Piastre

“ In front of V——, after having wandered in these endless streets with houses of miners' dwellings, all exactly alike, we come upon a huge slag heap, 800 yards high, like some black pyramid. The neighbouring pits, with their sheds, lifts and air-shafts, are working as usual. We pass a party of miners, solemn and resolute-looking people, their ages varying from 16 to 40, who are going to relieve the workers in the galleries 200 yards below soil. ”

“ The driver of piles takes the place of our stone mason, for of piles is the city’s foundation. A foot at a whack, these piles are sunk into the sand. They are then morticed with mud, girders are strung between them, and behold! ”

“ One, of great size, has a well constructed vaulted roof supported by piers: it is occupied by horse-mills, which grind the corn for the establishment; but the millstones are almost useless, the fittings broken, and the horses only are excellent, as they belong to the managers, and therefore work little, and feed well. ”

“ The privy is light and inexpensive and is placed over a pit in the ground. When the pit becomes one-half or two-thirds full the privy is drawn or carried to a new location. The pit should be shallow, preferably not over 21⁄2 feet in depth, and never should be located in wet ground or rock formation or where the surface or the strata slope toward a well, spring, or other source of domestic water supply. ”

“ In the street are ox-teams, mules, men, and donkeys loaded with ore, crowding each other familiarly, and sinking knee-deep in the mud. Furniture and kegs of beer, bedding and canned provisions, clothing and half-open packing-cases, and piles of raw lumber are heaped up in front of the new stores—or those still to be built—stores of canvas only, stores with canvas tops and foundations of logs, and houses with the Leadville front, where the upper boards have been left square instead of following the sloping angle of the roof. ”

“ The farmer may lean on the gate and gaze over an empty workshop, twenty acres big, with his hands in his pockets, except when he pulls out his purse to pay the hedge-cutters who are clearing out the ditches, the women who have been stone-picking, and the carters who took out the manure, half of which stains the drains, while the volatile part mixes with the atmosphere. ”

“ We enter the “works” through an enormous gateway, and, tapping at the door of the porter’s lodge, bring out an old man whose duty it is, provided we are furnished with the proper credentials, to hand us over to a guide. This done, on we go: over a canal bridge, across the railway, by long ranges of workshops, until we come to a large shed where several workmen are engaged in treading out clay and fashioning it into immense “pots,” or pans, as big as brewers’ vats of moderate dimensions. ”

“ Down by the sea, in the cavernous recesses of overhanging rocks, are some curious corn mills, to which one descends by a steep paved path, the tiny mountain stream that works the mills raging and sluicing alongside in a polished aqueduct at such prodigious speed that upon touching the water your hand receives a smart blow. ”

“ If the mill catches before we can get the pumps to work it's all up with us. If the piles of lumber git afire we kin save some of 'em if the wind's right; that's why we stack up the sawed stuff in separate piles."
"What do you do first—squirt water on it?"
"No, we ain't got no squirts that'll reach. Best way to handle the piles o' lumber is to start a line of bucket-men from the lake and cover the piles with anything you can catch up—blankets, old carpets, quilts; keep 'em soaked and ye kin fight it for a while; that's when one pile's afire, and ye're tryin' to save the pile next t'it. ”

“ There are four fine walks from the house, chiefly through ways artificially made by the proprietor; all dry, kept clean, and composed of materials found on the spot; which is chiefly a course stone, of a greyish cast, friable in many places, and like slate, but oftener consisting of immense masses, that cost the miner, in making some part of these walks, excessive labour; for there are places, where it was necessary to perforate the rock many yards, in order to pass a promontory, that, jutting across the way, denied further access ”

“ It is a prosperous district, crammed with the workers in a gigantic industry. There are visions of murky canals and great hills of accumulated rubble of the mines, coal and copper and iron, dug from the bowels of the earth and blotting out the skyline. ”

