the works it waal wair indeed a lesson in economy and when I 1 referred to it mr humberstone eald the nitrate profits of today a are A question of small savings we make inake so ao much that the difference of a cent in the cost of a quintal or pounds is an important item it would in fact mean to us a saving of at least 1200 a month mr humberstone also showed me how bow the iodine of c commeree commerce is made from this nitrate liquor it is an element separate and apart from the nitrate of soda and tt it forms another valuable p product of the nitrate fields it is precipitated in tanks by means of of soda and is drawn off in the shape of a dirty black the is washed and filtered and is then put into iron retorts and heated it soon turns to vapor which is conducted into pipes of fire clay in which as it cools it changes into crystals crystal of a beautiful violet color these are packed up and shipped to our country and to europe the sale of iodine is a monopoly in the hands of anthony gibbs co of london the different companies have formed a trust which controls the product of the world and dictates just how bow much each factory may make every year the price is now I 1 am told 8 pence per |