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I also visited a semi-active volcano close by continually sending out steam with a noise like a blast-furnace quite enough to give me a conception of all other descriptions of volcanoes. The lower parts of the mountains of Java, from 3,000 to 6,000 feet, have the most beautiful tropical vegetation I have ever seen.
Well, I'll admit I almost was done for." Again the volcano breathed in torment. It was like the sudden opening of a gigantic blast-furnace, and in that instant I saw him vividly his thin, saturnine face, his damp black hair pushed sleekly back, his lips twisted to a cruel smile, his eyes craftily alert, as if to some ambushed danger continually at hand.
Even the herds of half-frozen range cattle sense it by some subtle beast-knowledge. They are no longer afraid to lie down as they may have been for a week. The danger of freezing has passed. The temperature has been at fifty degrees below zero. Now, suddenly it begins to rise. The air is scarcely in motion, but occasionally it descends as out of a blast-furnace from overhead.
We waited at the works until the usual time had arrived for letting out the molten iron which had been accumulating at the lower part of the blast-furnace. It was a fine sight to see the stream of white-hot iron flowing like water into the large gutter immediately before the opening. From this the molten iron flowed on until it filled the moulds of sand which branched off from the central gutter.
A singular expedient was employed at these works, of using a vast vault hewn in the solid rock of the hillside for the purpose of storing up the blast produced by the engines, and so equalising the pressure; thus turning a mountain side into a reservoir for the use of a blast-furnace. This seemed to me a daring and wonderful engineering feat.
He succeeded in what he had set out to do, and it is now to be noted that the product he had striven so sedulously to obtain was a highly commercial one, for not only did the briquettes of concentrated ore fulfil the purpose of their creation, but in use actually tended to increase the working capacity of the furnace, as the following test, quoted from the Iron Age, October 28, 1897, will attest: "The only trial of any magnitude of the briquettes in the blast-furnace was carried through early this year at the Crane Iron Works, Catasauqua, Pennsylvania, by Leonard Peckitt.
Disaster had overtaken them in the panic of 1873, and all that remained of the huge plant was a tottering stump of the chimney and clusters of vacant houses dropping to pieces here and there. Young trees grew out of the cold ashes in the blast-furnace. All about was desolation.
The Greeks employed the lever, the tackle, and the crane, the force-pump, and the suction-pump. They had discovered that steam could be mechanically applied, though they never made any practical use of steam. In common with other ancients they knew the principle of the mariner's compass. The Egyptians had the water-wheel and the rudimentary blast-furnace.
He says: "When I was struggling along with the iron-ore concentration, I went to see several blast-furnace men to sell the ore at the market price. They saw I was very anxious to sell it, and they would take advantage of my necessity. But I happened to go to Mr. John Fritz, of the Bethlehem Steel Company, and told him what I was doing.
Its top, the main square of the settlement, was of baked clay, beaten hard by thousands of naked feet. Crossing it by day was an adventure. The air that swept it was the breath of a blast-furnace. Everett found a room over the shop of a Portuguese trader. It was caked with dirt, and smelled of unnamed diseases and chloride of lime.
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