Nevada Nugget Hunters

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Vol.123, No.18
ENGINEERING AND MINING JOURNAL
APRIL 30, 1927

Ancient Copper Smelting

TO THE EDITOR:
Sir—Mr. Walker has the best of me in regard to Bangweolo! How that name replaced Benguella is more than I can say; it is the kind of slip that the French impute to la malice des choses—the cussedness of things. Of course, as the context shows, I was quoting Mr. Walker’s statement in regard to the shipment of copper early in the seventeenth century, from the port of Benguella. I am as well aware of the separate identities of Bangweolo and Benguella, as well as those of Spokane and Seattle; however, some of my readers are not, and so Mr. Walker makes a justifiable correction, at my expense.

The point at issue, however, is whether the copper shipped from Benguella came from the Katanga, 1,100 miles distant, or from a nearer source, which, I suggested, was Bembe, less than a hundred miles from the West Coast. Even the statement quoted from Monteiro does not help us much. In the first place, a casual remark that the Portuguese had mined copper at Bembe, or elsewhere, 350 years ago is not convincing in the absence of evidence, preferably from Portuguese sources; next, we are discussing “ancient” copper mining in Central Africa, in the interior of the continent, and not at a place near the coast. Moreover, whether the mining was done two hundred or four hundred years ago, that would not warrant the adjective “ancient.”

If there be “abundant evidence that more copper was mined prehistorically (my italics) in Africa than all the rest of the world,” it should be forthcoming. The fact that one does not know with certainty when the primitive mining in the Katanga was done, nor by whom it was done, precludes any such confident statement.

I gave my opinion that it was done during the last two hundred years by the natives under the direction of of the Arabs. That they penetrated the interior— “war-cursed, man-eating, lion-infested,” as Mr. Walker says—is proved by statements of the Portuguese historians. De Barros (1496-1570) records the fact that the Portuguese traded with the Arabs at Sofala, and that these obtained gold by personal dealings with the natives of Monomotapa, the region of the old mines of Rhodesia, made famous by another archaeological mare’s nest—namely, Zimbabwe.

Dr. Hans Sauer told me that, in 1894, he found a stone temple of apparently Arab origin at a place 50 miles southeast of Bulawayo, and that at this place he and his companions gathered 800 oz. of alluvial gold scattered on the ground, as if left by owners that had fled from a predatory raid. He found also one Portuguese bronze cannon and an iron cannon, of English make, both of them of fifteenth century manufacture.

This locality is still far from the Katanga, but it indicates that the Arabs did penetrate the African hinterland. Mr. Walker quotes P. K. Homer. Yes, I know Mr. Homer quite well, and if I referred to him as “an English mining engineer,” he will, I trust, pardon me, with a smile. When an engineer has his office in London and acts for English clients, he is not far from meriting the description. However, that is by the way; Mr. Homer, by his long familiarity with the Katanga, is well qualified, as Mr. Walker suggests, to give valuable evidence on this disputed question.

If he, Dr. Sauer,
F. E. Studt, and others whom I could name, will assist in throwing light upon the identity of the people that worked the Katanga copper mines, and will give also data concerning the period of that exploitation, the readers of this journal will be grateful, and historic research will be enriched.

T. A. RIcKARD.
San Francisco, Calif.
732
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618 Engineering and Mining Journal-Press Vol. 114, No. 15 OCTOBER 7 1922

SILICOSIS on the Rand

AMONG the many things that have been done well on the Rand have been the efforts to lessen the ravages of SILICOSIS among the miners in the gold mines, and the system whereby the victims of the disease, or their families, are compensated. In 1919, a compensation fund was established, and under it a liability estimated at £8,000,000 was created, besides starting three farm settlements for those afflicted with PHTHISIS, which in the South African mines takes the form of silicosis, which may be described as the injury done to the tissue of the lungs, by the siliceous dust made in breaking ore and rock, in the mines and mills.

It is estimated now that owing to the increasing proportion of those afflicted, as compared with those dropping out of the list of beneficiaries, and the number of those passing from the primary, to the secondary stage, of the disease, the mining companies face a liability capitalized at £14,000,000. If one mine cannot pay its levy, it is distributed among the other mines. The miners used to pay 2 ½ percent of their earnings to the fund, but that has ceased. In future, the liability of each mine will be assessed each year, and the company owning the mine will be debited with the amount.

In 1918, the ravages of SILICOSIS on the Rand were the subjects of earnest discussion, because it became known then that not only the miners, but the managers and engineers, had been ruined in health by the disease. The report of the Miners’ PHTHISIS Board for the half-year ending Jan. 31, 1913, made this ‘distressful statement:

“A miner with nine and one-half years’ underground service, whose expectation of life under normal circumstances should be twenty-six years, has one and one-half years to live [from this point forward]; with four and one-half years underground, normal life expectation twenty-seven years, has three and one-eighth years to live; with three years underground, normal expectation thirty-one years, has three and one-half years to live.” This appalling decrease in the underground miner’s expectation of life, was a shock to the mining community, and stimulated an earnest effort to use such methods of drilling, with water sprays, as would diminish the quantity of dust in the mines. Those efforts were successful in large part, but they did not suffice to eradicate the evil, as is now evident.

The disease, of course, exists among miners in this country, in places where drilling is done in siliceous rock, yielding minute and sharp particles of quartz, but fortunately it is rarely that any one of our mines presents conditions identical with those on the Rand, where the ore is a conglomerate of quartzose pebbles between sandstone walls.

[Rehab notes, this same problem in any quartz rock mine, could kill the miner within several months, and though lessened by the use of water in hollow drill steel, did not stop the affliction. For example, in the Delamar, NV mines, miner life expectancy from beginning of work, to point of death, was 8 months. This due to dry mechanized drilling. In modern mining, including concrete and tile tradesmen, and other construction personnel, even with water sprays and other forms of dust control, the hazards continue to persist, though not at the mortality rate of years past.]

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STUDY, And be FREE from the BONDS of IGNORANCE!