llers, with other work required for the incorporating Mills, which,
together, weighed 240 tons; two of the rollers were made in Macon and
two in Chattanooga.

The immense iron shaft, nearly three hundred feet long, varying from
twelve inches in diameter at the central portions, to ten inches and
eight inches, toward the extremities, was cast and completed in
sections, mainly, at the Webster Foundry and Machine Works at the latter
city; here, also, were made the twelve heavy spur wheels, and twelve
powerful friction arrangements to start and stop gradually each set of
rollers separately, as the main shaft, working in the extensive
subterranean archway, which extended below the line of mills, continued
its incessant revolutions.

The great gear-wheel, sixteen feet in diameter, attached to the centre
of this shaft, giving it motion, with its corresponding massive pinion
on the engine shaft, were cast and accurately finished at Atlanta.

The fine steam engine of 130-horse power, having two cylinders and a fly
wheel of fourteen tons weight, and five boilers was made at the North
just before the war, and brought to that city to be used in a flouring
mill. This was purchased as being exactly the motive power required.

It was designed to make use of the water power of the canal for all
purposes, but its available capacities at that time would not permit
this, for the large amount required by the incorporating mills; it was
employed at the other and more dangerous buildings, which required a
smaller amount of power. Two smaller steam engines--one procured at
Macon and the other at Selma--were employed in the Refining building.
Two Hydraulic Presses were procured at Richmond; the twelve iron
evaporating pans, each holding five hundred gallons, were cast at the
large Iron Works on the Cumberland River, in Tennessee. The extensive
copper drying pans for the powdered saltpetre, being together forty feet
long by nine feet broad, were made at Nashville; the four cast iron
Retorts, four feet long by three feet in diameter, with eight cast iron
coolers, and twelve sheet iron slip cylinders of nearly the same
dimensions, were made at the Augusta Confederate Foundry and Machine
Works, where also all the smaller machinery required was constructed.
Copper boilers were procured from Wilmington, N. C., being made of large
turpentine stills; pumps, pipe and cement from Charleston; sheet copper
from Savannah and Nashville; tin and zinc for