326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



clocks and watches, sewing-machines and steam-engines, and is 

 universally recognized as indispensable whenever accuracy and 

 economy are to be combined with a large production. 



Swank gives the following description of the Sterling Iron 

 Works (already mentioned as the place where the West Point 

 chain was forged), translated from a book published in Paris in 

 1801, written by the Marquis de Crevecceur, who was in the French 

 service in the French and Indian War and afterward traveled 

 extensively in this country : 



" Hardly had we put our horses in the stable than Mr. Towns- 

 end, the proprietor, came to meet us with the politeness of a man 

 of the world. Having learned that the object of our journey was 

 to examine attentively his different works, he offered to show us 

 all the details, and at once led us to his large furnace where the 

 ore was melted and converted into pigs of sixty to one hundred 

 pounds weight. The blast was supplied by two immense wooden 

 blowers, neither iron nor leather being used in their construction. 

 This furnace, he said, produced from two thousand to twenty- 

 four hundred tons annually, three fourths of which are con- 

 verted into bars, the rest melted into cannon and cannon-balls, 

 etc. From there we went to see the forge. Six large hammers 

 were occupied in forging bar iron and anchors and various pieces 

 used on vessels. Lower down the stream (which afforded power 

 to the works) was the foundry with its reverberatory furnace 

 (air-furnace). Here he called our attention to several ingenious 

 machines destined for different uses. The models he had sent 

 him, and the machines he had cast from iron of a recently discov- 

 ered ore, which, after two fusions, acquired great fineness ; with 

 it he could make the lightest and most delicate work. ' What a 

 pity/ he said, ' that you did not come ten days sooner ! I would 

 have shown you, first, three new styles of plows, of which I have 

 cast the largest pieces, and which, however, are no heavier than 

 the old-fashioned. Each of them is provided with a kind of steel- 

 yard, so graduated that one can tell the power of the team and 

 the resistance of the soil ; second, I would have shown you a 

 portable mill for separating the grain from the chaff ; followed by 

 another machine by which all the ears in the field can be easily 

 gathered without being obliged to cut the stalk at the foot, ac- 

 cording to the old method.' From the foundry we went to see 

 the furnaces where the iron is converted into steel. ' It is not as 

 good as the Swedes',' said Mr. Townsend, ' but we approach it a 

 few years more of experience and we will arrive at perfection. The 

 iron which comes from under my hammers has had for a long time 

 a high reputation, and sells for 28 to 30 per ton.' After hav- 

 ing passed two days in examining these diverse works and ad- 

 miring the skill with which they were supplied with water, as 



