252

hr. ms. pantserdekschip „koningin wilhelmina

nog geruimen tijd met talrijke menigte die klaarblijkelijk zoolang mogelijk van de pret wenschten te profiteeren.

Op het feestprogramma van Woensdag 10 Juli bevonden zich drie nummers en wel:

's morgens bezoek aan de munt. 's middags races, 's avonds bal.

Omtrent het bezoek aan de munt geeft do «Standard" het volgende verslag:

inspection op the mint.

This morning the High Commissioner, the Governor of Natal, Admiral Rawson, Chief Justice (Free State), and other distinguished guests, visited the State Mint, by special invitation, and were shewn in detail every process in the coining of gold and silver. Samples of gold and silver were flrst of all exhibited in the rough state; the silver pure as imported, for it is not found worth while to save the silver from Rand ores at present; the gold in its familiar forms of retorted amalgam, cyanide, and chlorination gold. Then in the smelting room a large crucible of gold had been prepared in the furnace, and in the presence of the visitors this was passed out into moulds whieh were then separated and it was found that the gold had been cast into bars about 15 inches long by two wide and quarter of an inch thick. Every subsequent process was shown and fully explained how these bars were annealed, then passed between series of steel rollers becoming thinner and thinner until the metal was of the proper thickness. After further annealing the next process is to pass the bars through a machine which cuts the blank discs of metal. These discs are then taken to a machine which automatically weigh3 each one and when it is over weight passes a sufficiënt quantity of metal off. Then, after further annealings and preparation of the metal the discs are taken to the stamping machine. Here they are fed in automatically from a long tnbe and are taken by the machine from the bottom of the tube, each one by itself, carried into position under the die, and there impressed on both sides of the eoin at once, the coin being thus completed in the style in which it is to circulate by one noiseless but very firm squeeze. As each disc of gold comes under the pressure of the die, the pressure forces the gold out to fill all the milling marks in the edge of the die, the coin being impressed and given its milled edge all by the one movement. It has been urged that the dies for the Transvaal coins are too sharp, and that the coins in consequence soon wear and deteriorate, but the Mint [authorities do not admit this. Amongst the most remarkable machines in the establishment are eer-