During the first few days they were occupied in unloading the flotilla of the tools, machines, provisions, and a large number of plate iron houses made in pieces separately pieced and numbered.  At the same time Barbicane laid the first sleepers of a railway fifteen miles long that was destined to unite Stony Hill and Tampa Town.

It is known how American railways are constructed, with capricious bends, bold slopes, steep hills, and deep valleys.  They do not cost much and are not much in their way, only their trains run off or jump off as they please.  The railway from Tampa Town to Stony Hill was but a trifle, and wanted neither much time nor much money for its construction.

Barbicane was the soul of this army of workmen who had come at his call.  He animated them, communicated to them his ardour, enthusiasm, and conviction.  He was everywhere at once, as if endowed with the gift of ubiquity, and always followed by J.T.  Maston, his bluebottle fly.  His practical mind invented a thousand things.  With him there were no obstacles, difficulties, or embarrassment.  He was as good a miner, mason, and mechanic as he was an artilleryman, having an answer to every question, and a solution to every problem.  He corresponded actively with the Gun Club and the Goldspring Manufactory, and day and night the Tampico kept her steam up awaiting his orders in Hillisboro harbour.

Barbicane, on the 1st of November, left Tampa Town with a detachment of workmen, and the very next day a small town of workmen’s houses rose round Stony Hill.  They surrounded it with palisades, and from its movement and ardour it might soon have been taken for one of the great cities of the Union.  Life was regulated at once and work began in perfect order.

Careful boring had established the nature of the ground, and digging was begun on November 4th.  That day Barbicane called his foremen together and said to them—­

“You all know, my friends, why I have called you together in this part of Florida.  We want to cast a cannon nine feet in diameter, six feet thick, and with a stone revetment nineteen and a half feet thick; we therefore want a well 60 feet wide and 900 feet deep.  This large work must be terminated in nine months.  You have, therefore, 2,543,400 cubic feet of soil to dig out in 255 days—­that is to say, 10,000 cubic feet a day.  That would offer no difficulty if you had plenty of elbow-room, but as you will only have a limited space it will be more trouble.  Nevertheless as the work must be done it will be done, and I depend upon your courage as much as upon your skill.”

At 8 a.m. the first spadeful was dug out of the Floridian soil, and from that moment this useful tool did not stop idle a moment in the hands of the miner.  The gangs relieved each other every three hours.