the practice of his vocation was attended by any danger. Like most other men in perilous employments, he protested that there was not the least danger, if a man was only careful. In proof of which he adduced the fact, that in this mine only one man had been killed in eleven months, and he was killed by a piece of "horseback " falling on him. Horseback is a thick scale of remarkably heavy stone that is always found at the top of the stratum of coal, and which ought to fall when the coal is cut away from under it. But masses of it often adhere to the roof of the mine, and cannot be dislodged without more labor than a miner is always willing to bestow. In almost every "room" of a mine, therefore, there will be heavy chunks of horseback clinging to the roof, which are sure to fall soon, and may fall at any instant. The solitary occupant of the room intends to avoid standing under these masses. He also intends to employ his first leisure in prying them off. But time passes; he forgets, in the heat of his work, the overhanging periĮ; and some day the solitary worker in the next room notices that his neighbor's pickaxe has ceased to strike. Down there in the bowels of the earth, each man working by himself, separated from his fellow by a wall of coal several feet thick, men acquire a strange power of knowing how it fares with their friends in the rooms adjoining. They can tell what they are doing, whether they are forward with their load or behind with it, whether the coal is working easily or hard, whether they are working merrily or dully, whether they are good-tempered or cross. The sudden cessation of all noise in a room, at an hour when work is going on, soon attracts attention, and the poor miner is found with his lamp and his life crushed out, under half a ton of horseback. This is said to be the only danger to the miners of the Pittsburg Seam. If noxious gases are generated, it is easy to open a passage through to the other side of the hill for ventilation, or make a chimney through the roof. It is difficult

to see how fifty or sixty billions of tons of coal could be put where man could get at them more conveniently. Sir Charles Lyell, who was in this region some years ago, was particularly struck with the accessibility of this coal, and observed that he never saw anywhere else coal so easily worked and loaded.

The population of the coal region near Pittsburg is about thirty-five thousand, and seven thousand of these are employed in and about the mines. The annual product of the mines is something near two millions and a half of tons, of which one third is consumed at Pittsburg, and the rest is sent away down the rivers to fill the valley of the Mississippi with smoke. In one week of 1866, seven steamboats arrived at New Orleans, having in tow fifty-eight coal-barges from Pittsburg, containing in all forty-five thousand tons of coal, worth at New Orleans three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.

As to that third part of the coal product of the great Pittsburg Seam which Pittsburg itself consumes, it performs a prodigious quantity of work, assisted by nine thousand mechanics and laborers. There are in the congregation of towns which the outside world knows only by the name of Pittsburg, five hundred manufactories and "works." Fifty of these are glass-works, in which one half of all our glass-ware is made, and which employ three thousand persons. This important branch of busi'ness was planted here in 1787 by a person no less distinguished than Albert Gallatin, and it has grown to proportions of which no one seems to be aware out of Pittsburg. The fifteen bottle-works here produce the incredible number of seventy million bottles and vials per annum. But Pittsburg (so we were told in Nicholas Longworth's wine-cellar at Cincinnati) has not yet learned to make a champagnebottle that will stand the pressure of that wine. A serviceable champagnebottle has never yet been made in the United States; and we have to send to France for all that we require in Ohio,

Missouri, and California. We learned (in the same subterranean retreat) that the Pittsburg champagne-bottle comes nearest to being what a champagnebottle should be, of any made in the United States. One in ten of the best French bottles bursts in the cellar of the bottler; one in six of the best Pittsburg bottles. But the truth is, we are such inveterate swillers of every kind of abominable mess that admits of being bottled, labelled, and advertised, that the Pittsburg bottle-makers have not had time yet to develop the higher branches of their vocation. Any sort of glass will do for quack medicine.

