Make a mould for bricks. Build a brick-kiln and make bricks. Build a
smelting-house, blast-furnace, kiln for cleansing ore. Meditations.
Build water-wheel and fan-wheel, and set my machinery for an air-blast
to reduce the ore.
In the first place I went to work, and with my knife and hatchet
fashioned out two quite smooth pieces of wood about four feet long,
three inches wide, and perhaps one inch thick. I smoothed these on
one side with a great deal of care, and finished them off by means
of dry shark's skin, which stood me admirably in place of sandpaper.
I placed these two slips of wood parallel to each other, about four
inches apart, and fastened them in that position by means of blocks
of wood of the same size and thickness, placed between them at equal
distances of about six inches, which subdivided the whole into eight
equal compartments, fastening the cross-pieces in by means of hardwood
pegs driven into holes in the side, made by a red-hot nail. When my
labor was finished my affair looked like a set of pigeon holes, such
as are used in an office, except they were open on both sides and had
no back, and each compartment was four inches wide, three inches deep,
and six inches long. This was an insignificant looking thing in itself,
and, except the smoothing of the inside in all parts, was not a labor
of any great magnitude, and yet by means of this instrument I intended
to make a great stride forward in civilization. The thing that I had
made was a press or mould for bricks. I do not know the technical name,
but I knew that if I placed this instrument upon the level hewn side
of any fallen tree for a table, and filled each compartment with clay
properly moistened, I should at each filling and emptying turn out
eight equal-sized, unburned bricks, all ready for the kiln.
To enable me to prosecute this work I moved for a few days to the
landing-place, where clay in abundance was to be found, and where my
old hut would give me shelter. When I say I moved there for a few days
I should say that I came home to the Hermitage every second day to
care for my flock of goats and look after my household cares. Upon my
arrival at the clay pits I soon set to work, and my clay was so pure
that I had little trouble in moulding it; and, after having fixed
a smooth plane upon a fallen tree as a table for the bottom of my
mould, by levelling the same with my hatchet, smoothing with my knife,
and finishing with my shark-skin sandpaper, I set to work moulding,
getting my water at a short distance inland from a boggy piece of
ground abounding in springs, which existed right under my nose, a
little to the left, when I was so anxiously distilling water upon my
first arrival at this very spot. I transported this water, by means of
gourds and my canister, easily, to the clay pits, and soon had a fine
array of bricks, the moulding being simple, and I found I could work
quite fast; and by means of my knife and a sharp clam-shell or two,
and with a large mussel-shell for a shovel, I had no difficulty in
filling the mould quickly and trimming off all superfluous clay very
rapidly. As fast as I finished one set I dashed the mould over with
fresh water, so that the next lot moulded would slip out easily after
being carefully pressed in. As fast as I made the bricks I allowed
them to lie for a day or two in the air till they hardened, and then
commenced to pile them up in shape to be burned and perfected into
bricks. As a boy I had often examined brick-kilns, and I knew that I
must make, or rather leave, a sort of oven under them, and, throughout
the whole pile, apertures through which the flames and heat would
penetrate so as to bake the whole mass. I built my kiln with care and
on the above principles, and in less than a week had a goodly array of
bricks all built up in complete form. I then with my goat team drew to
the kiln all the old dead wood I could manage, and with my hatchet cut
it into suitable lengths to be thrust into my ovens, for I had three
of them in the whole pile, and with great glee set fire to them all
one evening, and saw that they had a good draft and burned fiercely.
I worked like ten men to keep these fires perpetually going, and,
prepared as I had been in the commencement by laying in a large supply,
I, with the aid of the team of goats, was able to keep up with them
and feed them regularly. I do not remember now how many days I burned
these bricks, but it was very easy to examine them and see when they
were sufficiently hardened and burned; and when they suited my eye,
and I experimented upon several by breaking them open, I let the fires
gradually go down, and found myself in possession of a nice stack of
bricks, fit for any purpose. These, as they cooled, I transported
in the canoe to the landing opposite to the Hermitage, where I had
determined to arrange all my appurtenances for smelting the iron ore.
In the first place I commenced a house or workshop, about twenty feet
long and twenty wide, by building up walls of stone, as I had done
for my Hermitage, but in a much rougher and coarser manner, without
foundations, and very much lower, not over six feet in height. Over
this I erected the usual bamboo roof and rushes for thatch, with one
opening for a window, and one for an entrance, in opposite sides. The
floor of this room I covered with pure white sea-sand for one half, and
the other half with soft, pulverized, dry, clayey loam that would do me
for castings. In one end of this smelting-house, as I called it, with
the feeding-place outside, I built, in an aperture in the wall left for
that purpose, a solid blast furnace of my bricks, which I lined with
my pottery cement, and made in every way complete to receive the ore
and smelt it. This was to me, except the manual labor, boy's play. The
opening for the fused iron was within the smelting-house, and I could
run the ore on to the sandy floor in channels made for that purpose,
and thus procure my pig iron or Bessemer steel as the case might be.
