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Chapter XIV: Pickaxe and Trowel
The same evening Barbicane and his companions returned to Tampa
Town; and Murchison, the engineer, re-embarked on board the Tampico
for New Orleans. His object was to enlist an army of workmen, and
to collect together the greater part of the materials. The members
of the Gun Club remained at Tampa Town, for the purpose of setting
on foot the preliminary works by the aid of the people of the
country.
Eight days after its departure, the Tampico returned into the
bay of Espiritu Santo, with a whole flotilla of steamboats.
Murchison had succeeded in assembling together fifteen hundred
artisans. Attracted by the high pay and considerable bounties
offered by the Gun Club, he had enlisted a choice legion of
stokers, iron-founders, lime-burners, miners, brickmakers, and
artisans of every trade, without distinction of color. As many of
these people brought their families with them, their departure
resembled a perfect emigration.
On the 31st of October, at ten o’clock in the morning, the
troop disembarked on the quays of Tampa Town; and one may imagine
the activity which pervaded that little town, whose population was
thus doubled in a single day.
During the first few days they were busy discharging the cargo
brought by the flotilla, the machines, and the rations, as well as
a large number of huts constructed of iron plates, separately
pieced and numbered. At the same period Barbicane laid the first
sleepers of a railway fifteen miles in length, intended to unite
Stones Hill with Tampa Town. On the first of November Barbicane
quitted Tampa Town with a detachment of workmen; and on the
following day the whole town of huts was erected round Stones Hill.
This they enclosed with palisades; and in respect of energy and
activity, it might have been mistaken for one of the great cities
of the Union. Everything was placed under a complete system of
discipline, and the works were commenced in most perfect order.
The nature of the soil having been carefully examined, by means
of repeated borings, the work of excavation was fixed for the 4th
of November.
On that day Barbicane called together his foremen and addressed
them as follows: “You are well aware, my friends, of the
object with which I have assembled you together in this wild part
of Florida. Our business is to construct a cannon measuring nine
feet in its interior diameter, six feet thick, and with a stone
revetment of nineteen and a half feet in thickness. We have,
therefore, a well of sixty feet in diameter to dig down to a depth
of nine hundred feet. This great work must be completed within
eight months, so that you have 2,543,400 cubic feet of earth to
excavate in 255 days; that is to say, in round numbers, 2,000 cubic
feet per day. That which would present no difficulty to a thousand
navvies working in open country will be of course more troublesome
in a comparatively confined space. However, the thing must be done,
and I reckon for its accomplishment upon your courage as much as
upon your skill.”
At eight o’clock the next morning the first stroke of the
pickaxe was struck upon the soil of Florida; and from that moment
that prince of tools was never inactive for one moment in the hands
of the excavators. The gangs relieved each other every three
hours.
On the 4th of November fifty workmen commenced digging, in the
very center of the enclosed space on the summit of Stones Hill, a
circular hole sixty feet in diameter. The pickaxe first struck upon
a kind of black earth, six inches in thickness, which was speedily
disposed of. To this earth succeeded two feet of fine sand, which
was carefully laid aside as being valuable for serving the casting
of the inner mould. After the sand appeared some compact white
clay, resembling the chalk of Great Britain, which extended down to
a depth of four feet. Then the iron of the picks struck upon the
hard bed of the soil; a kind of rock formed of petrified shells,
very dry, very solid, and which the picks could with difficulty
penetrate. At this point the excavation exhibited a depth of six
and a half feet and the work of the masonry was begun.
At the bottom of the excavation they constructed a wheel of oak,
a kind of circle strongly bolted together, and of immense strength.
The center of this wooden disc was hollowed out to a diameter equal
to the exterior diameter of the Columbiad. Upon this wheel rested
the first layers of the masonry, the stones of which were bound
together by hydraulic cement, with irresistible tenacity. The
workmen, after laying the stones from the circumference to the
center, were thus enclosed within a kind of well twenty-one feet in
diameter. When this work was accomplished, the miners resumed their
picks and cut away the rock from underneath the wheel itself,
taking care to support it as they advanced upon blocks of great
thickness. At every two feet which the hole gained in depth they
successively withdrew the blocks. The wheel then sank little by
little, and with it the massive ring of masonry, on the upper bed
of which the masons labored incessantly, always reserving some vent
holes to permit the escape of gas during the operation of the
casting.
This kind of work required on the part of the workmen extreme
nicety and minute attention. More than one, in digging underneath
the wheel, was dangerously injured by the splinters of stone. But
their ardor never relaxed, night or day. By day they worked under
the rays of the scorching sun; by night, under the gleam of the
electric light. The sounds of the picks against the rock, the
bursting of mines, the grinding of the machines, the wreaths of
smoke scattered through the air, traced around Stones Hill a circle
of terror which the herds of buffaloes and the war parties of the
Seminoles never ventured to pass. Nevertheless, the works advanced
regularly, as the steam-cranes actively removed the rubbish. Of
unexpected obstacles there was little account; and with regard to
foreseen difficulties, they were speedily disposed of.
At the expiration of the first month the well had attained the
depth assigned for that lapse of time, namely, 112 feet. This depth
was doubled in December, and trebled in January.
During the month of February the workmen had to contend with a
sheet of water which made its way right across the outer soil. It
became necessary to employ very powerful pumps and compressed-air
engines to drain it off, so as to close up the orifice from whence
it issued; just as one stops a leak on board ship. They at last
succeeded in getting the upper hand of these untoward streams;
only, in consequence of the loosening of the soil, the wheel partly
gave way, and a slight partial settlement ensued. This accident
cost the life of several workmen.
No fresh occurrence thenceforward arrested the progress of the
operation; and on the tenth of June, twenty days before the
expiration of the period fixed by Barbicane, the well, lined
throughout with its facing of stone, had attained the depth of 900
feet. At the bottom the masonry rested upon a massive block
measuring thirty feet in thickness, while on the upper portion it
was level with the surrounding soil.
President Barbicane and the members of the Gun Club warmly
congratulated their engineer Murchison; the cyclopean work had been
accomplished with extraordinary rapidity.
During these eight months Barbicane never quitted Stones Hill
for a single instant. Keeping ever close by the work of excavation,
he busied himself incessantly with the welfare and health of his
workpeople, and was singularly fortunate in warding off the
epidemics common to large communities of men, and so disastrous in
those regions of the globe which are exposed to the influences of
tropical climates.
Many workmen, it is true, paid with their lives for the rashness
inherent in these dangerous labors; but these mishaps are
impossible to be avoided, and they are classed among the details
with which the Americans trouble themselves but little. They have
in fact more regard for human nature in general than for the
individual in particular.
Nevertheless, Barbicane professed opposite principles to these,
and put them in force at every opportunity. So, thanks to his care,
his intelligence, his useful intervention in all difficulties, his
prodigious and humane sagacity, the average of accidents did not
exceed that of transatlantic countries, noted for their excessive
precautions— France, for instance, among others, where they
reckon about one accident for every two hundred thousand francs of
work.
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