5° 7' by the Washington meridian. It appears to me by its
barren and rocky nature to offer every condition favourable to our
enterprise; we will therefore raise our magazines, workshops, furnaces,
and workmen's huts here, and it is from this very spot," said he,
stamping upon it with his foot, "the summit of Stony Hill, that our
projectile will start for the regions of the solar world!"
*
That same evening Barbicane and his companions returned to Tampa Town,
and Murchison, the engineer, re-embarked on board the Tampico for New
Orleans. He was to engage an army of workmen to bring back the greater
part of the working-stock. The members of the Gun Club remained at Tampa
Town in order to set on foot the preliminary work with the assistance of
the inhabitants of the country.
Eight days after its departure the Tampico returned to the
Espiritu-Santo Bay with a fleet of steamboats. Murchison had succeeded
in getting together 1,500 workmen. In the evil days of slavery he would
have lost his time and trouble; but since America, the land of liberty,
has only contained freemen, they flock wherever they can get good pay.
Now money was not wanting to the Gun Club; it offered a high rate of
wages with considerable and proportionate perquisites. The workman
enlisted for Florida could, once the work finished, depend upon a
capital placed in his name in the bank of Baltimore.
Murchison had therefore only to pick and choose, and could be severe
about the intelligence and skill of his workmen. He enrolled in his
working legion the pick of mechanics, stokers, iron-founders,
lime-burners, miners, brickmakers, and artisans of every sort, white or
black without distinction of colour. Many of them brought their families
with them. It was quite an emigration.
On the 31st of October, at 10 a.m., this troop landed on the quays of
Tampa Town. The movement and activity which reigned in the little town
that had thus doubled its population in a single day may be imagined. In
fact, Tampa Town was enormously benefited by this enterprise of the Gun
Club, not by the number of workmen who were immediately drafted to Stony
Hill, but by the influx of curious idlers who converged by degrees from
all points of the globe towards the Floridian peninsula.
During the first few days they were occupied in unloading the flotilla
of the tools, machines, provisions, and a large number of plate iron
houses made in pieces separately pieced and numbered. At the same time
Barbicane laid the first sleepers of a railway fifteen miles long that
was destined to unite Stony Hill and Tampa Town.
It is known how American railways are constructed, with capricious
bends, bold slopes, steep hills, and deep valleys. They do not cost much
and are not much in their way, only their trains run off or jump off as
they please. The railway from Tampa Town to Stony Hill was but a trifle,
and wanted neither much time nor much money for its construction.
Barbicane was the soul of this army of workmen who had come at his call.
He animated them, communicated to them his ardour, enthusiasm, and
conviction. He was everywhere at once, as if endowed with the gift of
ubiquity, and always followed by J.T. Maston, his bluebottle fly. His
practical mind invented a thousand things. With him there were no
obstacles, difficulties, or embarrassment. He was as good a miner,
mason, and mechanic as he was an artilleryman, having an answer to every
question, and a solution to every problem. He corresponded actively with
the Gun Club and the Goldspring Manufactory, and day and night the
Tampico kept her steam up awaiting his orders in Hillisboro harbour.
Barbicane, on the 1st of November, left Tampa Town with a detachment of
workmen, and the very next day a small town of workmen's houses rose
round Stony Hill. They surrounded it with palisades, and from its
movement and ardour it might soon have been taken for one of the great
cities of the Union. Life was regulated at once and work began in
perfect order.
Careful boring had established the nature of the ground, and digging was
begun on November 4th. That day Barbicane called his foremen together
and said to them—
"You all know, my friends, why I have called you together in this part
of Florida. We want to cast a cannon nine feet in diameter, six feet
thick, and with a stone revetment nineteen and a half feet thick; we
therefore want a well 60 feet wide and 900 feet deep. This large work
must be terminated in nine months. You have, therefore, 2,543,400 cubic
feet of soil to dig out in 255 days—that is to say, 10,000 cubic feet a
day. That would offer no difficulty if you had plenty of elbow-room, but
as you will only have a limited space it will be more trouble.
Nevertheless as the work must be done it will be done, and I depend upon
your courage as much as upon your skill."
At 8 a.m. the first spadeful was dug out of the Floridian soil, and from
that moment this useful tool did not stop idle a moment in the hands of
the miner. The gangs relieved each other every three hours.
Besides, although the work was colossal it did not exceed the limit of
human capability.
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