In this blast-furnace I left several channels to be connected in some
way with a blast of cold air, for without this blast I could not of
course expect to smelt the ore. To improve the draught, and to have
Nature help me all possible, I built the chimney or cone of the blast
furnace at least twenty feet high, of bricks, tapering the same in a
cone form from the base to the apex. I worked upon this matter like
a beaver, and felt well satisfied with my work when it was done. My
smelting-house stood quite near to Rapid River Falls on the further
side, for I had foreseen that I should have to use some power to get up
speed to move some kind of a fan wheel, and I knew that I could only do
it by means of water, and had therefore, for that very reason, placed
the house near to the bank and had built the blast-furnace on the end
of the house nearest the river.
After finishing my blast-furnace completely I left it to dry and
harden, and set to work at my roasting-kiln, on which my ore was to be
first purified and cleansed. This was comparatively an easy affair,
and was made wholly of bricks, underneath which large fires could be
built, and through the numerous interstices the flame would reach the
ore placed upon the bed above; the flame, after passing through and
over the ore, to be carried out at the other end of the bed by means of
a brick chimney about twelve feet in height, high enough to give a good
draught.
As soon as I had my kiln done I commenced drying it by lighting a fire
under it, and found that it had a good draught and would answer my
purpose admirably. I then went to work again with my team of goats,
and dragged near to the smelting-house all the dead wood--and there
were large quantities of it--that I could lay hands upon, that was
anyway near or convenient. Being now in the month of June, I found the
mornings often quite snappishly cold, and was glad of a little fire
often in my home. But I worked so hard in these days that I scarcely
had time, after finishing my supper, to smoke a pipe of tobacco before
I was ready to throw myself upon my seal-skin bed and fall asleep.
In these times I worked so hard and persistently that I often cooked
enough corned meat to last me a week at a time, and could always
draw upon my stores of salted fish and smoked salmon, and goats'
hams, vegetables, etc., whenever I needed them. Of course many days
I was unable to work in the open air on account of rain and storms.
Those were the times that I took to improve my clothing, patch up my
moccasins, and make up warm skins for the cold weather; look after my
little flock of goats, which often strayed away short distances, but by
being careful to feed them each night regularly on a little delicacy of
some kind, mostly sweet potatoes, they always came back to the shelter
of a nice warm shed that I had constructed for them near my home, made
on exactly the same principle as my hut at the landing-place.
It would take too long to enumerate the various little articles that I
had gathered around about me, and how perfectly my mind was at rest
on the following subjects: First, that I could not suffer for want of
food, for I had enough and to spare of everything; amongst many others
the following principal ones,--dried goats' flesh, jerked goats' flesh,
smoked goats' flesh, smoked goats' hams, wild pigeons, eggs, fresh fish
for the catching, smoked and salted herring and salmon, sweet potatoes,
cabbages, turnips, beets, etc., vinegar, wine, salt, milk, etc. Second,
that I had a large quantity of nice skins, both cured and uncured, of
seals and goats, to last me a lifetime; with fuel, light, and covering
against all contingencies, and tobacco for my solace. Third, that I
felt confident and perfectly satisfied that the island was uninhabited
and unknown, and I went to sleep each night without fear of being
interrupted on the next day. My nerves had wholly regained their tone,
and I was grown strong, rugged, and hearty, whilst my experiments
with my iron ore and my hard work upon the smelting-house gave me the
necessary incentives to keep me from thinking of my own sad fate. I
saw such a future before me, could I have iron in all its forms ready
to my hand, that I was kept in a state of excitement just right for my
temperament, and was restrained thereby from gnawing at my own heart
with bitter regrets which would avail me nothing. I do not mean to say
that I did not have bitter and dreadful moments of despair and utter
hopelessness, but these occurred usually in the evening when I felt my
loneliness the greater than when I was at work in the open air. But
I began to dispel this even by giving another current to my thoughts,
making my pet goats go through their little series of tricks to amuse
me and draw me away from myself. A good smoke at my pipe, and a glass
of quite fair claret wine used often at these times to freshen me up
and dispel my mournful thoughts. When these would not work I used
to seek oblivion from my thoughts by plunging into my "Epitome" and
studying out some problem that would aid me in, at some future day,
fixing the latitude of my island, or else amused myself by reading
something from my book of useful arts and sciences that might be of
service to me some time.
