PICKAXE AND TROWEL.
That same evening Barbicane and his companions returned to Tampa Town,
and Murchison, the engineer, re-embarked on board the _Tampico_ for New
Orleans. He was to engage an army of workmen to bring back the greater
part of the working-stock. The members of the Gun Club remained at Tampa
Town in order to set on foot the preliminary work with the assistance of
the inhabitants of the country.
Eight days after its departure the _Tampico_ returned to the
Espiritu-Santo Bay with a fleet of steamboats. Murchison had succeeded
in getting together 1,500 workmen. In the evil days of slavery he would
have lost his time and trouble; but since America, the land of liberty,
has only contained freemen, they flock wherever they can get good pay.
Now money was not wanting to the Gun Club; it offered a high rate of
wages with considerable and proportionate perquisites. The workman
enlisted for Florida could, once the work finished, depend upon a
capital placed in his name in the bank of Baltimore.
Murchison had therefore only to pick and choose, and could be severe
about the intelligence and skill of his workmen. He enrolled in his
working legion the pick of mechanics, stokers, iron-founders,
lime-burners, miners, brickmakers, and artisans of every sort, white or
black without distinction of colour. Many of them brought their families
with them. It was quite an emigration.
On the 31st of October, at 10 a.m., this troop landed on the quays of
Tampa Town. The movement and activity which reigned in the little town
that had thus doubled its population in a single day may be imagined. In
fact, Tampa Town was enormously benefited by this enterprise of the Gun
Club, not by the number of workmen who were immediately drafted to Stony
Hill, but by the influx of curious idlers who converged by degrees from
all points of the globe towards the Floridian peninsula.
During the first few days they were occupied in unloading the flotilla
of the tools, machines, provisions, and a large number of plate iron
houses made in pieces separately pieced and numbered. At the same time
Barbicane laid the first sleepers of a railway fifteen miles long that
was destined to unite Stony Hill and Tampa Town.
It is known how American railways are constructed, with capricious
bends, bold slopes, steep hills, and deep valleys. They do not cost much
and are not much in their way, only their trains run off or jump off as
they please. The railway from Tampa Town to Stony Hill was but a trifle,
and wanted neither much time nor much money for its construction.
Barbicane was the soul of this army of workmen who had come at his call.
He animated them, communicated to them his ardour, enthusiasm, and
conviction. He was everywhere at once, as if endowed with the gift of
ubiquity, and always followed by J.T. Maston, his bluebottle fly. His
practical mind invented a thousand things. With him there were no
obstacles, difficulties, or embarrassment. He was as good a miner,
mason, and mechanic as he was an artilleryman, having an answer to every
question, and a solution to every problem. He corresponded actively with
the Gun Club and the Goldspring Manufactory, and day and night the
_Tampico_ kept her steam up awaiting his orders in Hillisboro harbour.
Barbicane, on the 1st of November, left Tampa Town with a detachment of
workmen, and the very next day a small town of workmen's houses rose
round Stony Hill. They surrounded it with palisades, and from its
movement and ardour it might soon have been taken for one of the great
cities of the Union. Life was regulated at once and work began in
perfect order.
Careful boring had established the nature of the ground, and digging was
begun on November 4th. That day Barbicane called his foremen together
and said to them--
"You all know, my friends, why I have called you together in this part
of Florida. We want to cast a cannon nine feet in diameter, six feet
thick, and with a stone revetment nineteen and a half feet thick; we
therefore want a well 60 feet wide and 900 feet deep. This large work
must be terminated in nine months. You have, therefore, 2,543,400 cubic
feet of soil to dig out in 255 days--that is to say, 10,000 cubic feet a
day. That would offer no difficulty if you had plenty of elbow-room, but
as you will only have a limited space it will be more trouble.
Nevertheless as the work must be done it will be done, and I depend upon
your courage as much as upon your skill."
At 8 a.m. the first spadeful was dug out of the Floridian soil, and from
that moment this useful tool did not stop idle a moment in the hands of
the miner. The gangs relieved each other every three hours.
Besides, although the work was colossal it did not exceed the limit of
human capability. Far from that. How many works of much greater
difficulty, and in which the elements had to be more directly contended
against, had been brought to a successful termination! Suffice it to
mention the well of Father Joseph, made near Cairo by the Sultan Saladin
at an epoch when machines had not yet appeared to increase the strength
of man a hundredfold, and which goes down to the level of the Nile
itself at a depth of 300 feet! And that other well dug at Coblentz by
the Margrave Jean of Baden, 600 feet deep! All that was needed was a
triple depth and a double width, which made the boring easier. There was
not one foreman or workman who doubted about the success of the
operation.
