or enters the mine without prostrating himself
before this dirty effigy.

This singular metal is of paramount
importance to science: its density and regular rate
of expansion in accordance with change of
temperature, gives it preference over all other
fluids for filling barometer and thermometric
tubes; alloyed with tinfoil it forms the reflective
surface of looking-glasses; a most powerful
solvent of gold and silver, and readily
diffused by moderate heat, it is useful in the
arts as an agent in gilding and silvering
other metals, and perfectly invaluable to the
gold miner, enabling him to collect fine dust
gold, that, but for this power of amalgamation,
must inevitably be lost. To the chemist also it
is all-important in the pneumatic trough; to
the anatomist to fill and permeate the minutest
tissues of the animal frame; to the physician
as being the basis of most powerful medicines;
to the manufacturer, giving hare and rabbit fur
the property of felting not naturally possessed;
to the painter in the valuable pigment known
as vermilion; to the zoologist as Goadby's
solution for preserving soft animal preparations;
and lastly to the builder and railway contractor,
as Kyan's patent for preventing dry rot in
timber. The richest quicksilver mines known,
are those of Almaden in Spain, Idria in
Carniola, Guancavilco in Peru, and the mines of
the Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine.

Pliny tells us the Greeks imported cinnabar
from Almaden in Spain seven hundred years
before the Christian era, and that Rome in his
time anually received seven hundred thousand
pounds from the same mine.

Did space permit, it would be interesting to
trace the history of quicksilver mining, and
glance at the different systems adopted in other
countries to raise and reduce the ores of this
indispensable metal, comparing their returns with
those of New Almaden. I must content myself
by saying, I eventually reached San Francisco
with many pleasant remembrances of my
quicksilver mining excursion.

GOING INTO BUSINESS.

IN THREE PARTS. PART THE THIRD.

WE had stopped payment*—"suspended" is
the more refined word used in these latter times
but did not call ourselves bankrupt. No
merchant who respects himself, at the present day
thinks of taking refuge in the Court of Basinghall-
street, if he can possibly avoid doing so.
What the old Insolvent Court in Portugal-street
was to the then Bankruptcy Court, the latter
institution is to the correct and proper way of
wiping out the liabilities of a commercial man.
In former years, the Insolvent Court was the
refuge of broken-down military officers, ruined
country gentlemen, clergymen who had written
their names unadvisedly across stamped paper,
publicans who had lived too fast, and all the
mass of pecuniary misfortune that surges up
to sight throughout this land. In those days
the Bankruptcy Court was reserved for
merchants, bankers, tradesmen, and others, who
had failed for their thousands, like respectable
men. But since the Insolvent Court has been done
away with, the great Bohemia of impecuniosity
has immigrated eastward to Basinghall-street,
and respectable men "compound with their creditors,"
or make other arrangements, satisfactory,
it is to be hoped, to all parties concerned.

* See Going into Business, page 404 of the
present volume.

This we intended to do. Our first act was to
place all our affairs in the hands of an accountant,
to whom they were, of course, utterly
incomprehensible unless he was assisted by one
of the firm. This task at first fell to my
lot; but I, too, found myself quite incapable
of solving many of the difficulties which arose
in endeavouring to trace out intricate transactions
which had passed through our books. For
instance: suppose our London firm—Messrs.
Velardi, Watson, and Co.—had drawn upon the
Odessa house which went by the name of
Velardi Brothers, and the latter had accepted
the bill, but had, on the other hand, drawn upon
us for money to pay the draft: we having been
unable to meet the bill they had drawn when it
fell due. In such a transaction—and the example
I give is exceedingly simple when compared with
very many others in which we were concerned—
who was the debtor and who the creditor? Was
the money due to our estate by the Odessa
firm? No, for that house was proved to be
merely a branch of our own house, and such
partners in it as had any existence were mere
men of straw—clerks who had been put up like
dolls or dummies on which to hang out a little
sham respectability. It was, however, certain
that some person or persons had been the
victim or victims in the transaction. When
we had drawn on the Odessa house for a certain
sum, say one thousand pounds, the bill had been
sold, say, in Hamburg, and hard coin given for
it. Those who had purchased it had indorsed
it, and passed it as cash, or sold it, to others
who had done the same. In due time—the
Odessa firm not being able to meet its engagements,
owing to the head firm in London having
failed—the bill was returned from one
indorser to another, until at last it was sent to
us for repayment. We also had stopped
payment, and were unable to take up the
dishonoured draft which we had drawn some three
months previously. And when these transactions
came to be multiplied by the hundred and
by the thousand, was it to be wondered at if no
little difficulty had to be experienced in
unravelling our affairs, and if not a few of our
creditors were exasperated with us for having
built up so large a commercial concern, with no
firmer foundation than three hundred pounds in
cash, and a mass of paper floating all over the
mercantile world, for which divers people had
paid in one way and another no less a sum than
three hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

This, in round numbers, was the amount of
our liabilities; what was the total of our assets?