Up to this season of the year no snow had as yet fallen, but ice had
skimmed the little fresh-water pools outside of the main river, and
some few nights had been cold outside; but, thanks to God who had been
so merciful to me, I was warmly clothed and housed, and had nothing to
fear from wind or weather.
During some of the stormy days I puzzled over the problem of how I was
to get blasts of air forced into my furnace. And this is how I did it
eventually. I cleared away a small portion of the fall of Rapid River,
so that the water rushed with great force through a sort of flume of
about four feet in width and three feet deep. I secured and regulated
this floor by means of a series of gates and pieces of wood that I
drove into the soil on either side. I procured them by cutting a tree,
about twelve inches in diameter, into sections of about five feet in
length with my hatchet, by infinite labor, and splitting them with
hard-wood wedges into long rough clapboarding or scantling about an
inch thick and I had no time to smooth them, but had to use them as
they came to hand, rough from being split with the wedges; but as the
wood was straight-grained I got quite a quantity of very fair pieces
of board that suited my purpose, although not smoothed. I drove these,
as I have said, into each side of the flume in the dam to protect the
sides from being washed away, and arranged a sort of gate so as to keep
all water from passing through when I so desired. It was a bungling
sort of a job, and not very strong, but answered my present purposes
quite well. I then went to work upon my water-wheel, which I intended
to hang in this flume, and, by opening the gate above, allow the water
to flow down upon it with great force and turn it, so as to obtain
motion, and power to which to connect pulleys and wheels on the land
side upon the axle of the wheel. I studied long over the formation of
this wheel, and finally constructed it by taking for the axle a smooth,
strong limb of a hard-wood tree, about four inches in diameter, and
apparently perfectly circular in form. From this I stripped the bark,
polished it with shark's skin, and cut it off so as to leave it about
seven feet in length. I then, by means of rawhide and willow withes,
fastened, at right angles to this axle, light but strong arms made
of cane, extending about three feet in each direction from the main
axle. These I again strengthened by means of crosspieces parallel to
the main axle, which I bound across the arms, and over these again
lighter canes yet, crossing the whole fabric from the extremity of one
arm to the base of another, till I had a framework of a wheel, light
and fragile to be sure, but very tough and well bound together, and
each withe and rawhide string set well taut and securely fastened in
real sailor style,--and sailors can make immensely strong articles
bound together only with string, the secret being that they know how
to make each turn do its work, and how to fasten the whole securely. I
sunk into the ground on each side of the flume a strong post of wood
some eight inches in diameter, each ending at the top in two natural
branches, or a crotch, like the letter Y, which I smoothed out by means
of my knife and fire so as to receive the axle of my wheel and allow it
to revolve in them. These posts I set in the ground very deep and very
securely, and battered down stones around their foundation, and braced
them also with other stakes driven into the ground near to them, at an
angle, and lashed securely to them. Upon my framework of the wheel I
tied on, with rawhides, slats or "buckets," as they are called, of my
split clapboarding, to be acted upon by the water and cause the wheel
to revolve. Outside the axle, upon the shore side, I fitted a wheel
of cane, about three feet in diameter, constructed in the same way as
the main wheel, but not more than six inches in width. This was to
receive a belt to communicate the power and motion of the water-wheel
to a series of pullies that I was yet to make. After getting the wheel
in place, and the axle set in the crotches of the two uprights, I
opened my gateway and saw with pleasure that it revolved very rapidly,
evenly, and with great strength. I also observed that the paddles were
submerged just as they ought to be, only about a foot in the water,
and that the rest of the wheel revolved in air. I also discovered that
I could regulate the speed exactly by letting a larger or smaller
quantity of water into the flume by means of my gate. I did not do
all this without infinite detail and hard work, and it was at least
a month before my wheel was completed and hung in its position. This
brought me into July, and now I commenced to see ice form in the smooth
pools near the river, and once, upon the fifteenth, was visited with a
severe snow storm, but a day or two of pleasant weather soon carried it
off. There were days also in this month when storms arose and lashed
the ocean into monstrous billows, and at these times I visited the
breakwater and East Signal Point and looked upon its grandeur. These
were the days in which I felt blue and dispirited. But I also knew
that the winter must ere this have reached its greatest severity, and
although it was now really cold and everything frost-bound, yet it was
not like zero weather at home. There were more mild and pleasant days
than cold and unpleasant ones. There was evidently a warm current of
the ocean embracing the island and keeping the climate mild. I felt
confident that cold weather would soon be gone, and that I had nothing
to fear on that account, for I found no difficulty in keeping myself
perfectly warm at any time in the open air by a little exercise. As
for my moccasins, they were warmer than any shoes I had ever worn,
and my skin clothing was, even in this winter weather, uncomfortably
warm, and on mild days I often used to change my sealskin coat that I
had made myself for one of pliable goatskin leather without any hair
upon it. My water-wheel I found was, although wonderfully light, of
excellent strength, and when I constructed it I was well aware of the
tough properties of the cane used in its formation, which might writhe
and give, but would not break. I kept the axle down in the crotches or
"journals" formed for it, by means of greased straps of rawhide, so
that it could not jump upward, and yet would revolve easily without
being bound or cramped. My next task was to connect my water-wheel with
a series of pullies on the shore and near to the blast-furnace, so as
to force a column of air into and through the ore that I intended to
smelt, by means of the different channels that I had left for that
purpose when building it, all of which ended or entered into one
opening in the side nearest the water-wheel.