An important decision taken by Murchison and approved of by Barbicane
accelerated the work. An article in the contract decided that the
Columbiad should be hooped with wrought-iron--a useless precaution, for
the cannon could evidently do without hoops. This clause was therefore
given up. Hence a great economy of time, for they could then employ the
new system of boring now used for digging wells, by which the masonry is
done at the same time as the boring. Thanks to this very simple
operation they were not obliged to prop up the ground; the wall kept it
up and went down by its own weight.
This manoeuvre was only to begin when the spade should have reached the
solid part of the ground.
On the 4th of November fifty workmen began to dig in the very centre of
the inclosure surrounded by palisades--that is to say, the top of Stony
Hill--a circular hole sixty feet wide.
The spade first turned up a sort of black soil six inches deep, which it
soon carried away. To this soil succeeded two feet of fine sand, which
was carefully taken out, as it was to be used for the casting.
After this sand white clay appeared, similar to English chalk, and which
was four feet thick.
Then the pickaxes rang upon the hard layer, a species of rock formed by
very dry petrified shells. At that point the hole was six and a half
feet deep, and the masonry was begun.
At the bottom of that excavation they made an oak wheel, a sort of
circle strongly bolted and of enormous strength; in its centre a hole
was pierced the size of the exterior diameter of the Columbiad. It was
upon this wheel that the foundations of the masonry were placed, the
hydraulic cement of which joined the stones solidly together. After the
workmen had bricked up the space from the circumference to the centre,
they found themselves inclosed in a well twenty-one feet wide.
When this work was ended the miners began again with spade and pickaxe,
and set upon the rock under the wheel itself, taking care to support it
on extremely strong tressels; every time the hole was two feet deeper
they took away the tressels; the wheel gradually sank, taking with it
its circle of masonry, at the upper layer of which the masons worked
incessantly, taking care to make vent-holes for the escape of gas during
the operation of casting.
This kind of work required great skill and constant attention on the
part of the workmen; more than one digging under the wheel was
dangerous, and some were even mortally wounded by the splinters of
stone; but their energy did not slacken for a moment by day nor night;
by day, when the sun's rays sent the thermometer up to 99° on the
calcined planes; by night, under the white waves of electric light, the
noise of the pickaxe on the rock, the blasting and the machines,
together with the wreaths of smoke scattered through the air, traced a
circle of terror round Stony Hill, which the herds of buffaloes and the
detachments of Seminoles never dared to pass.
In the meantime the work regularly advanced; steam-cranes speeded the
carrying away of the rubbish; of unexpected obstacles there were none;
all the difficulties had been foreseen and guarded against.
When the first month had gone by the well had attained the depth
assigned for the time--i.e., 112 feet. In December this depth was
doubled, and tripled in January. During February the workmen had to
contend against a sheet of water which sprang from the ground. They were
obliged to employ powerful pumps and apparatus of compressed air to
drain it off, so as to close up the orifice from which it issued, just
as leaks are caulked on board ship. At last they got the better of these
unwelcome springs, only in consequence of the loosening of the soil the
wheel partially gave way, and there was a landslip. The frightful force
of this bricked circle, more than 400 feet high, may be imagined! This
accident cost the life of several workmen. Three weeks had to be taken
up in propping the stone revetment and making the wheel solid again.
But, thanks to the skill of the engineer and the power of the machines,
it was all set right, and the boring continued.
No fresh incident henceforth stopped the progress of the work, and on
the 10th of June, twenty days before the expiration of the delay fixed
by Barbicane, the well, quite bricked round, had reached the depth of
900 feet. At the bottom the masonry rested upon a massive block, thirty
feet thick, whilst at the top it was on a level with the soil.
President Barbicane and the members of the Gun Club warmly congratulated
the engineer Murchison; his cyclopean work had been accomplished with
extraordinary rapidity.
During these eight months Barbicane did not leave Stony Hill for a
minute; whilst he narrowly watched over the boring operations, he took
every precaution to insure the health and well-being of his workmen, and
he was fortunate enough to avoid the epidemics common to large
agglomerations of men, and so disastrous in those regions of the globe
exposed to tropical influence.
It is true that several workmen paid with their lives for the
carelessness engendered by these dangerous occupations; but such
deplorable misfortunes cannot be avoided, and these are details that
Americans pay very little attention to. They are more occupied with
humanity in general than with individuals in particular. However,
Barbicane professed the contrary principles, and applied them upon every
occasion. Thanks to his care, to his intelligence and respectful
intervention in difficult cases, to his prodigious and humane wisdom,
the average of catastrophes did not exceed that of cities on the other
side of the Atlantic, amongst others those of France, where they count
about one accident upon every 200,000 francs of work.