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12 3

4 5 6

NATIONAL UnRARY

Canada

IRON AND STEEL,

» <^> «

A Brief Historic Sketch of their Manufac-
ture and Use.

A PAPER READ BEFORE THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION,
MARCH 23, 1882, BY A. T. FREED.

It is oautomary to speak of the stone, the
bronze and the iron ages ef the world, as if
tbey were distinctly marked upoohs. It is a
mistake so to regard them, for whilst oar
fathers audoabtedly abandoned stone weapons
and implements for bronze, and bronze for
iron, the change took place at widely remote
periods in different countries, and the periods
in which the several materials were uoed in
the same country overlapped each other.
National intercourse was slow and restricted
in the early ages of the world, and one nation
voald be in full possession of an important
discovery long before another not distant
nation had heard of It. Tne bronze age had
oome and gone on the shores of the Meditor-
ranean, and iron was in general use while as
yet the Skandiuavians and Britons were rude-
ly carving deers' horns with flint knives and
destroying tneir enemies with bludgeons. In
the vast host which Xerxes led in to Greece
were warriors bearing stone weapons, while
the great majority w«re armed with bronze
and a fow nad advanced to the use of steel.
Bo that to speak of the ages of stune, of
bronze and of iron is ae indefinite as if we
shoald divide history into Htjes of absolat-
ismu limited monarchy ai.a republicanism.

The dawn of history found iron in hmited
use. Ohinese historians say that it has been
employed in their country for many thousands
of years. Piiny the elder, in the early days
of our own era wrote that, " as many kinds

of irrin Ag tharA \\a mnno Mholl Tno4;«aK in rwr*^A

nesB the stoel that oometh from the Seres,
for this commodity also, as hard ware as it is,
they send and sell with their soft silks and
fine furs. In a second degiee of goodness
may be placed the Parthian iron." India has
made steel of the finest quahty from times

immemorial ; and the method which was
in use in prehistoric times is observed
there to this day. A small clay crucible
is made in which not more than two or three
pounds of very fine soft iron are inclosed to-
gether with charcoal, and covered with leaves
of a certain plant, when the whole is subject-
ed to great heat till the iron is melted and
the result is a button of very fine and pare
steel which they call wootz. When Alexan-
der defeated Porus, the latter gave the con-
queror 30 pounds of this steel, which was
highly prized by him. Malleable iron was
also made in India in large quantities in very
early times. There is in the gate of a mosque
near Delhi a pillar of soft iron 60 feet high,
16 inches in diameter near the base, and es •
t^maied to weigh 17 tons. A Sanscrit inscrip-
tion is interpreted by some to affirm that tnis
pillar was erected in the tenth century before
our era, and by some it is understood to make
its date 14U0 years later. In the ruins of
very ancient Indian temples wrought iron
beams have been foand,and metallurgists are
puzzled to understand how these immense
masses could have been handled and wroaght
by means known to have been in existence in
those days. The Ohaijbians, a people in-
habiting the southern shores of the Euxine,
were famous among the ancients for theur
iron and steel. Herodotus speaks of them as
"a people of ironworkers," and from them
steel was named.

£ Fcqilcut uieutidu Is mado Ol ifOn and steSl

in the Hebrew scriptures, but it is to be
noted that when Solomon would build the
temple, a thousand years before our era, he
was obliged to send to the King of Tyre for
a man skilled to work '*m gold and silver, and
in brass and in iron." Ohaideaa i&soriptioBS

speak of iron as havinsrbeen in nee from time
imrafcmonal. Nebuchadnezzar in an inaorip-
tion telling of his worka of improvement in
Babylon Bays : '• With pillars and beams
plated with oepper and strengthened with
iron 1 built up its gates." His daughter
Nuooris built a bridge the stones of which
were held together by bands of iron fixed in
their places by molten lead. At Nineveh,
Lajard found numerous relics, iuolnding " a
perfect helmet of iron, inlaid wiih copper
bands, as well as many other articles of iron,
Two or three baskets were filled with these
relics."

