r compound engines
from John Elder & Co. of Glasgow: she is three hundred feet long (and
that is a dimension that looks almost immeasurable when dry on land),
forty feet beam and twenty-five hundred tons burden. Another, of
similar dimensions, is building beside her, and they are both intended
for the Pacific Mail Company's line, and will ply between California
and China. The various operations going on upon the ground--the laying
of an iron keel three hundred feet long, the modeling into true and
fine curves the enormous plates for a ship's side, the joining of
these so neatly that the rivets are not visible, and the bending of
stout iron timbers on vast iron floors--are interesting even as a
mere spectacle; and the trains of men who go about to minister to the
various great machines seem like races of beings suddenly diminished
in the scale of magnitude, and to be so many wise Lilliputians
attending around the bodies of creatures of Brobdingnag. It is true
that neat mechanical contrivances save their muscle wherever it is
possible. A great plate of iron or a bundle of deck flooring is picked
up, by a hand which swings down from aloft, like a visiting-card by
a lady: a single man turning a windlass, it sails into the air, gets
up as high as it chooses to, and drops delicately just where it is
wanted along the length of the structure. Out on the wharf a double
"hoister," working by steam, and able to pick up and swing a hundred
tons, is used in handling the materials of the works. The dry-docks
are, in winter, a singular spectacle. They are a vast hospital
of interesting invalids, the patients being steamers, barges and
canal-boats. For instance, the old Edwin Forrest, which has paddled up
the Delaware with excursionists since a time whereof the mind of man
runneth not to the contrary, comes up into the dry-dock complaining of
its bunions. The dry-dock accommodates a ship as long as three hundred
and forty feet, and is one hundred feet across. The gouty steamer
potters comfortably in, and lays up its tired keel, while the dock is
being discharged, as serenely as a patient who lays his foot on the
knee of a corn-doctor: in due time, relieved and sound, the invalid
is ready to take the stage of life again. Another boat comes in to
be lengthened: it has growing-pains, and wants assistance. The stern
is sliced off, the keel is spliced, and the adolescent leaves the
docks longer by twenty feet. On the steamers that are being