[With William Byrd at Mr. Chiswell's on 25 September 1732.]
"Having thus filled my head with these particulars, we returned to the house, where, after talking of Colonel Spotswood and his stratagems to shake off his partners and secure the mines to himself, I retired to a homely lodging which, like a homespun mistress, had been more tolerable if it had been sweet.
"26 [September]. Over our tea, Mr. Chiswell told me the expense which the company had been already at amounted to near £12,000; but then the land, Negroes, and cattle were all included in that charge. However, the money began now to come in, they having run twelve hundred tons of iron, and all their heavy disbursements were over. Only they were still forced to buy great quantities of corn, because they had not strength of their own to make it. That they need forty Negroes more to carry on all the business with their own force. They have 15,000 acres of land, though little of it rich except in iron, and of that they have a great quantity.
"Mr. Fitzwilliam took up the mine tract and had the address to draw in the Governor, Captain Pearse, Dr. Nicholas, and Mr. Chiswell to be jointly concerned with him, by which contrivance he first got a good price for the land and then, when he had been very little out of pocket, sold his share to Mr. Nelson for £500; and of these gentlemen the company at present consists. And Mr. Chiswell is the only person amongst them that knows anything of the matter, and has £100 a year for looking after the works, and richly deserves it.
"After breaking our fast we took a walk to the principal mine, about a mile from the furnace, where they had sunk in some places about fifteen or twenty feet deep. The operator, Mr. Gordon, raised the ore, for which he was to have by contract 1s. 6d. per cartload of twenty-six hundredweight. This man was obliged to hire all the laborers he wanted for this work of the company, after the rate of 25s. a month, and for all that was able to clear £40 a year for himself."
"We saw here several large heaps of ore of two sorts, one of rich, and the other spongy and poor, which they melted together to make metal more tough. The way of raising the ore was by blowing it up, which operation I saw here from beginning to end. They first drilled a hole in the mine, either upright or sloping, as the grain of it required. This hole they cleaned with a rag fastened to the end of an iron with a worm at the end of it. Then they put in a cartridge of powder containing about three ounces and at the same time a reed full of fuse that reached to the powder. Then they rammed dry clay or soft stone very hard into the hole, and lastly they fired the fuse with a paper that had been dipped in a solution of saltpeter and dried, which, burning slow and sure, gave leisure to the engineer to retire to a proper distance before the explosion. This in the miner's language is called 'making a blast,' which will loosen several hundredweight of ore at once; and afterwards the laborers easily separate it with pickaxes and carry it away in baskets up to the heap."
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