Perseverance Island; Or, The Robinson Crusoe of the Nineteenth Century

by Douglas Frazar

  CHAPTER XV.

  Make a mould for bricks. Build a brick-kiln and make bricks. Build a smelting-house, blast-furnace, kiln for cleansing ore. Meditations. Build water-wheel and fan-wheel, and set my machinery for an air-blast to reduce the ore.

  In the first place I went to work, and with my knife and hatchetfashioned out two quite smooth pieces of wood about four feet long,three inches wide, and perhaps one inch thick. I smoothed these onone side with a great deal of care, and finished them off by meansof dry shark's skin, which stood me admirably in place of sandpaper.I placed these two slips of wood parallel to each other, about fourinches apart, and fastened them in that position by means of blocksof wood of the same size and thickness, placed between them at equaldistances of about six inches, which subdivided the whole into eightequal compartments, fastening the cross-pieces in by means of hardwoodpegs driven into holes in the side, made by a red-hot nail. When mylabor was finished my affair looked like a set of pigeon holes, suchas are used in an office, except they were open on both sides and hadno back, and each compartment was four inches wide, three inches deep,and six inches long. This was an insignificant looking thing in itself,and, except the smoothing of the inside in all parts, was not a laborof any great magnitude, and yet by means of this instrument I intendedto make a great stride forward in civilization. The thing that I hadmade was a press or mould for bricks. I do not know the technical name,but I knew that if I placed this instrument upon the level hewn sideof any fallen tree for a table, and filled each compartment with clayproperly moistened, I should at each filling and emptying turn outeight equal-sized, unburned bricks, all ready for the kiln.

  To enable me to prosecute this work I moved for a few days to thelanding-place, where clay in abundance was to be found, and where myold hut would give me shelter. When I say I moved there for a few daysI should say that I came home to the Hermitage every second day tocare for my flock of goats and look after my household cares. Upon myarrival at the clay pits I soon set to work, and my clay was so purethat I had little trouble in moulding it; and, after having fixeda smooth plane upon a fallen tree as a table for the bottom of mymould, by levelling the same with my hatchet, smoothing with my knife,and finishing with my shark-skin sandpaper, I set to work moulding,getting my water at a short distance inland from a boggy piece ofground abounding in springs, which existed right under my nose, alittle to the left, when I was so anxiously distilling water upon myfirst arrival at this very spot. I transported this water, by means ofgourds and my canister, easily, to the clay pits, and soon had a finearray of bricks, the moulding being simple, and I found I could workquite fast; and by means of my knife and a sharp clam-shell or two,and with a large mussel-shell for a shovel, I had no difficulty infilling the mould quickly and trimming off all superfluous clay veryrapidly. As fast as I finished one set I dashed the mould over withfresh water, so that the next lot moulded would slip out easily afterbeing carefully pressed in. As fast as I made the bricks I allowedthem to lie for a day or two in the air till they hardened, and thencommenced to pile them up in shape to be burned and perfected intobricks. As a boy I had often examined brick-kilns, and I knew that Imust make, or rather leave, a sort of oven under them, and, throughoutthe whole pile, apertures through which the flames and heat wouldpenetrate so as to bake the whole mass. I built my kiln with care andon the above principles, and in less than a week had a goodly array ofbricks all built up in complete form. I then with my goat team drew tothe kiln all the old dead wood I could manage, and with my hatchet cutit into suitable lengths to be thrust into my ovens, for I had threeof them in the whole pile, and with great glee set fire to them allone evening, and saw that they had a good draft and burned fiercely.I worked like ten men to keep these fires perpetually going, and,prepared as I had been in the commencement by laying in a large supply,I, with the aid of the team of goats, was able to keep up with themand feed them regularly. I do not remember now how many days I burnedthese bricks, but it was very easy to examine them and see when theywere sufficiently hardened and burned; and when they suited my eye,and I experimented upon several by breaking them open, I let the firesgradually go down, and found myself in possession of a nice stack ofbricks, fit for any purpose. These, as they cooled, I transportedin the canoe to the landing opposite to the Hermitage, where I haddetermined to arrange all my appurtenances for smelting the iron ore.