“ They cover acres on acres of ground, and cost millions of dollars. All around, you see walls from three to eight feet in thickness and solid as the rocks of the mountains, radiating in every direction. There are many shafts sunk deep into the bowels of the earth, each with its separate enclosure and outworks, and the chambers and drifts underground, now filled with water, measure miles in extent. At the main shaft the works resemble a vast fortress, and are on a scale of extent unprecedented in the history of mining in America. ”

“ At river ports throughout the world, the first primitive step, beyond the mere dumping of stuff and passengers on the natural shelving bank or river bed of mud or gravel, is the paving of the slope, as at Pittsburgh, still leaving the goods to be dragged up and down the bank by main force. ”

“ A hole some ten feet in circumference and ten to twelve feet deep, dug in the earth, walled with stone without mortar, may serve for catching and filtering the sewage. On top of the wall, which should not reach the surface of the ground by about two feet, lay two pieces of railroad iron, and on these place large flat stones, covering all with dirt, providing, however, for ventilation by means of a 4-inch iron pipe, which should be long enough to reach a little above the surface of the ground when all is completed. ”

“ Proceeding to the centre of the yard, your attention is directed to an enormous furnace, near the mouth of which a score of partly undressed workmen are grouped in attitudes of repose. Around are strewn the implements of labour—large cast-iron blocks, wooden mallets hooped with iron, crowbars, and pincers. ”

“ If the mill be on the banks of a small stream, the lumberers make up the logs and planks into rafts, the dimensions of which are suited to the capacity of the stream, and when these reach a larger stream into which the smaller one empties itself, the small rafts are broken up and re-arranged into larger ones; but if the mill be on the banks of the larger stream, the timber is at once made up into the rafts which float down to the shipping port—three or four hundred thousand feet of timber being sometimes conveyed in one raft. ”

“ In some instances it is sufficient to lay the distribution tile on a continuous bed, 8 to 12 inches thick, of coarse gravel, broken stone, or brick, slag, coke, or cinders and complete the refill as shown in Figure 16 or 29.
Figure 30 shows two other methods of controlling the flow on steep slopes and diverting proper proportions to the several lateral distributors laid along the contour of the field. This work can not be effected properly with T or Y branches; the flow tends to shoot straight ahead, comparatively little escaping laterally. ”

“ The pavement is already strewed with decayed cabbage-leaves, broken hay-bands, and all the indescribable litter of a vegetable market; men are shouting, carts backing, horses neighing, boys fighting, basket-women talking, piemen expatiating on the excellence of their pastry, and donkeys braying. ”

“ Around the main building are scattered, with little regard to regularity or uniformity of appearance, barns, cattle-sheds, stables, workshops, and out-offices; and not unfrequently a grist mill and a saw mill;—all bearing evidence of the thriving condition of the proprietor, who, if he lives near the river, is also generally engaged in the timber trade, and employs large gangs of lumberers in the woods. ”

“ Enthusiasm roared and whirred from the concentrating mill where wheels were turning and bands were slipping; where a tub, ore-laden, was jerking and clanking through the hoister shaft; where men on an upper platform were shovelling the dump from the tub into great crusher rolls ”

“ Near the farm-house doors you frequently see them falling from a wooden pipe into a trough, hollowed out of the trunk of a tree, the rudest of fountains; and the same arrangement is made here and there, along the highway, for the benefit of the traveller and his cattle.
One likes to come upon a spring in a walk. This afternoon we
were seldom out of sight of one. ”

“ At the farther end, a huge red saw-mill occupies the centre of a vast field of yellow lumber piles, the tall black stack of the mill clearly outlined against the gray of the land beyond.
Back, a hundred yards or so, a road, evidently constructed years ago when the logs were being taken out, comes up on the flats from the direction of the town, [Pg 12] turns sharply to the right and goes toward the ridge. ”

