130 PROGRESS TO THE MINES. 



collier has contracted to coal it for five shillings a load, consisting of one hun- 

 dred and sixty bushels. The fire in tlie furnace is blown by two mighty pairs 

 of bellows, that cost one hundred pounds each, and these bellows are moved 

 by a great wheel of twenty-six feet diameter. The wheel again is carried 

 round by a small stream of water, conveyed about three hundred and fifty 

 yards over land in a ti'ough, from a pond made by a wooden dam. But 

 there is great want of water in a dry season, which makes the furnace often 

 blow out, to the great prejudice of the works. Having thus filled my head 

 with all these particulars, we returned to the house, where, after talking of 

 Col. Spotswood, and his stratagems to shake off his partners, and secure all 

 his mines to himself, I retired to a homely lodging, which, like a homespun 

 mistress, had been more tolerable, if it had been sweet. 



2Gth. Over our tea, Mr. Chiswell told me the expense which the company 

 had been already at amounted to near twelve thousand pounds: but then 

 the land, negroes, and cattle were all included in that charge. However, 

 the money began now to come in, they having run twelve hundred tons of 

 iron, and all their heavy disbursements were over. Only they were still 

 forced to buy great quantities of corn, because they had not strength of 

 their own to make it. That they had not more than eighty negroes, and 

 few of those Virginia born. That they need forty negroes more to carry on 

 all the business with their own force. They have fifteen thousand acres of 

 land, though little of it rich except in iron, and of that they have a great 

 quantity. Mr. Fitzwilliam, took up the mine tract, and had the address to 

 draw in the governor, Capt. Pearse, Dr. Nicolas and Mr. Chiswell to be jointly 

 concerned with him, by which contrivance he first got a good price for the 

 land, and then, when he had been very little out of pocket, sold his share to 

 Mr. Nelson for five hundred pounds; and of these gentlemen the company 

 at present consists. And Mr. Ciiiswell is the only person amongst them that 

 knows any thing of the matter, and has one hundred pounds a year for 'look- 

 ing after the works, and richly deserves it. After breaking our fast we took 

 a walk to the principal mine, about a mile from the furnace, where they had 

 sunk in some places about fifteen or twenty feet deep. The operator, Mr. 

 Gordon, raised the ore, for which he was to have by contract one and six- 

 pence per cart-load of twenty-six hundred weight. This man was obliged 

 to hire all the laborers he wanted for this work of the company, after the 

 rate of twenty-five shillings a month, and for all that was able to clear forty 

 pounds a-year for himself We saw here several large heaps of ore of two 

 sorts, one of rich, and the other spongy and poor, which they melted together 

 to make the metal more tough. The way of raising the ore was by blowing 

 it up, which operation I saw here from beginning to end. They first drilled 

 a hole in the mine, either upright or sloping, as the grain of it required. 

 This hole they cleansed with a rag fastened to the end of an iron with a 

 worm at the end of it. Then they put in a cartridge of powder containing 

 about three ounces, and at the same time a reed full of fuse that reached to 

 the powder. Then they rammed dry clay, or soft stone very hard into the 

 hole, and lastly they fired the fuse with a paper that had been dipped in a 

 solution of saltpetre and dried, which burning slow and sure, gave leisure to 

 the engineer to retire to a proper distance before the explosion. This in the 

 miner's language is called making a blast, which will loosen several hundred 

 weight of ore at once ; and afterwards the laborers easily separate it with 

 pick-axes and carry it away in baskets up to the heap. At our return we 

 saw near the furnace large heaps of mine with charcoal mixed with it, a 

 stratum of each alternately, beginning first with a layer of charcoal at the 

 bottom. To this they put fire, which in a little time spreads through the 

 whole heap, and calcines the ore, which afterwards easily crumbles into 



