“Halt!” cried Barbicane, stopping.
“Has this place any name?”
“It is called Stony Hill,” answered the
Floridians.
Barbicane, without saying a word, dismounted, took
his instruments, and began to fix his position with
extreme precision. The little troop drawn up
around him watched him in profound silence.
At that moment the sun passed the meridian. Barbicane,
after an interval, rapidly noted the result of his
observation, and said—
“This place is situated 1,800 feet above the
sea level in lat. 27 deg. 7’ and West long.
5 deg. 7’ by the Washington meridian. It
appears to me by its barren and rocky nature to offer
every condition favourable to our enterprise; we will
therefore raise our magazines, workshops, furnaces,
and workmen’s huts here, and it is from this
very spot,” said he, stamping upon it with his
foot, “the summit of Stony Hill, that our projectile
will start for the regions of the solar world!”
PICKAXE AND TROWEL.
That same evening Barbicane and his companions returned
to Tampa Town, and Murchison, the engineer, re-embarked
on board the Tampico for New Orleans.
He was to engage an army of workmen to bring back the
greater part of the working-stock. The members
of the Gun Club remained at Tampa Town in order to
set on foot the preliminary work with the assistance
of the inhabitants of the country.
Eight days after its departure the Tampico
returned to the Espiritu-Santo Bay with a fleet of
steamboats. Murchison had succeeded in getting
together 1,500 workmen. In the evil days of slavery
he would have lost his time and trouble; but since
America, the land of liberty, has only contained freemen,
they flock wherever they can get good pay. Now
money was not wanting to the Gun Club; it offered a
high rate of wages with considerable and proportionate
perquisites. The workman enlisted for Florida
could, once the work finished, depend upon a capital
placed in his name in the bank of Baltimore.
Murchison had therefore only to pick and choose, and
could be severe about the intelligence and skill of
his workmen. He enrolled in his working legion
the pick of mechanics, stokers, iron-founders, lime-burners,
miners, brickmakers, and artisans of every sort, white
or black without distinction of colour. Many
of them brought their families with them. It
was quite an emigration.
On the 31st of October, at 10 a.m., this troop landed
on the quays of Tampa Town. The movement and
activity which reigned in the little town that had
thus doubled its population in a single day may be
imagined. In fact, Tampa Town was enormously
benefited by this enterprise of the Gun Club, not
by the number of workmen who were immediately drafted
to Stony Hill, but by the influx of curious idlers
who converged by degrees from all points of the globe
towards the Floridian peninsula.
