PICKAXE AND TROWEL
The same evening Barbicane and his companions returned to Tampa Town;
and Murchison, the engineer, re-embarked on board the Tampico for New
Orleans. His object was to enlist an army of workmen, and to collect
together the greater part of the materials. The members of the Gun Club
remained at Tampa Town, for the purpose of setting on foot the
preliminary works by the aid of the people of the country.
Eight days after its departure, the Tampico returned into the bay of
Espiritu Santo, with a whole flotilla of steamboats. Murchison had
succeeded in assembling together fifteen hundred artisans. Attracted by
the high pay and considerable bounties offered by the Gun Club, he had
enlisted a choice legion of stokers, iron-founders, lime-burners,
miners, brickmakers, and artisans of every trade, without distinction
of color. As many of these people brought their families with them,
their departure resembled a perfect emigration.
On the 31st of October, at ten o’clock in the morning, the troop
disembarked on the quays of Tampa Town; and one may imagine the
activity which pervaded that little town, whose population was thus
doubled in a single day.
During the first few days they were busy discharging the cargo brought
by the flotilla, the machines, and the rations, as well as a large
number of huts constructed of iron plates, separately pieced and
numbered. At the same period Barbicane laid the first sleepers of a
railway fifteen miles in length, intended to unite Stones Hill with
Tampa Town. On the first of November Barbicane quitted Tampa Town with
a detachment of workmen; and on the following day the whole town of
huts was erected round Stones Hill. This they enclosed with palisades;
and in respect of energy and activity, it might have been mistaken for
one of the great cities of the Union. Everything was placed under a
complete system of discipline, and the works were commenced in most
perfect order.
The nature of the soil having been carefully examined, by means of
repeated borings, the work of excavation was fixed for the 4th of
November.
On that day Barbicane called together his foremen and addressed them as
follows: “You are well aware, my friends, of the object with which I
have assembled you together in this wild part of Florida. Our business
is to construct a cannon measuring nine feet in its interior diameter,
six feet thick, and with a stone revetment of nineteen and a half feet
in thickness. We have, therefore, a well of sixty feet in diameter to
dig down to a depth of nine hundred feet. This great work must be
completed within eight months, so that you have 2,543,400 cubic feet of
earth to excavate in 255 days; that is to say, in round numbers, 2,000
cubic feet per day. That which would present no difficulty to a
thousand navvies working in open country will be of course more
troublesome in a comparatively confined space. However, the thing must
be done, and I reckon for its accomplishment upon your courage as much
as upon your skill.”
At eight o’clock the next morning the first stroke of the pickaxe was
struck upon the soil of Florida; and from that moment that prince of
tools was never inactive for one moment in the hands of the excavators.
The gangs relieved each other every three hours.
On the 4th of November fifty workmen commenced digging, in the very
center of the enclosed space on the summit of Stones Hill, a circular
hole sixty feet in diameter. The pickaxe first struck upon a kind of
black earth, six inches in thickness, which was speedily disposed of.
To this earth succeeded two feet of fine sand, which was carefully laid
aside as being valuable for serving the casting of the inner mould.
After the sand appeared some compact white clay, resembling the chalk
of Great Britain, which extended down to a depth of four feet. Then the
iron of the picks struck upon the hard bed of the soil; a kind of rock
formed of petrified shells, very dry, very solid, and which the picks
could with difficulty penetrate. At this point the excavation exhibited
a depth of six and a half feet and the work of the masonry was begun.
At the bottom of the excavation they constructed a wheel of oak, a kind
of circle strongly bolted together, and of immense strength. The center
of this wooden disc was hollowed out to a diameter equal to the
exterior diameter of the Columbiad. Upon this wheel rested the first
layers of the masonry, the stones of which were bound together by
hydraulic cement, with irresistible tenacity. The workmen, after laying
the stones from the circumference to the center, were thus enclosed
within a kind of well twenty-one feet in diameter. When this work was
accomplished, the miners resumed their picks and cut away the rock from
underneath the wheel itself, taking care to support it as they advanced
upon blocks of great thickness. At every two feet which the hole gained
in depth they successively withdrew the blocks. The wheel then sank
little by little, and with it the massive ring of masonry, on the upper
bed of which the masons labored incessantly, always reserving some vent
holes to permit the escape of gas during the operation of the casting.
This kind of work required on the part of the workmen extreme nicety
and minute attention. More than one, in digging underneath the wheel,
was dangerously injured by the splinters of stone. But their ardor
never relaxed, night or day. By day they worked under the rays of the
scorching sun; by night, under the gleam of the electric light. The
sounds of the picks against the rock, the bursting of mines, the
grinding of the machines, the wreaths of smoke scattered through the
air, traced around Stones Hill a circle of terror which the herds of
buffaloes and the war parties of the Seminoles never ventured to pass.
Nevertheless, the works advanced regularly, as the steam-cranes
actively removed the rubbish. Of unexpected obstacles there was little
account; and with regard to foreseen difficulties, they were speedily
disposed of.
At the expiration of the first month the well had attained the depth
assigned for that lapse of time, namely, 112 feet. This depth was
doubled in December, and trebled in January.
During the month of February the workmen had to contend with a sheet of
water which made its way right across the outer soil. It became
necessary to employ very powerful pumps and compressed-air engines to
drain it off, so as to close up the orifice from whence it issued; just
as one stops a leak on board ship. They at last succeeded in getting
the upper hand of these untoward streams; only, in consequence of the
loosening of the soil, the wheel partly gave way, and a slight partial
settlement ensued. This accident cost the life of several workmen.
No fresh occurrence thenceforward arrested the progress of the
operation; and on the tenth of June, twenty days before the expiration
of the period fixed by Barbicane, the well, lined throughout with its
facing of stone, had attained the depth of 900 feet. At the bottom the
masonry rested upon a massive block measuring thirty feet in thickness,
while on the upper portion it was level with the surrounding soil.
President Barbicane and the members of the Gun Club warmly
congratulated their engineer Murchison; the cyclopean work had been
accomplished with extraordinary rapidity.
During these eight months Barbicane never quitted Stones Hill for a
single instant. Keeping ever close by the work of excavation, he busied
himself incessantly with the welfare and health of his workpeople, and
was singularly fortunate in warding off the epidemics common to large
communities of men, and so disastrous in those regions of the globe
which are exposed to the influences of tropical climates.
Many workmen, it is true, paid with their lives for the rashness
inherent in these dangerous labors; but these mishaps are impossible to
be avoided, and they are classed among the details with which the
Americans trouble themselves but little. They have in fact more regard
for human nature in general than for the individual in particular.
Nevertheless, Barbicane professed opposite principles to these, and put
them in force at every opportunity. So, thanks to his care, his
intelligence, his useful intervention in all difficulties, his
prodigious and humane sagacity, the average of accidents did not exceed
that of transatlantic countries, noted for their excessive
precautions—France, for instance, among others, where they reckon about
one accident for every two hundred thousand francs of work.