lu Egypt iron was used in the earliest
times. In 1837 a piece of iron was taken
ftom an inner joint of the great pyramid at
Gizeh.and is now in the Biitish museum.
Ihe almost universal opinion of the best
Egyptologists places the erection of that edi-
fice at about 4,000 years before our era, so
that this venerable bit of rusty metal is un-
doubtedly the oldest piece of manufactured
iron of which men have any knowledge. Wil-
kinson copies un engraving showing the process
of smelling iron by the aid of bellows
m the shape of leather bags, trodden
by a man who exhausts the air from
one while with it string he raises the other
and permits ii to be refilled. Butchers are
depicted on the monuments wearing steels
such as are used to-day. Sickles and other
weapons of steel are pictured in great num-
bers and colored blue to distinguish them
from the bronze weapons which are color-
ed red. Belzoni found an iron sickle under
the foot of a sphynx at Oarnao, and it ie now
in the British museum. Kenrick, in " An-
cient Egypt under the Pharaohs " copies an
aooonnt of a military expedition made by
Thothmes I., who reigned about 1700 years
before our era. From some of the Deltan
Kings this monarch received as tribute or
presents gold and silver, as well as " bars
of wrought metal, and vessels of copper, and
of bronze, and of iron." From the region of
Memphis he received wine, iron, lead,
wrought metal, animals, etc. When I read
that the same King in a successful foray
against " Chadasha " took muoh booty, in-
eluding " iron of the mountains, 40 cubes,"
I was tempted to think that Jerusalem must
have been meant; but I believe the Chadasha
mentioned, is understood to be a city of the
Ehetae or Hitiites, and not JerusaUm, the
Khodesh or sacred city of the Jews, and El
Khuds of the modern Arab.

The dawn of history finds iron in use
among the Greeks. One legend, and the
most probable, says they derived a know-
ledge of it from the Piioeoicians, while an»
othtr says that the burning of the forests on

IRON AND STEEL.

Mount Ida smelted the iron ore exposed to
the fames, and revealed the secret ol work-
ing in iron. That such could have been the
oiise IS next to impossible.

Homer speaks of iron and weapons of iron
and steel— rarely in the Iiiad, frequently ia
the Odyssey. I leave the Wolfian and other
Homeric scholars to decide whether any par-
ticular significance attaches to that fact. Nor
will 1 pretend to say whether or not Homer had
historic knowledge enabling him to decide
tnat iron implements ana weapons were used
auring the siege of Troy, say about 1,200
years before our era, or whether he simply
supposed conditions similar to those he saw
around him to have existed in the days of
wnich he wrote, just as Shakespeare sup-
pobed cannon to have been used in the days
when the Danes governed England. Homer
mentions axes of steel. Gladstone, m his
Homeric Synchronisms, says : " Iron is in
Homer, exceedingly rare and precious. He
mentions nothing massive that is made of
this material." Among the prizes offered at
the funeral games of Patrooius is " a mass
of shapeless iron from the forge," and Achilles
says :

Stand forth, whoever -will contend for this ■ *'■

■ •?. ',* ^'9^'^ ^®^'1» '"I'i 'icb be his. the mass
^viU last bim many years. The man who tendb
Hi8 flocks or guiaes his plow need not be sent
To town for iron ; he wUl have it here.

We may infer from this that iron was very
valuable, for the mass in question was no
more than a man might lift ; and that it was
used in agriculture before it was utilized for
the manufacture of arms or armor.

An early as 700 years before Christ the
iron ores of Elba were worked by the
Greeks, who called the island Ethalia
•• from the blazes of the iron works." Strabo*
says .that at the beginning of our era the
Iron mines of Euboea were exhausted. Glau-
ous of Ohios made a silver cup, inlaid with
iron about 660 B. 0. Sophocles, 400 B
speaks of the tempering of iron in water'
and It is certain that steel swords
were made about the same time. The
father of Demosthenes made steel arms
When Xerxes invaded Greece, the Assyrians
who accompanied him were armed with
clubs, " knotted with iron." Daimachus a
Greek writer of Alexander's age, mentions
four kinds of steel, the Chalybdic and Synopic
from which ordinary tools were made. The
Laoedffimonian, from which were made files
augers, chisels and stone-cutting implements •
and theLjdian, which was used in the man-
ufacture of swords, razors, and other surgical
instruments. Iron sickles and other agri-
cultural implements were common in the
time of Alexander.

