was, we may hope for the honour of the laundry, a little highly coloured; but the history of the Yorkshire boy is not the less interesting.

We have said that Cyfarthfa Works lie on the north-west margin of the town of Merthyr. On the east and north-east, a winding road conducts us first to the Pen-y-darren Works, and then, higher and higher, to those of Dowlais-confessedly the largest in the world. A thousand tons of coal are here used every day, to produce iron from the ore. No words can adequately describe the appearance of these extraordinary works at night. The smelting-furnaces, and the furnaces of other kinds in which the operations are being carried on, send forth vast bodies of flame and intense flashes of light, which can be seen for miles around in every direction. When we look at them from a near point, their light throws a glare on all around them; when seen from a distance, they are as so many beacon-fires, vomiting upwards their vast bodies of flame. The cinder-tips, too, some of which are not far less than equal to St Paul's Cathedral in height, and extending over many acres, are never cold; and the huge heated mass exhibits a bluish sulphureous light in various parts, somewhat like a volcano in an incipient state of eruption. Some visitors have reached Merthyr from Brecon by night, some from Hirwain, some from east or south, but all alike are struck with the sort of barbaric splendour which meets their view.

The reader, without wishing for much technicality, would naturally like to know something concerning these fiery spots. There are many reasons why the operations of a great iron-smelting establishment are witnessed by comparatively few persons. The works are generally situated at some distance from the principal. towns; the roads and pathways thither, except in the finest and driest weather, are overlaid with an unctuous black mud of most unacceptable character; the smoke hovering over and around the place is so dismal as to disturb the equanimity of a lover of neatness and cheerfulness; the heaps of ironstone and of coal, and the monstrous ridges of cinder, give a wild irregularity and confusion to the vicinity of the furnaces; while the blaze, the heat, the roar, the rattling, the hammering, between and among the furnaces, forges, and mills-all tend to repel rather than to invite the approach of visitors. Yet if, discarding all concern about the state of coat, hat, and boots, one devotes a few hours to such a place under the care of an intelligent guide, it is impossible to come away without receiving a deep impression of the rough grandeur, the ingenuity, and the commercial importance of the operations conducted in these gigantic works. We hope to be able, then, without any tedious or minute detail, to give the reader a general idea of what meets the eye during a visit to such spots as Dowlais or Cyfarthfa.

In the first place, let us look well at the smelting-furnaces, which are the mainstay of the whole establishment; whether

they be fifteen or eighteen in number, as at Dowlais, or limited to two or three, as in the humblest works. How to produce fifty tons of iron per week from each furnace, is the problem to be solved. The furnaces are vast stone or brick structures, forty or fifty feet in height. In Scotland, they are sometimes made circular; but the Welsh furnaces are square, decreasing in size as they extend upwards. The interior cavity-which has been likened to a huge soda-water bottle, or still better, to a decanter supported upon a funnel-has two openings to the outside: one near the top, where the raw materials are thrown in; and one near the bottom, where the molten metal is drawn out. The space between the (hypothetical) decanter and funnel is occupied by a sort of fireplace; and it is here that the fierce current of air is blown in, whether hot-blast or cold-blast. The top of the furnace is formed by a kind of wide chimney, through which pour forth those vast bodies of flame and smoke which impart so striking an effect to a smeltingfurnace when seen from a distance. Modern experimenters have shewn how the heat might be economised, and the smoke prevented from contaminating the air, by a different adjustment of the top of the furnace; but where coal is so cheap as it is in South Wales, the smelters do not pay so much attention as they ought to these improvements. There is a kind of doorway near the top of each furnace, by which to introduce the materials; and a platform of masonry runs along the range of furnaces at this level, affording easy access to all the furnace-mouths in succession. On this platform are tramways to facilitate the bringing of the ironstone, the limestone, and the coal, from the neighbouring pits and mines. The opening at the bottom of each furnace is closed at all times, except when the smelted metal is in a sufficiently molten state to be run off or tapped. Near the furnaces are the large vessels to contain the air for the blast, the fires to convert this from a coldblast into a hot-blast, and the steam-engine to blow this air with immense force into the furnace. We need only modify this description in two points, by saying, that some iron-furnaces do not use the hot-blast, and that the furnace-head has sometimes four doors instead of one for the admission of material.