“ They cut the willows and gather sweet grasses for the making of baskets and trays. They grind and knead and shape clay into artistic pottery and then paint it with colors gleaned from the earth. They burn and bake the clay vessels until they are waterproof, and they carry them weary miles to the railway to sell them to the tourists so that their children may have food and clothing. ”

“ It is not merely the settler or the miner taking logs for his cabin and fence-rails and fire-wood, or timber for building a shaft, but it is the settler and the miner laying waste acres or stripping a mountain slope to get a few sticks. ”

“ It yielded in time—emerging slowly but steadily from a prodigious litter of cement and bricks and mortar and putty, under the hands of innumerable masons, carpenters, glaziers, plumbers, and nondescript subordinates, all of whom talked unwearyingly about nothing at all, and suffered no man to perform any part of his allotted task without suspending their own labours to watch him—an imposing long line of new greenhouses, more than twenty in number. ”

“ The old mill, weather-beaten and white with the accumulating flour dust of ages, and with the cobwebs hanging thick and heavy from its dingy rafters, stands near by, and this too is an object of interest to the sturdy farmers of the surrounding country. ”

“ If your stables are old, examine the floor; or some night may let a horse through, to come out lame for life. If you have a dirt floor, see that it is carefully laid, and remember that if it be inclined either way, it should be from the rack and not toward it. Let your wagons, carts, plows, etc., be repaired during the fall and winter, and not be left till spring. See that your shingles are all sound on the house, barn, and shed. ”

“ When the undertakers open or break up the road or pavement of any such street, or bridge, or any sewer, drain, or tunnel, they shall with all convenient speed complete the work for which the same shall be broken up, and fill in the ground and reinstate and make good the road or pavement, or the sewer, drain, or tunnel so opened or broken up, and carry away the rubbish occasioned thereby ”

“ In the afternoon the workers in the earth cutting took the rubbish left at the bottom of the gallery by the pikemen, and cleared out the exhausted section of the seam, in which they destroyed the wood, being only careful about the lower and upper roads for the haulage. ”

“ They are dug in the pit a vast depth in the ground, sometimes fifty, sixty to a hundred fathoms; and being loaded (for so the miners call it) into a great basket or tub, are drawn up by a wheel and horse, or horses, to the top of the shaft, or pit mouth, and there thrown out upon a great heap to lie ready against the ships come into the port to demand them. ”

“ When we've flung our trestles over the rivers, and blown room for the steel track out of the cañon's side, the oat-fields and the orchards creep up the valleys, and the men from the cities set up their mills. ”

“ Timber shall not be felled to make logs for fires for the
making of iron.
No one may take small fish to feed to dogs and pigs. Only nets
with mesh leaving three inches spaces may be used to catch fish.
Cottage and dwelling houses for workmen or laborers in mineral works, coal mines, or quarries of stone or slate for the making of brick, tile, lime, or coals shall be built only within a mile from such works. Dwelling houses beyond this must be supported by four acres of land to be continually occupied and manured as long as the dwelling house is inhabited or else forfeit 40s. ”

“ The streets and lanes entangled in the labyrinth of houses are irregular, narrow, dirty, and ill-paved; through many of them flow open sewers, receiving the drainage from the houses, and filth of all kinds abounds. ”

“ The whole yard seems alive, some sifting and others shovelling the sifted soil on to the heap, while every now and then the dust-carts return to discharge their loads, and proceed again on their rounds for a fresh supply. ”

“ The shafts by which the miners descend, and through which the ore is raised to the surface, are scattered over a considerable extent of sterile ground, whose dreary appearance, and the sallow countenances of the miners, concur to excite ideas of gloom, apprehension, and melancholy. ”

“ Bridge Pier Founded on Piles.
The ordinary method of forcing a pile into the ground is by repeated blows of a hammer of moderate weight; better success being obtained by frequent blows of the hammer, lifted to a slight elevation, than results from a greater fall, there being danger also in the latter case of injuring the material of the pile. ”