IRON AND STEEL.

The BomuiB were not workera in iron,
thongh they encouraged the indastrv among
the peoples whom they oonqaered. The
mines of Elba, which had snooeasively been
worked by the PhoenioiaQB, the Greeks and
the Etrurians, oontinued their operations
under Homan rule ; but we do not learn that
any improvements in prooeBses of manufacture
were introduced. The bellows were aubstanx
tially the same as the blacksmith's bellows in
use in our day, and the first reduction of the
ore produced a email loop or bloom of spongy
malleable iron, which was beaten on an anvil
into the shape most suitable for the transport-
ation to market or for the blacksmith's uae.
That iron weapons were in use at an early day
is proved by the tact that king Porsenna, 500
years before our era, imposed upon the
Bomans as a condition of peace that they
should use iron only for agricul-
tural implements. Tne best iron brought
to Rome at thebeginniuKof our era oame from
Noricum, corresponding to parts of Styria
and Garinthia, and it is believed that the
mmes now worked at Erzberg and Hutten-
berg are the same that were worked twenty
centuries ago. The (juadi who lived north of
Noricum in what is now Moravia, uere then
spoken of as a nation of iron workers ; and
it was from Moravia, that fifteen centuries
later one of the most valuable discoveries in
connection with iron— that of coating it with
tin — was derived.

The Spanish iron industry flourished during
the Oartbagioian occupation, and probably be-
fore. The Bomans attributed Hannibal's
success at OannsB in part to the fact that his
troops were.avmed with Spanish swords of
superior quality. Diodorus Siculus speaks
of Spanish two-edged swords "exactly
tempered with steel," made from
iron which had been buried in the
ground "to eat out all the weaker particles of
the metal, and leave only the strongest and
purest." The notion is not yet quite extinct
that rust first attacks and destroys the poorer
and baser parts of ihe iron, leaving the finest
and the best. The manufacture of Toledo
blades, begun in prehistoric times, has conn
tinned till our day, attaining its greatest
proportions, as the weapons attained their
greatest celebrity, in the fifteenth and six-
teentb centuries.

Wben Csaaar invaded Britain, 55 years be-
fore our era, he found iron in use there.
Most accounts represent that the natives who
met the BomsDS e!i!"lQ?ed chariots armed
with iron scythes. I have looked carefully
through Cffidar for confirmation of that state-
ment; but, though I find mmy references to
the chariots, I find no account of the iron
scythes. It is certain, however, that the

Britons had iron. Some writers think they
did not make it, but obtained what they had
from the Belgas, with whom they had consid-
erable intercourse, and who certainly manu-
factured iron. Others maintain that the
Britons themselves made iron. Casaar says
of them : " They use either brass or iron
rings, determined at a certain weight, as their
money. Tin is produced in the midland re-
gions ; in the maritime iron ; but the quantity
of it is small : they employ brass, wtiiob is
imported." Caesar's stay on the island was
brief, and his knowledge of it far from exten><
sive or accurate. My own belief is that at the
time of Caaair's visits iron had been made in
Britain for centuries, and in considerable
quantities. At various places in England,
but chiefly in the weald of Kent, the weald of
Su»sez,aDd in the Forest of Dean in Glouces-
tershire, have beeu found vast beds of cinder
or slag, the remains f iron works which ex-
isted there in very early times. Ttiat these
operations were carried on during the Roman
occnpatiun or later is evidenced by the fact
that Roman coins and pottery have been
found in the cinder. But 1 believe they were
also carried on before the arrival of the Bo-
mans. The smelting operations were to a
large extent conducted in wind bloomaries,
wittiout any artificial blast. These bloom-
aries were built on the tops of hills,
with openings in the direction of
the prevailing winds. The ore,

