Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/155

 The tinsmith now (sixthly) fixes the heads of the cans in, and solders them down. A small orifice is left purposely in the top of each can.

The cans are now (seventhly) placed in the preserving vats in the cooking-room. Here the heat was rather tropical, though the smell was most appetizing. The lightly-clad workmen, with their clean white caps, hurry to and fro, bending over the seething, bubbling vats, like magicians busy over some magic cauldron. There is the purring, piffing, paffing, plop plop, of incessant ebullition, and the cans in their simmering bath, steam away each from its tiny aperture like so many independent miniature steam-engines. The medium in which they are immersed for half their bulk has to be a dense one to keep down ebullition and lessen evaporation, and so a mixture of muriate of lime and fat is used. When sufficiently cooked, the orifice in the lid is soldered up, and the cans are next subjected to a further treatment in a bath of a higher temperature. Here one or two will occasionally burst with a terrific report and to the grievous hurt of the attendants. Happily such accidents are rare.

They are then plunged through an orifice into a bath of cold water, cleaned, painted, labelled, and a neat finish given to the exterior, which at last assumes a most attractive guise.

The tin-room was perhaps the most interesting one of the whole factory. The whole work was so neatly, cleanly, and expeditiously done that it