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 the 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 trough, 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. 
26Lh. 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. Fitz william, 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. Chiswell 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, Mn 
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 
