the whole matter of raising the ore and dumping the cars single handed. At the washer the dark, porous ore is broken up in an ordinary stone crusher and is passed down to the washer proper, where it is cleansed of earth and other adhesions and is loaded on flat-cars,-about twelve tons to a car,-and is shipped direct to the furnace at East Canaan. On the floor of the old pit is the building containing the pumping engine which raises the water from the mine and discharges it into a small pond on the bank above the washer. It is this water from HOISTING APPARATUS. the mine which is again used for washing the ore. The mine employs at present about thirty men under ground. The next nearest mine and probably another part of the same deposit is Chatfield's Bed, This lies about a quarter of a mile southeast of Ore Hill. The mining was done entirely at the surface and sixty years ago about eight hundred tons of ore were taken out annually. The bed has been abandoned and no ore has been mined there for fully five years. The third ore bed near Salisbury is known as Davis' Bed. It lies about two and a half miles northeast of Ore Hill on the road from Lakeville to Salisbury. The bed is still worked at the surface and an enormous pit shows how long the mining has been going on. This mine has long been leased by the Barnum Richardson Company, and the washed ore, averaging from twenty to twenty-five tons a day is sent to their furnace at East Canaan. Here the ore is mixed with that from Ore Hill, the mixture giving a more satisfactory grade of iron than either used singly. The ores from these beds yield about 45 per cent. of pig iron. From These are the important mines of the town of Salisbury, and the amount of ore taken from these is vastly in excess of all that has been raised from all the other Connecticut beds taken together. these beds were supplied furnaces at Chapinville, Mt. Riga, Cornwall, Canaan, Lakeville, Furnance Village, Lime Rock and other places, to say nothing of the ore smelted at Ancram Furnace in New York state. Shepard reports two other deposits of ore in the town of Salisbury, known respectively as Scovill's and Chapin's Beds, but he states that at that date (1837) they had been abandoned for eight years, as it was impossible to get a good grade of iron from them. Another important deposit of brown hematite is found on the east side of Indian Lake in the town of Sharon. In 1837 about two thousand tons of ore were raised annually, being used mostly in the furnaces of Sharon. A furnace was in blast at Sharon Valley until the winter of German steel and much was expected of it. Shepard's expectations seem to have been disappointed. There was trouble with the work in early times from faulty methods, and, though good steel was produced afterward, the enterprise seems to have declined, till at the present day the steel works, which shut down twenty years ago, are in ruins and what is perhaps the largest deposit of spathic iron in the United States has been utterly abandoned. In the eastern part of Connecticut another variety of limonite, known as bog ore, has been mined and smelted since very early times, notably at New Haven and North Branford. Deposits have been found at "Colchester, Hebron, Tolland, Willington, Westford (in Ashford), Stafford, Union and Woodstock." The principal furnaces were at Stafford and Hebron, the latter getting its ore from Colchester. In 1837 the output of the Stafford furnace was 350 tons of castings annually. These industries have been dead for many years. It should be mentioned as a matter of nterest that magnetite has been mined in several places, chiefly at New Preston, at Buck's Mountain in Sharon, and at Winchester. These ores have been smelted, but the undertaking never remotely approached the dignity of an industry. A considerable quantity of magnetite is to be found as an iron sand along the shore of Long Island Sound, especially from New Haven to Stonington. This sand was successfully smelted at Killingworth in Middlesex County as early as 1761 by the Rev. Jared Eliot, and a forge at Voluntown in New London County used a considerable quantity of this sand as ore. Although there is a great deal of interest connected with the history of iron mining in Connecticut, it is only when studied in connection with the history of iron smelting in the same state that the subject reaches its greatest importance. It is hard to keep the two subjects separate, so closely are they interwoven, but the aim of this paper has been to give some account of the mining, referring to the furnaces but incidentally. A history of these furnaces will be given in the next number. SONG OF THE TREE-TOP. BY HERBERT RANDALL. My love is the wind and his heart is mine; We sleep and we dream in the starlit gleam, When the day comes back and the sails unfurl, As blue billows fluff into foam; We laugh in delight at the hurricane's flight, And kiss when the ships come home. THE MAYORALTY IN CONNECTICUT. BY AMOS A. BROWNING. UR national system of government has been highly commended both at home and abroad. The foremost English statesman of this generation has referred to the Constitution of the United States as "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." But the government of American cities, judged by its fruits, has been pronounced a failure. A reform school has sprung up which has taught that our municipal system is ill-adapted to existing conditions and has advocated as a remedy the vesting of larger powers in the mayor and casting upon him a correspondingly greater responsibility for the good order and efficient government of the municipality. While the national and state governments in their main features have remained the