United States or Madagascar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He passed rusting mountains straddled by giant gantries, the towering lifts of mammoth cranes, banks of chalk-white stone, dizzy super-structures mounted by spasmodic skips. As the train proceeded with scarcely abated speed, and the vast operation continued without a break, mill on mill, file after file of stacks, Howat Penny's senses were crushed by the spectacle of such incredible labour.
On the way across he had posted himself so far as possible about the proposed Robinson-Ray plant. He learned that there were to be fifteen batteries of cyanide tanks, two high eighty-four in all supported by steel sub- and super-structures; the work to be completed at Krugersdorpf, twenty miles out of Johannesburg, South Africa. The address of the company was No. 42-1/2 Threadneedle Street.
It was a mass of pillars and super-structures and carvings, increasing in complexity from within outwards, until it attained the appearance of an ornate temple in the centre of which burned a little coal. It was grotesque. On the topmost ledges of this monstrous absurdity stood two vases.
"Well, they're not," the younger man declared, eying him boldly. "For instance, you call for cast-iron columns in your sub-and super-structures, whereas they're obsolete. We've discarded them. What you save in first cost you eat up, twice over, in freight. Not only that, but their strength is a matter of theory, not of fact.
Word Of The Day