Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/83

70 trucks we discover are only discharging their stone. By a simple mechanical contrivance the waggon drops its whole load bodily into the sea, and it was to this falling mass of rubble, some eight or ten tons in all, that the commotion was due.

Train after train of trucks runs by us on this errand, and everywhere is the crash of the falling masses of stone. All day long the work goes on, undeterred by weather or season, neither gales nor heavy seas producing much influence on its certainty and speed. Walking, as it were, by faith in science and skill, the locomotive steams along the platform, while the wind is howling through the timber work, and the sea is breaking vainly on the piling. Two thousand tons of material a day is thus cast into the water; for nearly ten years this has been going on, and the sea is not yet wholly conquered. The construction of the inner and shorter breakwater, being, as we have said, not only a sea wall, but a landing-stage as well, claims some attention. This part of the work is all but completed, and presents a magnificent specimen of masonry. The rubble foundation has been brought up to the lowest spring tide water-mark. Here it has been levelled, and upon it erected the wall proper, about twenty-five feet high and eleven feet thick; on its summit is a pathway about thirteen feet wide; the wall is strengthened by buttresses nine feet deep and ten feet wide, occurring at every twenty feet of its length on the inner side, while its seaward face is built of huge blocks, beautifully put together; the hardest granite being used up to high-water line, and the Portland stone completing the whole. This seaward face is nearly perpendicular, having a “batter” or slope of one inch in every foot. It must however be remembered, that the rubble foundation, previously described as reaching low-water level, is here heaped up higher along the wall, and naturally forms an embankment of rough stone, sloping gently to the bottom. This embankment, or “apron,” is of advantage in lessening the force of water upon the wall itself. The structure is terminated by a circular “head” of masonry. The foundation of these heads is laid about twenty-five feet deep at low water of spring tides, and here the duties of the mason were allied to those of the diver. Every stone was carefully marked and fitted before being placed under water; and the divers, duly equipped, did their day’s work some fifty-feet below the surface. More beautiful or successful specimens of the mason’s craft than these “heads” it is difficult to conceive. On the inner side of the sea wall are the landing quays before alluded to. Rising out of deep water, they permit the largest craft to range easily alongside, and are, we believe, chiefly destined to serve as coal wharves for ships of war lying in the roads. Already we see considerable quantities of coal stowed along them; and there will ultimately be erected a staging and line of railway, with the proper discharging apparatus for this service. Standing upon this quay, we will pause for a moment to enjoy the deep blueness of the water. How clear it is! and how plainly we see the great brown whiting lazily grazing among the weeds. Two youngsters from the works are taking advantage of the dinner hour to lie along the quay walls and try their luck with a primitive line and hook; but the whiting show an evident desire to avoid their delicate attentions. We watch them amused for a while, till one of them shouts, excitedly, “Bill, here be the bait!” Bill is all eyes in a moment; and we share their pleasure, as we see shoal after shoal of the small fry the local fishermen call “bait” swimming slowly by. When the bait is about, the mackerel are most likely near. Myriads of the little fish cover the water; thicker and thicker they glide past. Our little friend grows madder and madder, and flings out his barbarous line farther into the blue water, in the vain hope of taking some idiotic mackerel fonder of pork than safety. Still the bait swims on unmolested, when we become aware of a curious kind of excitement among them; growing and spreading, in an instant it has become a panic, and the gliding shoal darts wildly through and even out of the water, as a hundred glittering streaks of green and silver flash among them out of the deep sea. For one moment the beautiful destroyers gleam bright upon the surface, then sink again below. The bait, slowly resuming their tranquillity, swim quietly by again; but the spectacle is not without its excitement; none but those who have seen it can imagine the fierce, swift rush with which a mackerel shoal rising for food flashes past, and it is with quickened interest we wait the return of the fish, and a renewal of the slaughter. They come again and again, while all the time the great brown whiting graze as unconcernedly as if there where no such thing in the watery world as pain, terror, and death. We must not let this scene, however, detain us too long, but stroll leisurely on to the extreme end of the breakwater. It is a long walk, but a pleasant. The cliffs of Portland open as we proceed, and the view becomes more extensive and beautiful: the white sails of passing yachts, the wheeling gulls, the breezy air—all combine to make a picture pleasant to see and to remember. On the farthest finished point we come upon a portable light apparatus for the warning of vessels, which is carried forward with every additional increase in the length of the structure. The lamp is fed with gas in a somewhat novel way. A small gas holder furnished with wheels, and running like a truck upon the rails, is attached by flexible tubing to the light. This holder goes periodically backwards and forwards to be filled; and it is a curious sight to see the locomotive dragging a gas-holder shorewards for its feed of gas.

Returning to the land, we must visit, before we leave Portland, some of the principal shops and buildings connected with the works. Chief among these in interest are the cement-mills, the fitting and engine-shops, and the pickling-house. We have heard much, during our visit, of the extraordinary tenacity of the cements used in putting the masons’ work together, and have seen a specimen of stone broken before the cement would yield;