ployed 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.

It will easily be understood that 1,200 furnaces were not too many to
melt these 60,000 tons of iron simultaneously. Each of these f