There are also fifteen window-glassworks at Pittsburg, which produce nearly half a million boxes of that commodity every year, worth about two millions and a half of dollars. It so happened that we had a burning curiosity to know how window-glass is made, and one of the first things we did at Pittsburg was to gratify this noble thirst for knowledge. Who would have thought that common window-glass is blown? It is actually blown like a bottle. The blower stands on a bench, and as he blows, he swings his tube to and fro, which causes the soft globule to lengthen out into a cylinder, five feet long and one foot in diameter. This cylinder is afterwards slit down all its length by a diamond, and placed in an oven, with the diamond-cut uppermost. As that oven grows hot, the cylinder divides where the diamond marked it, gently falls apart, and lies down flat on the bottom of the oven. There is your sheet of window-glass. As soon as it is cooled, it is cut into the required sizes by a diamond. There are also fifteen flint-glass-works at Pittsburg, the annual product of which is more than four thousand tons of the finest glass-ware, worth two millions of dollars. The total value of the glass made at Pittsburg every year is about seven millions of dollars, which is almost exactly one half of the value of our whole annual product of glass-ware. This is one item of the yearly work done by Pittsburg coal at Pittsburg. Other tri

fies are sixteen potteries, forty-six foundries, thirty-one rolling-mills, thirtythree manufactories of machinery, and fifty-three oil-refineries. Such a thing it is to have plenty of coal !

Oil Creek is a branch of the Alleghany River, and empties into it one hundred miles above Pittsburg. Pittsburg is, consequently, the great petroleum mart of the world. It is but five years ago that this material became important; and yet there were received at Pittsburg during the year 1866 more than sixteen hundred thousand barrels of it. The Alleghany River is one of the swiftest of navigable streams; but there is never a moment when its surface at Pittsburg is not streaked with petroleum. It would not require remarkable talent in an inhabitant of this place to "set the river on fire." The crude oil is floated down this impetuous river in the slightest-built barges, mere oblong boxes made of common boards, into which the oil is poured as into an enormous trough. Petroleum is lighter than water, and would float very well without being boxed in; only it would be difficult to keep each proprietor's lot separate. It needs but a slight accident to knock a hole in one of these thin barges. When such an accident has occurred, the fact is revealed by the rising of the petroleum in the barge; and the vessel gets fuller and fuller, until it overflows. In a few minutes, the petroleum lies all spread out upon the swift river, making its way toward Pittsburg, while the barge is filled with water and sunk.

We were prepared to discourse wisely upon the subject of oil, its discovery, the fortunes made and squandered "in" it, and the healthy, proper way in which oil is now rising from the rank of a game to that of a business. We give place, however, to the editor of the "Crawford Journal" (published in the oil region), who related while we were at Pittsburg a story which is worth more than preaching. An item appeared in the papers, recording the sale of a certain farm on Oil Creek for taxes, which elicited from the editor of

"This farm was among the first of the oil-producing farms of the valley. Early in 1863, the Van Slyke well, on this farm, was struck, and flowed for some time at the rate of twenty-five hundred barrels per day, and several wells yielding from two hundred to eight hundred barrels were struck at subsequent periods. Beside these, there were many smaller wells; and the territory, though sadly mismanaged, is still regarded as among the best in the oil region. In 1864, Widow McClintock died from the effects of burns received while kindling a fire with crude oil. At this time, the average daily income from the landed interest of the farm was two thousand dollars; and by her will the property, with all her possessions in money, was left, without reservation, to her adopted son, John W. Steele, then about twenty years of age. In the iron safe where the old lady kept her money was found one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, two thirds of the amount in greenbacks, and the balance in gold. Mrs. McClintock was hardly cold in her coffin before young Steele, who appears to have had nothing naturally vicious in his composition, was surrounded by a set of vampires, who clung to him as long as he had a dollar remaining. The young millionnaire's head was evidently turned by his good fortune, as has been that of many an older man who made his 'pile in oil'; and he was of the opinion that his money would accumulate too rapidly unless it was actually thrown away, and throw it away he did. Many of the stories concerning his career in New York and Philadelphia savor strongly of fiction, and would not be credited were they not so well authenticated. Wine, women, horses, faro, and general debauchery, soon made a wreck of that princely fortune; and in twenty months Johnny Steele squandered two millions of dollars.

Hon.