mined with infinite patience and toil, was oar-*
ried up to the^e furnaces on men's backs, and
the operation was wasteful of metal as of
labor ; for so little of it was extracted from
the ore that in late years the slag has been
remelted in modern furnaces, and the opera-
tion found remunerative. Now, the Bomans
had for centuries been accustomed to the use
of the bellows in smelting iron ; and if they
had introduced tbe industry into Britain they
certainly would have adopted the methods
known to them and not have reverted to a
rnder, more waatefnl and more laborious
one. I am therefore compelled to believe
that when the Bomans invaded Britain they
found the wind bloomary in use. The hearths
of more modern bloomaries have been found,
with Boman coins and remains among the
ashes ; and these are pretty good evidences
that during the Boman occupation, improve-
ment!), based up m Bomau knowledge, were
introduced. Andrew Yarranton says that
" within a hundred yards of the walls of the
eity of Worcester there was duM' up on© of the
hearths of the Boman foot blast, it being then
firm an^ in order, and was seven foot deep in
the earth ; and by the side of the work there
was found a pot of Boman coin to the quan-
tity of a peck." St^bg says that in his day

IRON ArJD STEEL

non WM exported from Britain in ♦».-
121 a great Roman m"i tarvTr J *H\^."
WHB estabJiehed at Ba h tL ^ °'' i^^""^
being obtained i?thePo;ett of ZnAf'J*
S lo^^L^r fd ^ -:?e«iot*i ^

that., i^and beS the S of wllfr. T
Gonqaerer th« nJ.,o# ° j'*" °' "iHip.m the

none bot K SS .£ "• °° "°''' "' >"^

andtodoleUrtasneeiWt ^^^^^ '««
ing employed to ml^r m^kVSe n? ''^ '"

0' loop, ox won of mailable iron A f.„ ;
kepi open nnlil ,h, ft„n„, ^J £t;;''_™

Mr,Lr-r^"r,:Snj
s,n"c^'';,r"r°-^"™^^^

an,th.ng*:Mhrkin7Sh"hr'!,'° 'r 'y
produced." The deL^fJf "°°^ "^^^

lb. top»..ib°l?i, 0,7,™, S" '','"'''''?,"' "»

invented by Hans Tinh.il, • ^ ^"'°^> ''^^
1560. From tZ t^if'T^ '".^""""y'"

the hearthToa ?° oS"'' As L' ^' '°"°"' °*
Btill larger the ore ^hail^ ''"■°*°« «""
from thd fuel till t^f« ™uT''*/ ""^ »"bon
The old furnLeUJ^J^^^^^ i»wa« melted,
as a etuckofen and he hfah 7° '" Germany
ofen or flussofen thaf- 1*^ ^""'*°® » ''laa-

bellows, or a flowiL fnrnf"'" '^* ''"P^^^'^
duct was withdrrwn^in t^ ''u'"°*°'° ^''^ P""
Of molten iron Tn F„ f '^"^u^ °* "^ '*'«»«>
lows of wood on the old nin* *"'''''"'"' '^'•
great size and operated htr» """" "'"'« °*
these supplied a bla« «f ^ ""'^^ P"''^'' «"»d

Bo'Sets: ra^hrtr"'"'*'^^^''

sumption of oharooal th-^ ^'^'" ''°°"

were passed and?h« nr 5'\"P'^'"'« ^^^s
greatly lessened and «.«'*"°i'"° °^ "°° ''»«
int^if-""^SlSr

less than^he?n"e%°rA°^^4V,°3lf.-to" no
whioh Have to England the r,L «!' r" °'^"
iron manufacture which Jtl Preeminence m

highly iniportSinvenLn ;:Xat of-'"f.- ^
f«r converging bloods into^d" b'a^S ° r p£

IRON AND STEEL.

