to be entering an unfortunate, if not very
unhealthy, plantation, where the trees have
never been able to attain maturity. Many
are black and withered, some shattered;
none have a pleasing look, as if they ever
expected another spring to arrive. It is in
this locality—scattered all over it—that the
various mills, work-places, and "houses" of
explosive tendencies are situated. The rain
with which the morning commenced, has
never ceased, and still continues; so that our
wandering among these various interesting
and uncommonly suggestive structures, is not
attended, we are obligingly informed, with
the same degree of danger as on a dry and
sultry day. We trust that we are not only
grateful for this intimation, but that it really
does tend, in a due degree, to banish from
our minds any little misgivings as to casualties,
which we are aware might occur at any
time, with no means whatever of
subsequently tracing the cause. It is rather a
pleasing emotion with which we contemplate
this favourable circumstance,—we mean the
rain.

At this stage of our proceedings, a grave-
faced man advances towards us, from behind
some trees, carrying two pairs of large
Indian-rubber over-shoes. On approaching
the saltpetre mill, we are stopped at a broad
platform, apparently of slate, laid down in
front of the entrance; and, before permitted
to step upon it, our boots are carefully
encased with a pair of these shoes.

The mill, where the saltpetre is ground, is
a small house, where two huge circular stones,
as large, in circumference, as the hind-wheels
of a great waggon (of eleven or twelve inches in
thickness, each weighing about six tons)
revolve in a circle so small, that they would be
unable to roll round it, but for an ingenious
grinding twist, which is communicated to
each of them by machinery, and has its effect
upon the material underneath, in the more
completely reducing it to a fine powder.
Men with wooden shovels feed the bed
beneath the rolling stones, from time to time,
and keep the powdered saltpetre in its place;
while a man and boy, in a second room
opening from this, cast it up against a slanted
sieve of tine wire, so as to sift it clear of
all larger grains or any refuse. The faces
of the two men and the boy, engaged in this
process, are begrimed with a goblin-like white
dust. On emerging upon the platform, the
over-shoes are carefully taken off at the edge of
the platform; and on no account must the
sole of the boot touch the platform, nor the
sole of the over-shoe touch the gravel.

The charcoal mill presents a similar
machinery, so far as we can judge, amidst the
cloud of black dust that flies and floats about
in all directions. The faces of the men, as
well as their dresses, are of a peculiar dull
dry black, amidst which their eyes shine with
a strange intelligence.

We next visit the brimstone mill. Here
the grinding operation is of a similar kind;
but the most striking feature of this house is,
the ghastly faces of the men, whose eyes
seem to look out of a grim, yellowish mask,
of a kind that we once saw in a pantomime,
when some agents of the nether regions were
supposed to be smitten with a sick headache,
by the spells of the good genius above.

All work is divided into gangs of men, each
with a non-commissioned officer over them,—
as the head cooper, the head mill-wright, the
head charcoal-grinder, the head brimstone
man, &c.; then, there is the foreman of the
works, and over all the general manager, Mr.
Ashbee, a very experienced, intelligent, and,
of course, very careful person.

The rain still continues. All the better.
We are now plashing along over the wet path-
way to the "incorporating mill"—a sufficiently
dangerous place. The ceremony of the over-
shoes having been gone through as before, we
find the machinery is much the same as that
of the grinding-mills previously described
two ponderous, upright millstones, rolling
round like waggon-wheels, in a small circle.
But in the bed beneath these huge rolling
stones lies, not one, but the three terrible
ingredients of powdered charcoal, saltpetre, and
sulphur, which are thus incorporated. The bed
upon which the stones roll is of iron; from it
the stones would inevitably strike sparks—and
"there an end of all"—if they came in contact
in any part. But between the stones and the
iron bed lies the incorporating powder—forty
pounds of it giving a bed of intermediate
powder, of two or three inches deep; so that
the explosive material is absolutely the only
protection. So long as the powder lies in this
bed with no part of the iron left bare, all is
considered to be safe. To keep it within the
bed, therefore—while the rolling twist of the
stones is continually displacing it, and rubbing
it outwards and inwards—several mechanical
contrivances are adopted, which act like
guides, and scoops, and scrapers; and thus
restore, with regularity, the powder to its
proper place, beneath the stones. A water-
wheel keeps this mill in action. No workmen
remain here; but the time required for the
incorporating process being known, the bed
of powder is laid down, the mill set in motion,
and then shut up and left to itself—as it
ought to be, in case of any little oversight or
"hitch" on the part of the guides, scoops,
or scrapers. The machinery of these mills,
as may be readily credited, is always kept in
the finest order. "And yet," says Mr. Ashbee,
in a whisper; "and yet, five of them—just
such mills as these—went off at Faversham, the
other day, one after the other. Nobody knew
how." This seasonable piece of information
naturally increases the peculiar interest we
feel in the objects we are now examining, as
they proceed with their work. We stand
staring at these ponderous stones, with their
rolling "lurch to port," and grimly quaint and
undeviating twist, and we contemplate the