John Morrissey, M. C., went through' him at faro to the amount of one hundred thousand dollars in two nights;

after driving them an hour or two gave them away; equipped a large minstrel troupe, and presented each member with a diamond pin and ring, and kept about him, besides, two or three men who were robbing him day after day. He is now filling the honorable position of doorkeeper for Skiff and Gaylord's Minstrels, the company he organized, and is to use a very expressive, but not strictly classical phrasecompletely played out.'

"The wealth obtained by those who worked so assiduously to effect Steele's ruin gave little permanent benefit to its possessors. The person most brazen and chiefly instrumental in bringing about the present condition of affairs was the notorious Seth Slocum, who hung around this city several weeks last summer. He was worth at one time over one hundred thousand dollars, which he had captured' from Steele, and laid aside for a rainy day; but when the latter's money vanished, this amount soon took unto itself wings, and he is at present known among his old associates as a 'dead beat.' At last accounts, Slocum was incarcerated in the jail of a neighboring county for various breaches of the peace, and was unable to obtain bail in the sum of five hundred dollars. Exemplifications these of the old adage, 'Easy come, easy go'; or the other, Fools and their money are soon parted.'"

This is merely the most striking and best known of many similar instances. It is doubtful if wealth suddenly acquired, without merit on the part of the recipient, has ever been of real service; and we presume Johnny Steele did the best thing possible for him in getting rid of his absurd millions in twenty months. He might have staggered under them twenty years, and even then had enough left to keep him from his proper place in the world. Happily, all this is over in the oil country, where the business languishes after the excitements of recent years, and is settling down to be a safe and legitimate pursuit, like coal, iron, and salt.

It is, however, the iron-works of Pittsburg that usually attract the stranger first, astonish him most, and detain, him longest. We all know the precise quantity of "dirt" which each of us has to eat in a lifetime. It is one peck. But is the gentle reader aware, that each inhabitant of the United States "consumes" about one hundred and twenty-five pounds of iron every year? So we are assured; and we are also informed that the fact is highly honorable to us, since the quantity of iron consumed by a nation is one of the tests of its civilization. A Spaniard, for example, gets along with only five pounds of iron in a year, and a Russian finds ten pounds sufficient. An Austrian is satisfied with fifteen, a Swiss with twenty-two, a Norwegian with thirty; but a German must have fifty pounds, a Frenchman sixty, a Belgian seventy. Of the iron consumed in the United States, it appears that about two fifths are manufactured at Pittsburg, in those hundred and thirteen iron-works mentioned before. There is not one of those establishments in which an intelligent person may not find wonders enough to entertain him all day; but in the compass of one brief article we can do little more than allude to one or two of the more famous and established "lions." Pittsburg, as we have before remarked, is densely packed with marvels. Go where you will, you find something of the most particular interest, that demands to be examined, and most richly rewards examination. If ever we establish a college, we shall arrange it so, that the senior class shall spend six weeks at and near Pittsburg, in order to vivify their knowledge of geology, chemistry, and the other sciences.

Down by the swift and turbid Alleghany, close to the river, as all the great foundries are, we discovered with difficulty, on a very dark morning, the celebrated Fort Pitt Foundry, where twentyfive hundred of the great guns were cast that blew the late "So-Called" out of water. In this establishment may be seen the sublime of the me

chanic arts. Only here, on the continent of America, have there ever been cast those monsters of artillery which are called by the ridiculous diminutive of "the twenty-inch gun." A twenty-inch gun is one of those corpulent pieces of ordnance that we see mounted on forts about our harbors, which weigh sixty tons, cost fifty thousand dollars each, and send a ball of a thousand pounds three miles. To be exact, the ball weighs one thousand and eighty pounds, and it costs one hundred and sixty-five dollars. To discharge a twenty-inch gun, loaded with one of these balls, requires one hundred and twenty-five pounds of powder, worth forty cents a pound; so that every time one of the guns is fired it costs a hundred and ninety-five dollars, without counting the wear and tear of the gun and its carriage, and the pay of the men.

The foundry where these huge guns are made is large, lofty, dark, and remarkably silent. Nearly every operation goes on in silence, and without the least fuss or hurry. We will endeavor to show, in a few words, how it is that a large lump of iron with a hole in it should cost so much.