  In the first place I commenced a house or workshop, about twenty feetlong and twenty wide, by building up walls of stone, as I had donefor my Hermitage, but in a much rougher and coarser manner, withoutfoundations, and very much lower, not over six feet in height. Overthis I erected the usual bamboo roof and rushes for thatch, with oneopening for a window, and one for an entrance, in opposite sides. Thefloor of this room I covered with pure white sea-sand for one half, andthe other half with soft, pulverized, dry, clayey loam that would do mefor castings. In one end of this smelting-house, as I called it, withthe feeding-place outside, I built, in an aperture in the wall left forthat purpose, a solid blast furnace of my bricks, which I lined withmy pottery cement, and made in every way complete to receive the oreand smelt it. This was to me, except the manual labor, boy's play. Theopening for the fused iron was within the smelting-house, and I couldrun the ore on to the sandy floor in channels made for that purpose,and thus procure my pig iron or Bessemer steel as the case might be.In this blast-furnace I left several channels to be connected in someway with a blast of cold air, for without this blast I could not ofcourse expect to smelt the ore. To improve the draught, and to haveNature help me all possible, I built the chimney or cone of the blastfurnace at least twenty feet high, of bricks, tapering the same in acone form from the base to the apex. I worked upon this matter likea beaver, and felt well satisfied with my work when it was done. Mysmelting-house stood quite near to Rapid River Falls on the furtherside, for I had foreseen that I should have to use some power to get upspeed to move some kind of a fan wheel, and I knew that I could only doit by means of water, and had therefore, for that very reason, placedthe house near to the bank and had built the blast-furnace on the endof the house nearest the river.

  After finishing my blast-furnace completely I left it to dry andharden, and set to work at my roasting-kiln, on which my ore was to befirst purified and cleansed. This was comparatively an easy affair,and was made wholly of bricks, underneath which large fires could bebuilt, and through the numerous interstices the flame would reach theore placed upon the bed above; the flame, after passing through andover the ore, to be carried out at the other end of the bed by means ofa brick chimney about twelve feet in height, high enough to give a gooddraught.

  As soon as I had my kiln done I commenced drying it by lighting a fireunder it, and found that it had a good draught and would answer mypurpose admirably. I then went to work again with my team of goats,and dragged near to the smelting-house all the dead wood--and therewere large quantities of it--that I could lay hands upon, that wasanyway near or convenient. Being now in the month of June, I found themornings often quite snappishly cold, and was glad of a little fireoften in my home. But I worked so hard in these days that I scarcelyhad time, after finishing my supper, to smoke a pipe of tobacco beforeI was ready to throw myself upon my seal-skin bed and fall asleep.In these times I worked so hard and persistently that I often cookedenough corned meat to last me a week at a time, and could alwaysdraw upon my stores of salted fish and smoked salmon, and goats'hams, vegetables, etc., whenever I needed them. Of course many daysI was unable to work in the open air on account of rain and storms.Those were the times that I took to improve my clothing, patch up mymoccasins, and make up warm skins for the cold weather; look after mylittle flock of goats, which often strayed away short distances, but bybeing careful to feed them each night regularly on a little delicacy ofsome kind, mostly sweet potatoes, they always came back to the shelterof a nice warm shed that I had constructed for them near my home, madeon exactly the same principle as my hut at the landing-place.

  It would
take too long to enumerate the various little articles that Ihad gathered around about me, and how perfectly my mind was at reston the following subjects: First, that I could not suffer for want offood, for I had enough and to spare of everything; amongst many othersthe following principal ones,--dried goats' flesh, jerked goats' flesh,smoked goats' flesh, smoked goats' hams, wild pigeons, eggs, fresh fishfor the catching, smoked and salted herring and salmon, sweet potatoes,cabbages, turnips, beets, etc., vinegar, wine, salt, milk, etc. Second,that I had a large quantity of nice skins, both cured and uncured, ofseals and goats, to last me a lifetime; with fuel, light, and coveringagainst all contingencies, and tobacco for my solace. Third, that Ifelt confident and perfectly satisfied that the island was uninhabitedand unknown, and I went to sleep each night without fear of beinginterrupted on the next day. My nerves had wholly regained their tone,and I was grown strong, rugged, and hearty, whilst my experimentswith my iron ore and my hard work upon the smelting-house gave me thenecessary incentives to keep me from thinking of my own sad fate. Isaw such a future before me, could I have iron in all its forms readyto my hand, that I was kept in a state of excitement just right for mytemperament, and was restrained thereby from gnawing at my own heartwith bitter regrets which would avail me nothing. I do not mean to saythat I did not have bitter and dreadful moments of despair and utterhopelessness, but these occurred usually in the evening when I felt myloneliness the greater than when I was at work in the open air. ButI began to dispel this even by giving another current to my thoughts,making my pet goats go through their little series of tricks to amuseme and draw me away from myself. A good smoke at my pipe, and a glassof quite fair claret wine used often at these times to freshen me upand dispel my mournful thoughts. When these would not work I usedto seek oblivion from my thoughts by plunging into my "Epitome" andstudying out some problem that would aid me in, at some future day,fixing the latitude of my island, or else amused myself by readingsomething from my book of useful arts and sciences that might be ofservice to me some time.

