.

[Illustration: BRANDYWINE SPRINGS, ON REDCLAY CREEK.]

After the ponderous establishments near the mouth of the Christine,
and the neater sorts of industries which can be carried on within the
city, we come to notice some of the mills and factories up stream.
Many of these are of great antiquity.

Walton, Whann & Co. boast that fully one-half the arrivals and
departures of shipping at Wilmington are in connection with their
business. What is that business? Why, it is the revival of the
fertility of the South, exhausted by the land-murdering agriculture
of slavery. The demand from the cotton regions since the war has been
enormous for the best artificial fertilizers, and the appreciation
of the particular kind made by Walton, Whann & Co. is very marked.
Planters have learned the fact, which science and experience
demonstrate, that a reliable compost must be now used for the
remunerative culture of cotton, as well as of their corn and other
staples; and their preference for the superphosphate prepared by this
firm over most other fertilizers is evinced by the fact that their
demand has for several years been largely in excess of the supply.
We need not wonder, then, at the formidable preparations made for
this mighty overdriven business. The cargoes discharging by means
of steam-power into the barges proceed from mills covering several
acres of ground, and worked by three engines, aggregating one
hundred horse-power. Think of it! the strength of one hundred horses
overtasked day by day to provide this magic powder, through which
the tired _real_ horse is to drag the plough in so many thousands of
distant acres! The machinery for grinding the organic materials is of
the most approved excellence, and is tested by the turning out, with
the power stated, of full fifteen hundred tons of the phosphate per
month. A visit to the store-house of this factory is a strange sight,
reminding the tourist of the open-air cemetery of the Capuchins at
Rome. It is a realm of bones. Bones from the South American pampas,
bones from the pork-packing houses of Cincinnati, bones from the
grazing plains of Texas, come here to mingle. The skeletons of half
a continent meet in these whirling mills for a prodigious Dance of
Death, being most emphatically denied what is the last wish of all
sentient creatures--rest for their bones.

[Illustration: HOUSE OF MR. J.T. HEALD.]

This factory is on the Christine River, just outside the limit of
t