y specks, like grains
of silver; this affordeth the greatest quantity of iron, but being
melted alone, produceth a metal very short and brittle. To remedy
this inconvenience, they make use of another material, which they
call cinder, it being nothing else but the refuse of the ore, after
the melting hath been extracted, which, being melted with the other
in due quantity, gives it that excellent temper of toughness for
which this iron is preferred before any other that is brought from
foreign parts.

"After they have provided their ore, their first work is to calcine
it, which is done in kilns, much after the fashion of our ordinary
lime kilns; these they fill up to the top with coal and ore untill it
be full, and so, putting fire to the bottom, they let it burn till
the coal be wasted, and then renew the kilnes with fresh ore and
coal. This is done without any infusion of mettal, and serves to
consume the more drossy part of the ore, and to make it fryable,
supplying the beating and washing, which are to no other mettals;
from hence they carry it to their furnaces, which are built of brick
and stone, about 24 foot square on the outside, and near 30 foot in
hight within, and not above 8 or 10 foot over where it is widest,
which is about the middle, the top and bottom having a narrow
compass, much like the form of an egg. Behind the furnace are placed
two high pair of bellows, whose noses meet at a little hole near the
bottom: these are compressed together by certain buttons placed on
the axis of a very large wheel, which is turned round by water, in
the manner of an over-shot mill. As soon as these buttons are slid
off, the bellows are raised again by a counterpoise of weights,
whereby they are made to play alternately, the one giving its blast
whilst the other is rising.

"At first they fill these furnaces with ore and cinder intermixt with
fuel, which in these works is always charcoal, laying them hollow at
the bottom, that they may the more easily take fire; but after they
are once kindled, the materials run together into an hard cake or
lump, which is sustained by the furnace, and through this the mettal
as it runs trickles down the receivers, which are placed at the
bottom, where there is a passage open, by which they take away the
scum and dross, and let out their mett