  Up to this season of the year no snow had as yet fallen, but ice hadskimmed the little fresh-water pools outside of the main river, andsome few nights had been cold outside; but, thanks to God who had beenso merciful to me, I was warmly clothed and housed, and had nothing tofear from wind or weather.

  During some of the stormy days I puzzled over the problem of how I wasto get blasts of air forced into my furnace. And this is how I did iteventually. I cleared away a small portion of the fall of Rapid River,so that the water rushed with great force through a sort of flume ofabout four feet in width and three feet deep. I secured and regulatedthis floor by means of a series of gates and pieces of wood that Idrove into the soil on either side. I procured them by cutting a tree,about twelve inches in diameter, into sections of about five feet inlength with my hatchet, by infinite labor, and splitting them withhard-wood wedges into long rough clapboarding or scantling about aninch thick and I had no time to smooth them, but had to use them asthey came to hand, rough from being split with the wedges; but as thewood was straight-grained I got quite a quantity of very fair piecesof board that suited my purpose, although not smoothed. I drove these,as I have said, into each side of the flume in the dam to protect thesides from being washed away, and arranged a sort of gate so as to keepall water from passing through when I so desired. It was a bunglingsort of a job, and not very strong, but answered my present purposesquite well. I then went to work upon my water-wheel, which I intendedto hang in this flume, and, by opening the gate above, allow the waterto flow down upon it with great force and turn it, so as to obtainmotion, and power to which to connect pulleys and wheels on the landside upon the axle of the wheel. I studied long over the formation ofthis wheel, and finally constructed it by taking for the axle a smooth,strong limb of a hard-wood tree, about four inches in diameter, andapparently perfectly circular in form. From this I stripped the bark,polished it with shark's skin, and cut it off so as to leave it aboutseven feet in length. I then, by means of rawhide and willow withes,fastened, at right angles to this axle, light but strong arms madeof cane, extending about three feet in each direction from the mainaxle. These I again strengthened by means of crosspieces parallel tothe main axle, which I bound across the arms, and over these againlighter canes yet, crossing the whole fabric from the extremity of onearm to the base of another, till I had a framework of a wheel, lightand fragile to be sure, but very tough and well bound together, andeach withe and rawhide string set well taut and securely fastened inreal sailor style,--and sailors can make immensely strong articlesbound together only with string, the secret being that they know howto make each turn do its work, and how to fasten the whole securely. Isunk into the ground on each side of the flume a strong post of woodsome eight inches in diameter, each ending at the top in two naturalbranches, or a crotch, like the letter Y, which I smoothed out by meansof my knife and fire so as to receive the axle of my wheel and allow itto revolve in them. These posts I set in the ground very deep and verysecurely, and battered down stones around their foundation, and bracedthem also with other stakes driven into the ground near to them, at anangle, and lashed securely to them. Upon my framework of the wheel Itied on, with rawhides, slats or "buckets," as they are called, of mysplit clapboarding, to be acted upon by the water and cause the wheelto revolve. Outside the axle, upon the shore side, I fitted a wheelof cane, about three feet in diameter, constructed in the same way asthe main wheel, but not more than six inches in width. This was toreceive a belt to communicate the power and motion of the water-wheelto a series of pullies that I was yet to make. After getting the wheelin place, and the axle set in the crotches of the two uprights, Iopened my gateway and saw with pleasure that it revolved very rapidly,evenly, and with great strength. I also observed that the paddles weresubmerged just as they ought to be, only about a foot in the water,and that the rest of the wheel revolved in air. I also discovered thatI could regulate the speed exactly by letting a larger or smallerquantity of water into the flume by means of my gate. I did not doall this without infinite detail and hard work, and it was at leasta month before my wheel was completed and hung in its position. Thisbrought me into July, and now I commenced to see ice form in the smoothpools near the river, and once, upon the fifteenth, was visited with asevere snow storm, but a day or two of pleasant weather soon carried itoff. There were days also in this month when storms arose and lashedthe ocean into monstrous billows, and at these times I visited thebreakwater and East Signal Point and looked upon its grandeur. Thesewere the days in which I felt blue and dispirited. But I also knewthat the winter must ere this have reached its greatest severity, andalthough it was now really cold and everything frost-bound, yet it wasnot like zero weather at home. There were more mild and pleasant daysthan cold and unpleasant ones. There was evidently a warm current ofthe ocean embracing the island and keeping the climate mild. I feltconfident that cold weather would soon be gone, and that I had nothingto fear on that account, for I found no difficulty in keeping myselfperfectly warm at any time in the open air by a little exercise. Asfor my moccasins, they were warmer than any shoes I had ever worn,and my skin clothing was, even in this winter weather, uncomfortablywarm, and on mild days I often used to change my sealskin coat that Ihad made myself for one of pliable goatskin leather without any hairupon it. My water-wheel I found was, although wonderfully light, ofexcellent strength, and when I constructed it I was well aware of thetough properties of the cane used in its formation, which might writheand give, but would not break. I kept the axle down in the crotches or"journals" formed for it, by means of greased straps of rawhide, sothat it could not jump upward, and yet would revolve easily withoutbeing bound or cramped. My next task was to connect my water-wheel witha series of pullies on the shore and near to the blast-furnace, so asto force a column of air into and through the ore that I intended tosmelt, by means of the different channels that I had left for thatpurpose when building it, all of which ended or entered into oneopening in the side nearest th
e water-wheel.