inBtosd of porformiDg that work by the slow
and laboriouB manipnlation of the hammer.
It is onatomary to say that Oort invented rolle
m 1783 ; but I found in the library of the
Frankhn Institute at Philadelphia a copy of a
patent granted to John Payne nearly half a
century earliar. This patent is dated Nov. 21,
1728. The first part iti for the oonvereion of
oaet into malleable iron by the application of
aahea, salt, etc., to pig or sow iron while in
the refinery fire, "which," the patent says,
"will render the same into a state of mallea
bility as to bear the stroke of the hammer, to
draw it into barrs, or other forms at the pleas
ure of the workman, and those or other barrs
being treated in the said melted ingredients
in a long hot arch or cavern, as hereafter
described; and those or other barrs are to
pass between two large mettallrowlers (which
have proper notches or furrows
upon their surfass) by the force of
my entiine hereafter decsribed, or
other power, into such shapes and forms
as shall be required." In this document we
have a faithful description of grooved rolls,
and also an acconnt of the decarbonization of
oast iron in a reverberatory f urnoce - that is
a process of puddHng iron, instead of reduc-
ing it to nature by the slow and expensive
process of repeated heatings and hammerings,
as had theretofore been practiced.

Another candidate for the honor of having
invented rolls was Major John Hanbury, who
professed to have made the discovery in 1729,
a year after Payne's patent was granted.'
About 1680 Andrew Yarranton was sent into
Saxony to learn the art of coating iron with
tin. ^ho knowledge of that process is said
to L. w been carried into Saxony from
Bohemit by a clergyman, but its origin is
lost. Tarranton succeeded m his mission,
and brought the art into England, where the
manufaoture of tinned plates soon assumed
considerable proportions, not only for home
use, bnt for export. After the introduction of
rolls the English plates were considered
superior to those made on the continent, be-
cause they were rolled and not hammered,
and were consequently of equal thickness
throughout.

A great impetus was given to the iron
trade in England by the labors of Henry
Oort toward the close of the 18cb century.
He greatly improved the rolls and
brought them into general use ; and
he perfected the process of pud-
dling, bringing it g.,Ki,.antial!y to
its present perfection. It will be remembered
that the product of the low bloomary wa?
malleable iron, the carbon in the fuel was all
burned away by a strong blast of air directed
through the tngeres upon the bloom as it form-

ed. The process was slow and expensive
though it is to be noted that bloomaries only
slightly improved a.e in use to-day and pro-
duce high grade malleable iron of first rate
quality in competition with modern iurnaoes.
When the high furnace was introduced it
made the first production of iron much cheap-
er, bnt the iron was oast iron, and tno ex-
pense of converting it into malleable iron in
the finery was tgdious and costly. Oort by
the puddling furnace made the operation
simple and vary much cheaper.

Another highly important improvement
introduced into England about the middle of
the eighteenth century was the substitution
of mineral fuel for charcoal. The attempt
had been made a century earlier by Dud
Dudley, a cousin I believe of the unfortunate
husband of Lady Jane Grey, but though he
demonstrated the practicability of it, he
achieved for himself only ridicule, disappoints
ment and great pecuniary loss. Revived in
1735 by Abraham Darby at Ooalbrookdale in
Shropshire, it proved immediately successful
and restored to Britain her iron industry'
which had fallen into a great decline through
want of fuel. The first iron cylinders for
supplying a blast to the furnace were con-
structed by John Smeaton at the Oarron Iron
works in Scotland, and steam was first used
at the same works to furnish the power
through the influence of Dr. Roebuck.

Since then the only important improve-
ments introduced in the productive iron in-
dustry have been the application of the hot
blast, first employed by Nwlson in Scotland
in 1728, and the withdrawal of unconsnmed
gases from the top of the furnace, and their
utilization for the production of heat. I
think Franco is entitled to credit for that dis-
covery.

Iron is of two kinds ; cast iron containing
from 2 to 6 per cent of carbon, which la
brittle and granular in its construction ; and
malleable or wrought iron, which is ductile
and fibrous, and contains little or no carbon.
Between the two lies steel, containing from a
quarter of 1 pe'- cent to 2 per cent of carbon.
If you ask me for a technical definition of
the word steel, I shall tell you frankly that I
cannot give it, and I have heard some very ex-
pert metallurgists express a dislike to be put
to the same test. A few years ago you would
be told off hand that steel was an article
wliich would forge, temper and weld ; but if
you demand these qualities to day yon will
relegate io the iron heHp a great many arti-
cles which the world calls steel, including all
metal produced by the pneumatic process, and
I shall be compelled to tell you that there are
not a thousand tons of steel rails in ex-
istence. I beUeve the article produced in the

IRON AND STEEL.

