iron kettle, and melted. This allows the dirt to sink to the bottom, and
the ozokerite, freed from all other solids, is skimmed off with a ladle,
poured into conical moulds, and allowed to cool, in which form it is
sold to the refiners, for about six cents per pound. The quantity
produced is uncertain, as the miners take care to understate it, for
the reason that the government lays a tax upon all incomes, and the
landowner demands his one-fourth of the quantity mined. The best
authority is Leo Strippelman, who states the quantity produced in
fifteen years at from 375,000,000 to 400,000,000 pounds, worth
twenty-four millions of dollars. As the owners of the land get
one-fourth of the sum, they received six millions. This is at the rate
of four hundred thousand a year, a rather valuable crop from some two
hundred acres of land.

The miners do not support the earth by timber or pillars, as they
should; the result is that the whole plot of about two hundred acres is
gradually sinking, and this will eventually ruin the industry in that
part of the deposit. In another part of the same field, a French company
has purchased forty acres, and it is mining the whole tract and hoisting
through one shaft by steam power. In that shaft they have sunk to a
depth of six hundred feet, and are troubled with water and petroleum.
These they pump out very much the same way as in coal and other mines,
worked in a scientific manner. The thickest layer of ozokerite found is
about eighteen inches, and this layer or pocket was a great curiosity.
When first removed at the bottom of the shaft, it was found to be so
soft that it was shoveled out like putty. During the night it oozed
into the space that had been emptied the day before; this continued for
weeks, or until the pressure of the gas had become too weak to force it
out.