To people outside of the iron world iron is iron; but to people inside of that world there are as many varieties of iron as there are sources of supply. We have often been amused at the positiveness with which the inhabitants of iron districts declare their iron to be the "best in the world." The people of Marquette, upon Lake Superior, the people interested in the Iron Mountain of Missouri, the iron-makers of Lake Champlain, and all who have anything to do with an iron mine, assert the superiority of their own iron. The best of it is, that all these people are right; for each of the great brands of iron actually is the best in the world — for some purposes. The iron for these large cannons comes from the Bloomfield Mine, in Blair County, Pennsylvania, and there is in the United States but one other iron as good for guns; and that is found in far-off Massachusetts. Everything depends upon the even and

sufficient density of the iron; therefore, the pigs of iron from the Bloomfield Mine are again melted and purified here. They have an ingenious machine for testing the strength of iron. By a system of levers, a round piece of iron, one inch thick, is subjected to a steady pull until it breaks, and the operator is enabled to ascertain precisely how many pounds' weight it will bear. The same machine tests it by twisting and by crushing. It is this machine which determines the rank and value of all iron.

The mould in which the cannons are cast is an enormous structure of iron and sand, which weighs, when ready for the metal, more than forty tons. The preparation of the mould is the most difficult and delicate of all the work done in the foundry; but it would be nearly impossible to convey an idea of it on paper. When it is ready, it is hoisted by steam-derricks, and let down into a pit, where it stands on end, with open mouth, ready for the fiery fluid. Those steam-derricks are wonderful. One man, by their assistance, lifts, carries, and deposits upon a car, in thirty minutes, a twenty-inch gun in its mould, weighing in all (including the waste metal) one hundred and thirty tons; and this he does with about as much physical exertion as is required to draw a glass of beer from a barrel. The whole force of the foundry-two hundred and fifty men-could not move such a mass one inch in twenty-four hours, unaided by machinery.

The thrilling event of the day is the casting, which occurs here at two o'clock in the afternoon, one great gun being cast every day. Three furnaces, early in the morning, are stacked full of pigs of iron, as high as a man's head, and about ten o'clock the fires are lighted under them. In some three hours the stacks of pigs are all melted down into a pool of liquid iron one foot deep. From each of the three furnaces an iron trough, lined with clay, extends across the wide and gloomy foundry, to the mould which is this day to be filled. The distance is a hundred feet, per

haps; and the iron troughs are laid in curves, to prevent a too rapid flow of metal. (The Ohio River is arranged on the same principle.) Men are stationed along each trough to comb off the dross, and there are men at the mould with levers and other implements; while Joseph Kaye, the foreman and genius of the place, who learned his trade here thirty years ago, and who is the inventor of important parts of the process we are beholding, stands apart, to give the word and overlook the whole. The word is given. A man at each furnace sets the stream running. At once, three FIERY SERPENTS of the fieriest fire come coiling down those troughs with a kind of slow rush, and make for the mould, into which they go headlong, and fall to the bottom with a sputtering thud. The resemblance to a serpent is perfect, until the stream has reached the gun. The stranger fancies that he can see the fiery devil's eyes, and that the sparks that fly from his head are the signs of a deadly anger. The streams run for about twenty minutes, and then, at a signal, a lump of clay is thrust into the aperture of each furnace; the streams dwindle to threads, and dry up.

ness.

Usually, all goes so smoothly that it seems as if it could go no other way. But there are frightful perils in the busiSometimes an obstruction will occur in one of the troughs, and the liquid metal will overflow, and spread about the ground; or the supply of iron will be exhausted before the mould is quite full; or a break will occur in the mould, and the iron burst through, spoiling the mould, and wasting itself in the bottom of the pit. It is at such times that Joseph Kaye asserts his kingly power, and stands self-possessed in the midst of panic-stricken men. Many a great gun about to lapse into hopeless ruin he has saved by his courage and skill. There have been times when every man fled but him, and he sufficed. They point out one honest German, who was so thoroughly terrified by the breaking of a steam-derrick with a gun hanging to it, that he ran home at