You fellas seem to know a lot about smelting precious metals from raw ore.
What did they do? Build a hot fire and pitch in the ore and it came out shiny
as a new penny. Franklin says they "had a smelter". I'd sure like to know
where that "smelter" came from. The Spanish built arastras to get gold out of
rock. Don't much think they hauled "smelters" around with them. They also
learned to build clay "smelters" that could be super-heated with coal or pitch
but ores varied from district to district. Some ores, probably most, were
impossible to refine into recognizable bars or ingots. They called these slugs
dore which resemble rusty iron in color.
Then again you fellas are experts at this. So the Bealites came across half
the US with nuggets the size of sweet potatoes. Then they ate the potatoes
and left the gold in a hole in the ground.
My, my, my. What a load of taters.
What did they do? Build a hot fire and pitch in the ore and it came out shiny
as a new penny. Franklin says they "had a smelter". I'd sure like to know
where that "smelter" came from. The Spanish built arastras to get gold out of
rock. Don't much think they hauled "smelters" around with them. They also
learned to build clay "smelters" that could be super-heated with coal or pitch
but ores varied from district to district. Some ores, probably most, were
impossible to refine into recognizable bars or ingots. They called these slugs
dore which resemble rusty iron in color.
Then again you fellas are experts at this. So the Bealites came across half
the US with nuggets the size of sweet potatoes. Then they ate the potatoes
and left the gold in a hole in the ground.
My, my, my. What a load of taters.