It is true that several workmen paid with their lives
for the carelessness engendered by these dangerous
occupations; but such deplorable misfortunes cannot
be avoided, and these are details that Americans pay
very little attention to. They are more occupied
with humanity in general than with individuals in
particular. However, Barbicane professed the
contrary principles, and applied them upon every occasion.
Thanks to his care, to his intelligence and respectful
intervention in difficult cases, to his prodigious
and humane wisdom, the average of catastrophes did
not exceed that of cities on the other side of the
Atlantic, amongst others those of France, where they
count about one accident upon every 200,000 francs
of work.
THE CEREMONY OF THE CASTING.
During the eight months that were employed in the
operation of boring the preparatory works of the casting
had been conducted simultaneously with extreme rapidity;
a stranger arriving at Stony Hill would have been
much surprised at what he saw there.
Six hundred yards from the well, and standing in a
circle round it as a central point, were 1,200 furnaces,
each six feet wide and three yards apart. The
line made by these 1,200 furnaces was two miles long.
They were all built on the same model, with high quadrangular
chimneys, and had a singular effect. J.T.
Maston thought the architectural arrangement superb.
It reminded him of the monuments at Washington.
He thought there was nothing finer in the world, not
even in Greece, where he acknowledged never to have
been.
It will be remembered that at their third meeting
the committee decided to use cast-iron for the Columbiad,
and in particular the grey description. This
metal is, in fact, the most tenacious, ductile, and
malleable, suitable for all moulding operations, and
when smelted with pit coal it is of superior quality
for engine-cylinders, hydraulic presses, &c.
But cast-iron, if it has undergone a single fusion,
is rarely homogeneous enough; and it is by means of
a second fusion that it is purified, refined, and
dispossessed of its last earthly deposits.
Before being forwarded to Tampa Town, the iron ore,
smelted in the great furnaces of Goldspring, and put
in contact with coal and silicium heated to a high
temperature, was transformed into cast-iron. After
this first operation the metal was taken to Stony
Hill. But there were 136 millions of pounds of
cast-iron, a bulk too expensive to be sent by railway;
the price of transport would have doubled that of
the raw material. It appeared preferable to freight
vessels at New York and to load them with the iron
in bars; no less than sixty-eight vessels of 1,000
tons were required, quite a fleet, which on May 3rd
left New York, took the Ocean route, coasted the American
shores, entered the Bahama Channel, doubled the point
of Florida, and on the 10th of the same month entered
the Bay of Espiritu-Santo and anchored safely in the
port of Tampa Town. There the vessels were unloaded
and their cargo carried by railway to Stony Hill,
and about the middle of January the enormous mass of
metal was delivered at its destination.