Near this opening I built, at about three feet distant, a little room
completely of brick, about two feet wide and six feet high, with
the narrow end pointing towards the opening in the blast-furnace
that connected with all the interior air-channels that I had left
when building it. This room I covered on top with flat stones firmly
cemented down, and closed it up air-tight, except an opening left in
the brickwork at the top, six inches in diameter. Opposite the opening
into the blast-furnace, which was at the same height, and on the two
sides of the structure, equidistant from the ground and the top, I
left two similar holes in the brickwork, and opposite to them planted
two stakes in the form of the letter Y. In other words, I constructed
this building to contain a wheel similar to my water-wheel, about six
feet in diameter, which was to revolve in air instead of water, and
force a column into the blast-furnace. I should say that I made such a
wheel with paddles and hung it in its bearings before putting on the
top of flat stones or building up all around it. When completed I had
a wheel enclosed in an air-tight place, the paddles of which would,
when revolving, push the air into the opening left at the top of the
end facing the blast-furnace. Around about the axle on each side the
openings were not closed, purposely; for it was here that the machine
was to suck in the air which it discharged into the blast-furnace
opening by means of a tube made of goatskin which connected the two
together. On the outside of the axle I built a small and very light
wheel of cane, only a foot in diameter, to receive the pulley for the
wheel on the axle of the water-wheel. I had only to connect these two
together and my task was done. The two pulleys were distant about
fifteen feet, and I had to make a band of goatskin, about three inches
wide, over thirty feet in length, to connect the two. This I did by
cutting strip after strip and sewing them strongly together in length
till I completed my band. I had only to place this upon my pulleys,
open the gate, let on the water, and the task would be finished. Having
arranged everything so as to be all ready the next day, I got across
the river on my stepping-stones, and went to my home to think matters
over. I knew, as a mechanic, that the affair would work, and that I
had much more power even than I had any need of. But I could not rest.
I should not be content till on the next day I saw all the wheels,
already greased and lashed into their sockets with rawhide, revolving
by the mere motion of my lifting the gateway and letting on the water.
I smoked and thought and paced my room for hours, and finally, when I
went to bed from sheer weariness of mind and body, I passed a disturbed
night. Morning saw me bright and early upon my feet, and, snatching
a hasty morsel of food, I started for the smelting-house, got out my
band and stretched it from pulley to pulley, and with trembling hands
went to the gateway at the dam and let on the water to my undershot
water-wheel. It did not hesitate a moment to obey the force of nature
and the law of mechanics, and the volume of water had scarcely struck
the paddles before the whole apparatus began to work, the axle to
revolve, and the band to move.
[Illustration: OPENING THE WATER GATE.--PAGE 164.]
I let on a very little head of water first, and rushed to my fan-wheel.
There it was, moving with great rapidity, and the connecting goatskin
bag was evidently distended with air. Thence I rushed to the other
side of the blast-furnace, where the feeding-place for fuel was, and
by casting in small, light objects saw them sucked up the chimney at
once. I was successful. I had at least ten times the power that I
needed for my purpose. I rushed back to the dam and cut off the water,
perfectly content with the experiment without bringing any shock upon
my machinery by putting on a full head of water, which I saw I did not
need, as my fan-wheel, as I supposed, was turned with the utmost ease,
having no resistance except the air. I could do nothing more this day
but admire my handiwork, and arrange little matters here and there to
perfect the whole affair and get ready for my first smelting of the
ore.