Beisemer converter, however, to be «
trae Hteel, bat it will not weld.

In former timea ateei was aometimes ob-
tainad as part of the pronnot of the bloomary
united in certain proportiona with soft iron in
the bloom or loop. Bat when it waa desired
to produce steel from iron, very fine bar iron
was arranged in layers in a fire-briok ovnn,
each layer of iron being overlaid with char-
coal. All openings were then oarefnlly closed
with clay and the whole oven was heated to
redness and kept at that temperature for
from seven to ten days. This process is slill
employed, and the product is variously known
aa cement or blister steel, or, if the bars are
rolled tORether to secure homogeneity, as
shear steel. Reaumur described this process
in 1722 ; and it is not known how long be-
fore his time it was employed or wkere, when
or by whom it was introduced. About the
middle of last century Benjamin Huntnman,
in England iutroduoed the modern method of
making crucible cast steel Bubetantially as it
is practiced to •day.

Steel was also aomotimea made by dipping
bare of soft iron into molten oast iron, from
which they absorbed a portion of the carbon
and were converted into steel ; and some-
times malleable and cast iron were fused to'
gether in a close chamber producing steel of
inferior quality.

Siemens Martin steel is made by the de-
carbonization of cast iron in a reverber-
atory furnace heated with gas, the flame of
which asRista the reaction ; and the subse-
quent recarbonization of the bath by the ad-
dition at the close of the process of white
iron, apiegileisen, or ferro manganese. The
operation requires from four to eight hours.
The Thomap Gilchrist proceaa ia simply an
improvement upon the Bessemer or pneu-
matic process. A chemical lining is put into
the converter, which absorbs phosphorus
and other objectionable minerals from the
melted metal, and permita the use of a lower
grade of iron than ia possible in the Bessemer
process.

Puddled steel ia made in much the same
way as wrought iron ia made from cast iron.
That ia, the iron is melted in a reverberatory
furnace exposed to a strong draft of atmos-
pheric air, and is kept stirred or puddled
until the oxygen of air uniies with the carbon
in the iron and burcs it cut. If steel is de-
aired the metal is withdrawn before all the
carbon is oonanmed ; if iron is desired the
process ia continued till the carbon is
consumed, when the metal is brought to a
spongy, pasty condition, is rolled into' balls
or blooma, and ia lifted to the
squeezer, where the slag and other
imparities are squeezed out. Paddled,

or open hearth'ateel, as it is generaUy called
18 growing in favor, and in England ita prox
duotion la increasing more rapidly than that
of Bessemer or pneumatic steol.

The modt important metallurpioal discovery
of the age was that of making steel from oast
iron by the pneumatic prooeas. This was the
invention of Sir Henry Besaemer, and waa
made about 30 years ago. Besaemer'a first
idea waa to produce wrought iron by forcing
a strong blant of atmospheric air through the
melted iron by which the carbon would be
burned away and the iron reduced to nature.
Hia earlier experimenta were disastrous fail-
ures. The iron produced waa so brittle as to
be almost worthless, and no steel werthy of
the name could be made. At length Mr.
Robert Mushet anageated that if mangenese
were added to the iron good steel cauld be
maae. This was done and proved highly
aucoeasful. Some improvements were also
made in the lining of the converters by which
the amount of silicon in tha iron waa re-
duced. The Besaemer prooeaa requires a good
quahty of pig iron, reasonably free from
phosphorus, sulphur and arsenic, and not
containing a superabundance of ailicon or
t'tanenm. Thia la melted in an ordinary
furnace and conveyed to the converter, which
somewhat resembles an immense soda water
bottle with the neck wrenched to one aide.
The ordinary converter containa from five to
ten tona of molten iron, but is then not more
than one fourth filled. A powerful blast of
air la now conveyed to the bottom of the con-
verter whence it riaes through the iron unit-
ing with the carbon and producing
combustion and intense heat. The blow
is usually continued for 16 to 20 minutes
and manganese is added during the process
generally in the shape of spiegileisen, but
sometimes as ferro-manganese. ^'■■:,. ^the
operation has continued a sufficin t time
which is determined by means of the speolro'
scope, the blast ia stopped, the converter is
tipped to one aide, the metal flows into
moulds.and the ingota ao formed are known a
Bessemer blooma. Sir Henry Beasemer'a
royalty amounts to only a shilling a ton, but
w 187 i Mr. J. S. Jeans, secretary of the
British Iron association, wrote that he had

