three canvas-covered waggons, or a covered
cart of a suspicious-looking kind; but we are
mistaken. It proceeds from the charcoal
furnace. A man with a barrow emerges from the
smoke. He has an iron hook, in place of a
hand (blown otf in one of the minor explosions
which now and then occur), which, however,
he does not seem to miss. He sets down the
barrow—opens the latch of a door with his
hook—enters, and draws it inwards after him,
the point of the hook disappearing just as the
door closes.

We now approach a larger building, in
which the first process of the manufacture of
gunpowder is carried on. We enter by a
square door-way, and ascending a broad
ladder, arrive upon a platform, and find
ourselves in a large building faintly lighted with
a sad twilight gleam, which displays a series
of bowls or basins, the size of large kettle-
drums, covering the whole of the surface
below, and the whole of the surface of the
upper floor, with the exception of the platform
on which we stand, almost enveloped in
a cloud of hot steam, that proceeds from a
great hissing caldron behind us. This
caldron, worthy of Hecate and the weird sisters,
contains the raw material, the great first
principle of gunpowder—saltpetre. It is
brought expressly for this purpose from the
north of Bengal. Here it is boiled—evaporated,
till it attains a consistency of about a
pint to a pound; it is skimmed; strained
through bags and cloths, and is then allowed
to run down into the pans or bowls we have
described, where it undergoes crystallisation.

Very like great bowls of cold punch, of
rather a queer and uninviting kind, do these
numerous vessels appear. They contain a
yellowish liquid, getting lighter and clearer,
as the different series of bowls get more and
more purified. Some of them seem full of
frozen maccaroni; but on a closer inspection,
you find them to be full of crystals of
saltpetre. The yellowish water being poured off,
as from a bowl of ice, the hardened contents
are turned out, and present the appearance of
an inverted kettle-drum, or half a huge sugar-ball,
or snow-ball, according to the series. The
third, or most purified, is used for the finest
sort of gunpowder. But although there are
only three in the regular series, the bowls are
worked again and again, if they resist, until
every particle of salt is abstracted, and Peter
only remains. The salt is sold for agricultural
purposes, while Peter (nitre) is sent
onwards to finish his education. The concluding
process of refinement is that of calcining, or
fusing, the nitre, which is effected at a heat
of six or seven hundred degrees. It is then
poured off into moulds, where it hardens into
cakes, so pure, that it has been ascertained
by Teschmacher's test, that it contains only
one part of salt in four thousand of nitre.

We have made our exit from the saltpetre
department, and we are now again in the
open air, walking through the "wood-yard".
This is a large space, occupied by various
stacks of wood, ranged in columns, as if at. a
review. They are composed. of alder, willow,
and dog-wood. The first and second are to
be manufactured with the charcoal that is
used for coarse powder,—used for mines,
cannon, muskets, or other military purposes
—in short, for killing men; the third sort,
or dog-wood, being the finest sort of wood, is
for the finest description of powder, intended
for sporting purposes—to kill partridges,
woodcocks, snipes, and other creatures
requiring a delicate treatment.

The wood is charred in a square shed-like
house, all black and shining with tar, and
enveloped in a stinging smoke, that makes us
often shut our eyes, and press them inwards
with our fingers. It is curious enough that
the chemical studies of one of our bishops
should have led him to a discovery of the
best method of making charcoal. The whole
process is conducted on the plan laid down
by Dr. Watson, the energetic, learned, and
ingenious Bishop of Llandaff. The wood is
enclosed in large iron cylinders, closed up
from the air; and round these there is a revolving
furnace, which regularly feeds itself from
a coal-truck at the top, dropping a small
portion of coals in a circle, so as to make the
distribution equal. By these means are
extracted, from the wood, all the acids and all
the tar, which run down into a wooden
vat or well, the acid (pyro-ligneous) remaining
at the top, with a thick deposit of tar at the
bottom. The surface presents the appearance
of a coppery liquid. On inquiring as to
the reason for tarring the whole of this brick
building, which was saturated from the roof to
the lowest brick, the tar and the stains of acid
streaming down from every pore, we were
informed by Mr. Ashbee, the manager of the
works, that the charring-house found its own
tar, and tarred itself by continual oozing. The
charcoal thus produced is of singular purity.
A black truncheon of it, nearly two inches in
diameter, being placed in our hands, with a
request that we would break it, a slight movement
of the thumb and finger snapped it in an
instant.

We will now visit, in quick succession, the
mills where the ingredients, of which we have
already spoken, are ground. The reader has,
by this time, discovered that a Gunpowder
Mill is, in fact, a series of mills and other
work-places, distributed over a large space of
ground, each at some distance from the next
one, and, in some cases, at a very respectful
distance indeed, with sundry barriers
interposed between—the good reason for which
will become quite apparent as we proceed.

We now descend a winding slope, by a narrow
muddy path, and, turning at the bottom,
we pass through a tall and somewhat squalid
wooden gateway, and arriving at the narrow
arm of a river, we cross over a small wooden
bridge. We are duly informed that we are
now in "the dangerous ground." We seem