PROGRESS TO THE MINES, a |29 
better proof against the sudden changes of weather, to which tliis climate is 
unhappily subject. 
25th. After saying some very civil things to Mrs. Chiswell, for my hand- 
some entertainment, I mounted my horse, and Mr. Chiswell his phaeton, in 
order to go to the mines at Fredericksviile. We could converse very little 
by the way, by reason of our different voitures. The road was very straight 
and level the whole journey, which was twenty-five miles, the last ten 
whereof I rode in the chair, and my friend on my horse, to ease ourselves by 
that variety of motion. About a mile before we got to Fredericksviile, we 
forded over the north branch of Pamunky, about sixty yards over. Neither 
this nor the south branch run up near so high as the mountains, but many miles 
below them spread out into a kind of morass, like Chickahominy. When we 
approached the mines, there opened to our view a large space of cleared 
ground, whose wood had been cut down for coaling. We arrived here about 
two o’clock, and Mr. Chiswell had been so provident as to bring a cold 
venison pasty, with which we appeased our appetites, without the impatience 
of waiting. When our tongues were at leisure for discourse, my friend told 
me there was one Mr. Harrison, in England, who is so universal a dealer in 
all sorts of iron, that he could govern the market just as he pleased. That 
it was by his artful management that our iron from the plantations sold 
for less than that made in England, though it was generally reckoned much 
better. That ours would hardly fetch sixr pounds a ton, when their’s fetched 
seven or eight, purely to serve that man’s interest. Then he explained the 
several charges upon our sow iron, after it was put on board the ships. That 
in the first place it paid seven shillings and sixpence a ton for freight, being 
just so much clear gain to the ships, which carry it as ballast, or wedge it in 
among the hogsheads. When it gets home, it pays three shillings and nine- 
pence custom. These articles together make no more than eleven shillings 
and three pence, and yet the merchants, by their great skill in multiplying 
charges, swell the account up to near thirty shillings a ton by that time it 
gets out of their hands, and they are continually adding more and more, as 
they serve us in our accounts of tobacco. Fie told me a strange thing about 
steel, that the making of the best remains at this day a profound secret in 
the breast of a very few, and therefore is in danger of being lost, as the art 
of staining of glass, and many others, have been. He could only tell me they 
used beech wood in the making of it in Europe, and burn it a considerable 
time in powder of charcoal; but the mystery lies in the liquor they quench 
it in. After dinner we took a walk to the furnace, which is elegantly built of 
brick, though the hearth be of fire-stone. There we saw the founder, Mr. 
Derham, who is paid four shillings for every ton of sow iron that he runs, 
which is a shilling cheaper than the last workman had. This operator looked 
a little melancholy, because he had nothing to do, the furnace having been 
cold ever since May, for want of corn to support the cattle. This was how- 
ever no neglect of Mr. Chiswell, because all the persons he had contracted 
with had basely disappointed him. But having received a small supply, they 
intended to blow, very soon. With that view they began to heat the furnace, 
which is six weeks before it comes to that intense heat required to run the 
metal in perfection. Neverthless, they commonly begin to blow when the 
fire has been kindled a week or ten days. Close by the furnace stood a 
very spacious house full of charcoal, holding at least four hundred loads, 
which will be burnt out in three months. The company has contracted with 
Mr. Harry Willis to fall the wood, and then maul it and cut it into pieces of 
four feet in length, and bring it to the pits where it is to be coaled. All this 
he has undertaken to do for two shillings a cord, which must be four feet 
broad, four feet high, and eight feet long. Being thus carried to the pits, the 