*i oKnnnA'!'* ,-*™" his patent upward of
;tl,UoO 000 sterling.

A description of the first iron works estab-
hshed in Canada will not, 1 hope, prove un-
interesting.

^Colbert, the great French financier and
i rime Miuiater to Louis XIV., was strongly
impresHed with the importance of the Cana-.
dian dominions of France, andjhe carried on a
long correspondence wtth M Talon, the
royal intendant, with a view to the discovery

IRON AND STEEL.

and working of the mineral treasures of New
Franoe. Many of these letters are now in the
Parliamentary library at Ottawa.

In 1650 Father Drouillettes, a member of
that noble band of Jesuit missionaries who
did so muob to eiplore and devulop not dan-
ada alone, but the whole country as far as the
MiBsiPsippi. settled among and oonvt^ried to
Ghristianity a tribe of Indinns, tho Attikame-
gnes, living near Three Bivers, at the mouth
of the St. Maurion, on the north bank of the
St. Lawrence, about midway o( Htadaoona,
Quebec, and Hochelaga, Montreal. It is
probable, though not certain, that Father
Drouillettes reported the existenoe of iron
near that point, for in 1666, M. Talon, who
had been sent by Colbert to (iaspe to look for
silver and bad failed, sent the Sienr de la
Tetiserie to Bale St. Paul, near Trois Bivieres,
where he found iron ore which appeared to be
rich. M. La Portardiere was sent from Que-
bec to inspect the mine, but his report was
unfavorable, and nothing praotioal was done
for seventy years.

In 1681 the Marquis de Denonville reported
to his Majesty's Government that be was con-
vinced a very fine iron mine existed at Trois
Bivieres, where a forge could be profitably
worked. He said he had sent some of the
ore to M. Colbert, who tested it with favorable
results. In 1686 the same nobleman report-
ed that he bad sent a sample of the ore to
France, where the iron workers found it "of
good quality and percentage," and desired
fifteen or twenty "bariques" of it to give it a
thorough trial. In 1672 the Oonnt de Fron-
tenac reported that be bad begun to mine the
ore and that "there are six piles of ore now
lying at Gap Madelaine, which, according to
the annexed report of the miner, would last
for two uastini^s per day for four months."
He strongly urged the establishment of
"forges and a foundry."

In 1737 a firm known as Cugnet et Cie.,
was formed by royal charter, which acquired
the mines and a tract of forest land, and at
once erected two furnaces, a foundry and
dwellings for the operatives. There was a
French garrison at Trois Bivieres, and the
soldiers weie the principal workmen. 'i,'he
operations appear to have been unprofitable,
for in a few years Ougnet et Cie. surrendered
their charter to the local Gover jment, and
the works were carried on for some time by
agents of the Crown. The fuel used was
charcoal, the product of the furnaces was pig
iron, and the greater part of this was cast
into stoves, pots, etc., for local nee ; but some
bar iron was made, though I jan find no des-
oriptioQ of tbe method employed. It prob-
ably was the old method of repeated heatings

and hammerings, as there was a trip hammer
operated by water power.

