[With William Byrd on September 23, 1732, as he met with Mr. Chiswell.]
"He assured me the first step I was to take was to acquaint myself fully with the quantity and quality of my ore. For that reason I ought to keep a good pickax man at work a whole year to search if there be a sufficient quantity, without which it would be a very rash undertaking. That I should also have a skillful person to try the richness of the ore. Nor is it great advantage to have it exceeding rich, because then it will yield brittle iron, which is not valuable. But the way to have it tough is to mix poor ore and rich together, which makes the poorer sort extremely necessary for the production of the best iron. Then he showed me a sample of the richest they have in England, which yields a full moiety of iron. It was of a pale red color, smooth and greasy, and not exceedingly heavy; but it produced so brittle a metal that they were obliged to melt the poorer ore along with it.
"He told me, after I was certain my ore was good and plentiful enough, my next inquiry ought to be how far it lies from a stream proper to build a furnace upon [for the water power to drive the bellows], and again what distance that furnace will be from water carriage; because the charge of carting a great way is very heavy and eats out a great part of the profit. That this was the misfortune of the mines of Fredericksville [note - ville , not - burg ], where they were obliged to cart the ore a mile to the furnace, after 'twas run into iron to carry that twenty-four miles over an uneven road to Rappahannock River, about a mile below Fredericksburg, to a plantation the company rented of Colonel Page. If I were satisfied with the situation, I was in the next place to consider whether I had woodland enough near the furnace to supply it with charcoal, whereof it would require a prodigious quantity. That the properest wood for that purpose was that of oily kind, such as pine, walnut, hickory, oak, and in short all that yields cones, nuts, or acorns. That two square miles of wood would supply a moderate furnace, that so what you fell first may have time to grow up again to a proper bigness (which must be four inches over) by that time the rest is cut down.
"He told me farther that 120 slaves, including women, were necessary to carry on all the business of an ironwork, and the more Virginians amongst them the better; though in that number he comprehended carters, colliers [charcoal makers], and those that planted the corn. That if there should be much carting, it would require 1,600 bushels of corn yearly to supply the people and the cattle employed; nor does even that quantity suffice at Fredericksville."
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