Page:The Overland Monthly, volume 1, issue 1.djvu/45



made up a goodly company, with president, secretary, treasurer and directors, some of whose valuable autographs lie before me now, on a neatly engraved certificate, for five shares in the California Diamond Crystallization Company.

Months were consumed in the laborious manufacture of a solid iron sphere, thirty-eight inches in diameter, a mass of laminated and wrought castiron, so hooped, banded, braced and strengthened in every part as to seem a miracle of strength and solidity. Into this, at great cost and painful labor, a circular channel, three inches in diameter, was bored, reaching to the center, where a circular chamber, six inches in diameter, was hollowed by a peculiar machine, invented by Barnard for the purpose. The materials for the crystallization being introduced, it was intended to close the channel from end to end with a closely-fitting steel screw, adjusted to threads made to fit those of this stopper. Two small openings ran through the center of this screw-stopper, through which were to be passed the poles of a galvanic battery, encased in an insulating substance. The battery used on the occasion was a wonder in its way. It was said to have been the largest ever made in the United States. I do not know enough about such things to be able to take the responsibility of that statement, but it was made of two cups—tubs, rather—each holding ten plates, forty-two inches in diameter. It was said to be of sufficient power to kill a hundred men at one shock. The experiment was never fairly tried.

I have not the heart to describe the repeated failures and reversals, the disappointments and rising and falling hopes with which the work went on during the summer months of 1860. There were numerous disasters of breaking tools, spoiled castings, and unexpected obstacles. The young machinist tore his hair in despair, but picked up his

tools again and worked on with a comical sort of wilfulness. More assessments were levied, and more stock created. Some shareholders fell out by the way, discouraged and dismayed at the "Irish dividends," and one by one withdrew in great disgust. Meantime, tidings of what was going on in the Sacramento machine shop had spread all over the State, and relief came in the shape of new subscriptions from sympathising or sanguine people in the mountains and valleys, and -by the sea side. One man in Shasta county wrote that he had been warned in a dream that he must buy five shares in the Diamond Company if he would be rich. He would be rich, so he enclosed a draft for $625, and bequeathed his five shares of stock to his next of kin five years thereafter.

In September, 1860, the machine which I have described was carried into the heart of an adjoining county, secretly and at night, for fear of such scoffers as might follow it to deride the proceedings or share in the knowledge of the great success. Only a few of the most select of the select, eight in all, were permitted to know the place of rendezvous, and they, to keep all outsiders from the secret, turned teamsters and laborers, and when the machine was fairly prepared for transportation, were the only guard and attendants of its transit to a lonely place, far away from the inspection of any curious eye. A day or two elapsed after the apparatus was taken to the place of experiment, during which Barnard slept on the field, under a slight shed put up for the purpose of sheltering the battery and the materials. His eye shone with a strange light, a bright-red spot appeared on either cheek, and his once elastic step was heavy and trembling with strange eagerness. But his courage was still unshaken, and he spoke calmly and confidently of the Dright certainty before us all. For his™beloved friends