Such is the mechanism of a smelting-furnace. And now we will see it at work. The ironstone is thrown in, because it is the ore which contains the iron; the coal is thrown in, because it yields the heat necessary for the process; the limestone is thrown in, because it acts as a flux to facilitate the action of the heat upon the ore; and the ironstone and limestone are previously calcined in separate kilns, to expedite still more the extrication of the iron from its stony prison. To stand near the furnace-mouth, or tunnel-head, as it is called, and watch the fiery ordeal through which these mineral ingredients have to pass, is a thing to be remembered. A vast body of flame is shooting up from the open top of the furnace; and this flame, as it passes the open tunnelhead, throws out a glare and a heat so terrible as to forbid approach

by all except the swarthy salamanders, who have attained a power of heat-endurance by long practice. The men bring barrows full of ironstone, limestone, and coal; they wheel them close to the tunnel-head; they precipitate the contents into the fiery gulf; and then return for more. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, Sunday and week-day, by night and by day, is this going on, for a smelting-furnace knows no rest; if once the burning contents were allowed to solidify, by a lapse of feeding and attention, the operations would be delayed for days or perhaps weeks to come ; and thus the voracity of this flaming monster is unceasing. The three kinds of materials are supplied in regular succession; and at each charge a fresh impetus seems to be given to the burning mass, urged as it is by the blast below: so far as the eye can detect, it is one mass of liquid fire. The ironstone contains from twenty to seventy per cent. of pure iron; and according to the quality of the iron to be produced, so do the smelters determine on the mixture of different kinds, and on the ratio of ore to coal and limestone: these are the secrets of the smelter, which he does his utmost to master. When the vast mass within the furnace has done its work, when the metallic iron has separated from the vitrified slag into which the other ingredients tend to form themselves, then comes the operation of tapping-an operation the savage grandeur of which, at night, neither words can duly describe nor pencil represent. In front of the bottom of the furnace is a flat layer of smooth sand, with channels formed in it in various directions. When the molten iron has sunk nearly to the bottom of the fiery mass, a man with an iron bar breaks away the clay barrier which had stopped the orifice at the bottom of the furnace; and then out bursts the intensely bright golden liquid, flowing into all the channels in the sand, and lighting up the otherwise dim and dusky spot. It is at night, as we have said, that this scene should be witnessed.

All that is done in a smelting-furnace is rather chemical than mechanical, but the remaining operations in an ironwork are rather mechanical than chemical. Yet are there many striking scenes to be witnessed. The pieces into which the iron is moulded, by flowing into the channels in the sand, are called pigs; and very clumsy and rude-looking pigs they are. These pigs are exposed to an intense heat for several hours, in a refiner or refining-furnace; the metal then flows into flat moulds; and thus are produced cakes of refined iron, from which the carbon and the oxygen have been almost wholly driven off. These cakes are next broken into fragments by formidable blows from huge sledge-hammers; and the fragments, which present a kind of crystallised appearance, are ready for the uncouthly named puddling process. If we stop to inquire the meaning or origin of the technical terms employed in manufactures, we should never get to the end of our task; and therefore we must simply say here, that puddling means-puddling; but the process itself is the conversion of cast iron into wrought.