same, our city governments during a hundred years have undergone essential changes, none more radical than those which have recently been in progress. To describe these changes, to outline the growth and development of the mayoralty under Connecticut city charters, and especially to indicate the effect of the movement now going on in enlarging the mayor's prerogatives and duties, is the writer's inviting has been highly commended both task. Until the times of the Revolution, the town meeting held unbroken sway in the Nutmeg state. The elaborate governmental machinery of our larger cities, with the systematic division of duties and powers, of care and control, was as far from the thought of the colonial fathers as the electric wagons that are now appearing upon our streets. But in 1784, the demand of certain growing sections for more highly organized local government was recognized. In that year the General Assembly incorporated the cities of Hartford, New Haven, Middletown, New London and Norwich. For half a century they remained the only representatives of municipal government in Connecticut. In 1836 Bridgeport was added to the roll and Waterbury in 1853. The number has since increased to eighteen. To Connecticut belongs the distinction among the New England states of being the pioneer in municipal incorporation. Boston, the oldest chartered city in Massachusetts, was not incorporated until 1822. Portland and Providence became cities in 1832, Bangor in 1834, Lowell and Salem in 1836. Newport undertook city government in 1784, but soon abandoned it and did not try the experiment again for more than sixty years. The five original Connecticut charters were substantially alike and conferred but little power. They made the cities corporations and defined their limits; created the offices of mayor, treasurer, clerk, sheriff, and inspector of produce; empowered the municipality to lay taxes; created the court of common council and the city courts; and authorized the common council to pass ordinances or bylaws for certain specified purposes. But the latter power was doubly safe-guarded, for no such ordinance could take effect until approved in city meeting, and it might be repealed within six months after its enactment, by the superior court, if found on hearing to be unreasonable or unjust. None of these cities had then a population in excess of five thousand. Repair of highways and care of the poor remained still for the town, which retained its jurisdiction over the territory within city limits. Police were unknown. Water works, fire companies, sewer systems, parks, boards of health, electrical communications, and street railways were non-existent or independent of city government. All that was practically effected by these original charters might be summed up in the statement that they created the court of common council and the city court, the mayor being the head of each. There were none of those commercial and administrative depart ments and bureaus which form so important a feature of modern city government. The authority of the mayor was small, his salary nothing. He received compensation as judge of the city court at the same rate as the county judges, which at first was fixed at two dollars per day, but was increased in 1802 to three dollars and a half. Assistant judges received fifty cents a day less. This surely was not large pay according to present-day standards. But in those times the fees of all officials were small. The chief judge of the superior court in 1784 received twenty-seven shillings and his assistants twenty-four shillings per diem, "as a recompense", in the language of the law, "for their services while attending the duties of their office." The mayor's duties may be classified as two-fold. He was a member and the presiding officer of the court of common council, in which the aldermen and councilmen met as one body, and he presided at city meetings. He was, secondly, a judicial magistrate, and this may have been regarded his chief distinction The exercise of both executive and judicial functions by the same person, a practice as old as the time of Solomon, and indeed coeval with government itself, was still customary. The mayor was made the chief judge of the city court, having cognizance of civil causes, not involving title to real estate and arising within the city, of the same magnitude as those triable by the county court. It had no criminal jurisdiction. Two aldermen made up the other members of the court and a jury was drawn from the city jury list when required. The mayor or any alderman might severally hold court for the trial of civil causes, having the jurisdiction of a justice of the peace. The mayor was chosen by the freemen of the city but held his office during the pleasure of the General Assembly. This prerogative of the assembly it rarely if ever exercised and in consequence the terms of office of the early mayors were terminated either by death or resignation. The first mayor of New London held the office for the continuous term of twentyone years; the first mayor of Hartford for twenty-eight years. The mayor had no power of veto, appointment or nomination, and no authority or commission to enforce the laws. There were no departments or bureaus to be administered. While the office had no salary attached and the powers of the mayor were few and restricted, yet as the position was an honorary one and the duties far from burdensome, the foremost citizens did not decline to fill the office. The mayors first chosen were Thomas Seymour of Hartford, Jabez Hamlin of Middletown, Roger Sherman of New Haven, Richard Law of New London, and Benjamin Huntington of Norwich. They were all leading and representative men |