In 1752 M Bigot, who was at that tim In-
tendant of New France, resident at Quebec,
instruoled M. Franqn> o visit the St. Maur-
ice forges, and bio rip, . t is of great interest.
After describing the locality be says : " Tho
stream which drives the niHchinery of the es-
tablishment is dammed up in three places ;
the first dam driveo the wheel for tbe fur-
nace, tbe second and third each a trip ham-
mer. ... It is supposed that the
stream or water power is sufiiciently
strong to drive two other hammers. . . .
On entering tbe smelting forgo I was received
with a cuotomary ceremony : the workmen
moulded a pig of iron about 16 feet long, for
for my especial benefit. Tbe process is very
simple : it is done by plunging a large ladle
into tbe liquid boiling ore and emptying the
material into a gutter made in the sand.
After this ceremony, I was shown tbe process
of stone moulding, which is also a very simple
but rather intricate operation*. Each stone
is in six pioces, which are separately mould-
ed ; they are fitted into each other and form
a stone about three leet high. I tiien visited
a shed where the workmen were moulding
pots, kettles and other hollow ware. On
leaving this part of the forge we were taken
to the hammer forge, where bar iron of every
kind is hammered out. In each department
of the forges the workmen observed tbe old
ceremony of brushing the stranger's boots,
and in return tliey expect some money to buy
liquor to drink the visitor's health. The es«
tablishment is very extensive, employing up-
ward of 180 men. Nothing is consumed in
furnaces but clean coal, which is made in the
immediate vicinity of the post. The ore is
rich, good and tolerably clean. Formerly it
was found on tbe sj^ot : now the director has
to send some little distance for it . . .
This iron is preferred to tbe Spanish iron,
and is sold ofif in the King's stores in Quebec
at the rate of 25 or 30* per hundred pounds
weight.

In 1760, Quebec having been taken by
Wolfe, Canada was ceded to Great Britain,
and among tbe stipulations m the treaty was
one that the papers relating to the forges
should remain in tbe possession of M. Bigot,
tbe intendaut, and should be transmitted to
France without inspection of tbe British.

For seven years after that event the works
lay idle, but in 1767, Christopher Pehsier
formed a company which obtained a conces-
sion from Governor Carleton for tbe working
of the forges for 16 years, at an annual rental
of £26 lawful money of our said Province of
Quebec. An indication of the relations bo
soon established between the French and

IRON AND STEEL.

BngliBb people of Oanada is fnrniahed by the
names of this company whiob embraced,
ChrietopLtr Pelisier, Alexander Dumafl, Tboa.
Dunn, Benjamin Price, Colin Drummond,
Dumaa St. Mar»in, CJeorge Alsopp, James
Johnston and Brooke Wats m. When this
lease expired Oonrad GuRy took the works at
an annual rental of £17 158. sterling. Various
persons conducted the business down to 1801,
when another firm took it at £B5 I sterling,
which rental was reduced in 1810 to tSOO cur-
rency.

In 1815 a visitor wrote : " The foundry it-
self is replete with convenience for carrying on
an extensive concern ; furnaces, forges, cast-
ing houses, workshops, etc., with the dwelling
houses and other builiings, have quite the
appearance of a tolerably large village. The
articles manufactured consist of stoves of all
descriptions that are used throughout the
Provinces, large caldrons of kettles, that are
used for making potashes, machinery for
mills, with oast or wrought iron-work of all
denominations. There are likewise large
quantities of pig and bar iron expoit-d. The
number of men employed is from 250 to 300.

The principal foreman, engaged ti. making
models, are jither English or Hootohmen ;
the workmen are gentrally Canadians."

The ownership remained in the Oovera-
ment till 184G. In the year named the pro-
perty was »old to Henry Stuart, who seriously
embarrasBed himself by large and ill advised
expenditures. He then rented it ; and it
Bubseqiieutljr fell into the hands of Andrew
Stuart and John Porter, of Quebec, who
workea on a limited scale till 1859, when the
fires were extinguished,

The only information, later than that in
the narrative which I have been able to get ia
contained in a report to Parliament made in
March, 1879. which says : " Thb St.
Maurice Foboes.— Owned by F. Macdougall
(& Son, Three Itivers ; using a bug ore ; mak-
ing a very fine iron with charcoal fuel. The
first fuinac9 was erected in 1737. Still run-
ning with same fuel ; capacity lour tons."

* Intricate simplicity was probably com-
mon in those days.

* The editor says "castors."— beaver akiuB.