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The fragments are thrown into a puddling-furnace, where the iron is heated to an intense degree, and kept stirred by a man who thrusts an iron-rod through the open doorway in front. A fearful office this stirring a mass whose heat seems enough to scorch, and brightness enough to blind, any one who stands in such close proximity to it! The iron undergoes a strange change: it loses its fluidity, and becomes a kind of fiery gravel or glowing crumbling cinder; and then, when further stirred up and poked about by the puddler, it heaps up into a lump or ball, like a mass of putty. Each of these heaps is called a ball or a puddling-ball; and a man, inserting a formidable pair of tongs into the furnace, pulls out this fiery ball, drags it along the iron floor of the building, and brings it to the squeezer-an instrument whose squeeze is truly impressive. Each ball, weighing nearly 100 pounds, is squeezed into an oblong quadrangular mass, by a force which drives out all the dross; and then this mass is passed to and fro between ponderous rollers, and brought to the state of a flat bar, twelve feet long by three inches wide. All this occurs before the iron has had time to lose its red heat; and what with the fearless strength of the men swinging about these glowing masses with as much impunity as if they weighed but a few pounds each, the appearance of the white hot masses trailing along the ground, the smoke and heat around, the low rumbling of the squeezers and rollers, and the unceasing activity of all concerned-the scene altogether is very exciting. The long bars are next cut into pieces; the pieces are piled into square masses, and placed in the balling-furnace- another strange name; and when brought to a white heat, they are dragged out into a sort of low barrow. Each mass, weighing three or four hundredweights, is a bloom; and this bloom is passed between grooved rollers so many times, that it at length makes its appearance as a railway-bar, or a rod, or a bar of any other kind.

It is sometimes amusing to see the perplexity into which a visitor is thrown at such works as these. There are so many fiery masses trailing about around him; there are so many sparks flashing and so much dross flowing; there are so many persons running hither and thither; such a din and heat, such a smoke, and (to him, but to him alone) confusion-that he becomes well-nigh bewildered; and if he finds his fair skin and his tidy linen somewhat be-blackened, he must not feel much wonderment thereat.

When the metal is to be brought into practical use in the form of cast iron, instead of wrought, it does not pass through so many of these preparatory processes. Before it has acquired that degree of toughness which is necessary for rails, bars, rods, sheets, and so forth, it is poured into moulds made in sand; and thus are produced the iron guns, the iron cylinders and pipes, and those ponderous masses of cast iron which modern engineering presents to our notice in such vast number. The district around Merthyr does not produce so much of this cast iron as the Staffordshire

and other English districts; but still there are large undertakings of this kind, especially at the important and admirably arranged Cyfarthfa Works.

If Merthyr had iron but no coal, or if the coal were far distant, we may be assured that these vast works would never have reached their present pitch of grandeur. But the coal is even more abundant than the iron; and after supplying all the ironworks, there is an exhaustless store offered to the acceptance of the whole world. The value of the mineral treasures of this district has been displayed in a striking light by the inquiries respecting the supply of coal for the royal steam navy. It is obvious that, considering the limited available space on board ship, it is desirable to obtain as much heat-giving power as possible within a limited bulk of coal; and in 1845 the government intrusted to Sir H. de la Beche and Dr Lyon Playfair the management of a series of researches, to determine what kind of coal possesses the requisite qualities in the highest degree. An assistant-commissioner made a tour in South Wales, to examine all the collieries, and the ports from which coal might be shipped; for it was expected from the outset, that Welsh coal would prove to be better for the purpose than any in England or Scotland or Ireland; but, nevertheless, coal from all four parts of the United Kingdom was tried. The qualities investigated were numerous-the number of pounds of water evaporated by one pound of coal; the weight of a cubic foot; space in cubic feet occupied by one ton; rapidity of evaporation produced; and so forth. The commissioners had, indeed, enough to do; for their duty was to find a coal which should have large evaporative powers, quick production of steam, smokeless combustion, stowage in small bulk, freedom from dust and dirt, freedom from offensive odour, power of resisting attrition, and power of resisting spontaneous combustion. All these virtues are not to be expected in any one variety of coal, and therefore the inquiry was to what extent are they to be met with combined? The result of the inquiry shewed, that the coal obtainable in the neighbourhood of Merthyr comprises a greater number of available excellences than any other. A bounty of natural gifts here-that the coal which is the best of all for smelting-furnaces is the best of all for steamships. Merthyr ought, in joy over its good-fortune, to clap its hands and-wash its face!

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But we shall not be sorry to escape from this magazine of iron and coal, heat and smoke, dirt and noise, and get out into a little of the open country; for the Welsh border, near this junction of three counties, has many pretty spots, and there is much which ought to be said concerning the people and their doings. men and women, and boys and girls, in Merthyr and similar towns, are, as we have said, losing their primitive Welsh characteristics. One of the least pleasant features observable, is that connected with the employment of women. It is a pity that females, whether from choice or necessity, should be employed as they