adopted here. It has been found to tempt
the men to hurry their work at the expense
of a neat finish, and the manager prefers to
give a workman six months' trial, during
which he learns his business of gun-making
by machinery, and is also sure by that
time to have shown what wages he is worth.
Only twelve of these people are Americans;
one or two Germans; the rest are English.

Listening to these facts as my conductor
communicates them, we pass into a long room
hung with portraits of targets as they
appeared after firing at them with Colt's
revolvers. All the bullet marks are, of
course, very near the bull's eye—which,
I hope I am not presumptuous or
depreciatory of the great Colt invention in
attributing in some measure to the marksman.
Beyond this is the store room,
lined with wooden racks up to the ceiling,
which are almost naked now, only five pistols
of all the number that are made here—six
hundred a week—being at this moment in
store. For there is a new government order
for the Baltic; and as fast as they are finished
the pistols are sent away, packed in deep
cases, that look very large indeed, considering
that they are only for five-and-twenty single
pistols each. But the conical balls and bullet-
moulds, powder-flasks and percussion caps
take up more room than the pistols themselves.

Out of the hot atmosphere, and the all-
pervading odour of hot oil, we pass a yard ancle
deep in iron chips (which make a dry hard
road in all weathers, very destructive to
leather) into a long out-building, in which
the only genuine smiths are at work. Here
the very beginning of the pistol is made; if
we except the cutting and polishing of the
stock, which have been already described
in these pages.* There is little of the
noise of a smithy here, except the roaring of
the furnaces. A workman rams the end of
a long bar of steel into the fire; and, taking
it out glowing with heat, strikes a bit off the
end as if it were a stick of peppermint;
while his companion, giving it a couple of
rough taps upon the anvil, drops the red-hot
morsel into a die. This die is a plug-hole
shaped something like a horse-shoe, at the
foot of a machine, bearing a painful resemblance
to a guillotine. While they have been
breaking off the bit of steel, a huge screw has
been slowly lifting up the iron hammer-head,
which plays the part of the axe in the guillotine:
and now the great hammer drops, and
with one stroke beats the piece of iron to the
form of the die. It has cooled to a black
heat now, and is shaped something like the
sole of a very narrow shoe; but it must be
heated again, and the heel end must be beat
up at right angles to the long part—taking
care that it be bent according to the grain of
the metal, without which it will be liable to
flaw. Thus the shield, and what may be
called the body of the pistol, are made in an
instant.
* Guns and Pistols. See vol. iv. p. 580.

In Birmingham, the barrels of fire-arms are
made of old nails that have been knocked
about, and which are melted, rolled into
sheets, twisted again, and beaten about, till
they are considered to be tougher and less
likely to burst; but the American gunsmiths
know nothing about this. They merely heat
the end of the bars of cast steel again and
beat it with steam hammers; for it would
not do to draw it through holes, as thick wire
is drawn, or to roll it as with ordinary round
bars. These hammers are fixed, five in a
frame, where they quiver with a chopping
noise too rapidly to count the strokes, over a
little iron plate, never touching it, though
coming very close. Into the first of these
the smith thrusts the red end of the bar, and
guides it till it is beaten square. The next
hammer beats it smaller, but still square:
the next beats it smaller and longer still, but
rounder. The fourth hammer beats it quite
round, and the fifth strikes off the exact
length for the barrel. This gradual process
is absolutely necessary, for the steel will not
bear being beaten round the first time; and,
although five barrels may be thus forged in
one minute, the rapid strokes of these
hammers are said to make it quite as tough as
the Birmingham plan; which seems to be
borne out by the results at the Proof-House.
On the same floor, the barrels and cylinders,
after polishing, are case-hardened, and tinted
blue, by burning in hot embers; processes
which are well known.

Across the yard strewn with chips of iron
again, and through the tool room, where men
are turning great screws and other bolts and
portions of machinery, we mount to the first
floor, and enter a long room filled with
machines, and rather more redolent of hot
rank oil. Considering that the floor
supports a long vista of machinery in full
action, the place looks clean and neat, and
is not very noisy. Girls quietly attending
to the boring and rifling of the barrels
—having nothing to do but to watch the
lathe narrowly, and drop a little oil upon
the borer with a feather now and then—men
drilling cylinders, holding locks to steam
files, cutting triggers, slotting screws, treating
cold iron every where as if it was soft wood,
to be cut to any shape, without straining a
muscle. It would be difficult and tedious to
describe these machines minutely, although
they are very interesting to a spectator, and
cannot, I believe, be seen elsewhere. Every
one of them is a simple lathe; but it is in
the various cutters, borers, and riflers that
the novelty and ingenuity exist. Where the
thing to be made is of eccentric shape, the
cutter is of eccentric shape also; and although
the superintendent of each machine acquires
more or less skill by practice, it is in the
perfection of these cutters and borers that the
guarantee for uniformity consists. The bores