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Updated: June 4, 2025
The price for the descent was fixed at five dollars a head, and, notwithstanding this high charge, during the two months that preceded the experiment, the influx of visitors allowed the Gun Club to pocket nearly 500,000 dollars! It need hardly be said that the first visitors to the Columbiad were the members of the Gun Club. This privilege was justly accorded to that illustrious body.
"So, then, in place of 1,600,000 pounds of powder, we shall have but 400,000 pounds of fulminating cotton; and since we can, without danger, compress 500 pounds of cotton into twenty-seven cubic feet, the whole quantity will not occupy a height of more than 180 feet within the bore of the Columbiad.
A few moments later the three travelling companions were installed in the projectile, and had screwed down the door-plate, and the mouth of the Columbiad, entirely liberated, rose freely towards the sky. Nicholl, Barbicane, and Michel Ardan were definitively walled up in their metal vehicle. Who could predict the universal emotion then at its paroxysm?
To these insinuations Barbicane returned no answer; perhaps he never heard of them, so absorbed was he in the calculations for his great enterprise. When his famous communication was made to the Gun Club, the captain's wrath passed all bounds; with his intense jealousy was mingled a feeling of absolute impotence. How was he to invent anything to beat this 900-feet Columbiad?
"Done, my captain!" replied Ardan, clasping Nicholl's hand. "But, by the bye, you have already lost three bets with our president, as the necessary funds for the enterprise have been found, as the operation of casting has been successful, and lastly, as the Columbiad has been loaded without accident, six thousand dollars." "Yes," replied Nicholl. "Thirty-seven minutes six seconds past ten."
Barbicane, therefore, opened the inclosure to all comers; but, in accordance with his practical character, he determined to coin money out of the public curiosity. It was, indeed, something to even be allowed to see this immense Columbiad, but to descend into its depths seemed to the Americans the ne plus ultra of earthly felicity.
"Well, then," said Morgan, "I propose for the fabrication of the Columbiad the best alloy hitherto known that is to say, 100 parts of copper, 12 of tin, and 6 of brass." "My friends," answered the president, "I agree that this composition has given excellent results; but in bulk it would be too dear and very hard to work.
At the bottom of the excavation they constructed a wheel of oak, a kind of circle strongly bolted together, and of immense strength. The center of this wooden disc was hollowed out to a diameter equal to the exterior diameter of the Columbiad. Upon this wheel rested the first layers of the masonry, the stones of which were bound together by hydraulic cement, with irresistible tenacity.
"Certainly; but what would be bad for a gun destined for long service would not be so for our Columbiad. We run no danger of explosion, and the powder must immediately take fire to make its mechanical effect complete." "We might make several touchholes," said J.T. Maston, "so as to set fire to it in several places at the same time."
"This is a very affecting scene," said the commissioner, wiping his eyes. "I must keep the impression of it for my 'Columbiad';" and drawing out his tablet, he proceeded to write on the spot an apostrophe to Freedom, which afterwards found a place in his great epic. David Matson had saved a little money during his captivity by odd jobs and work on holidays.
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