  Near this opening I built, at about three feet distant, a little roomcompletely of brick, about two feet wide and six feet high, withthe narrow end pointing towards the opening in the blast-furnacethat connected with all the interior air-channels that I had leftwhen building it. This room I covered on top with flat stones firmlycemented down, and closed it up air-tight, except an opening left inthe brickwork at the top, six inches in diameter. Opposite the openinginto the blast-furnace, which was at the same height, and on the twosides of the structure, equidistant from the ground and the top, Ileft two similar holes in the brickwork, and opposite to them plantedtwo stakes in the form of the letter Y. In other words, I constructedthis building to contain a wheel similar to my water-wheel, about sixfeet in diameter, which was to revolve in air instead of water, andforce a column into the blast-furnace. I should say that I made such awheel with paddles and hung it in its bearings before putting on thetop of flat stones or building up all around it. When completed I hada wheel enclosed in an air-tight place, the paddles of which would,when revolving, push the air into the opening left at the top of theend facing the blast-furnace. Around about the axle on each side theopenings were not closed, purposely; for it was here that the machinewas to suck in the air which it discharged into the blast-furnaceopening by means of a tube made of goatskin which connected the twotogether. On the outside of the axle I built a small and very lightwheel of cane, only a foot in diameter, to receive the pulley for thewheel on the axle of the water-wheel. I had only to connect these twotogether and my task was done. The two pulleys were distant aboutfifteen feet, and I had to make a band of goatskin, about three incheswide, over thirty feet in length, to connect the two. This I did bycutting strip after strip and sewing them strongly together in lengthtill I completed my band. I had only to place this upon my pulleys,open the gate, let on the water, and the task would be finished. Havingarranged everything so as to be all ready the next day, I got acrossthe river on my stepping-stones, and went to my home to think mattersover. I knew, as a mechanic, that the affair would work, and that Ihad much more power even than I had any need of. But I could not rest.I should not be content till on the next day I saw all the wheels,already greased and lashed into their sockets with rawhide, revolvingby the mere motion of my lifting the gateway and letting on the water.I smoked and thought and paced my room for hours, and finally, when Iwent to bed from sheer weariness of mind and body, I passed a disturbednight. Morning saw me bright and early upon my feet, and, snatchinga hasty morsel of food, I started for the smelting-house, got out myband and stretched it from pulley to pulley, and with trembling handswent to the gateway at the dam and let on the water to my undershotwater-wheel. It did not hesitate a moment to obey the force of natureand the law of mechanics, and the volume of water had scarcely struckthe paddles before the whole apparatus began to work, the axle torevolve, and the band to move.

  OPENING THE WATER GATE.--PAGE 164.]

  I let on a very little head of water first, and rushed to my fan-wheel.There it was, moving with great rapidity, and the connecting goatskinbag was evidently distended with air. Thence I rushed to the otherside of the blast-furnace, where the feeding-place for fuel was, andby casting in small, light objects saw them sucked up the chimney atonce. I was successful. I had at least ten times the power that Ineeded for my purpose. I rushed back to the dam and cut off the water,perfectly content with the experiment without bringing any shock uponmy machinery by putting on a full head of water, which I saw I did notneed, as my fan-wheel, as I supposed, was turned with the utmost ease,having no resistance except the air. I could do nothing more this daybut admire my handiwork, and arrange little matters here and there toperfect the whole affair and get ready for my first smelting of theore.