as in many other kinds of manufacture; but
their occupations are varied and unceasing,
many of them, too, being, to the uninitiated,
perfectly inexplicable. Vast sheds, enormous
factories extend in every direction.
The whole range of open space is intersected
at all points with iron tram-ways, railroads
in miniature. Along these, trains of loaded
railway waggons are propelled by horses;
some filled with coals, some with lime, others
with salt, and many with the curious looking
stony earth that we have seen discharged
from the ships on the wharves.

Where they all come from, where they are
going to, or what their use, are perfect
mysteries. My conductor takes me through a
lofty doorway, and I find myself in a huge
storehouse filled on every side with leaden
cisterns of enormous magnitude. There is
not more than just sufficient space left
between those Titanic vats for a portly man to
walk in comfort. I am buried in lead; the
place being in appearance a huge leaden
coffin. A leaden feeling of oppression
overwhelms me; I appear to be crushed under
the vast expanse of metal; I try to catch a
glimpse of the summit of those towering, far-
spreading cisterns, and become giddy with
the effort; my imagination is drowned within
their metallic profundity, and I abandon the
attempt. But what do these contain? Do
they hold within their dusky sides a supply
of water for the city of Glasgow? Not at
all. They only contain vitriolic acid! Merely
that. If I shudder; if I observe how thin
their leaden cases are; if I feel chilly at the
supposition of the consequences of one of
them giving way at this particular moment,
a desire to be somewhere out of scalding
bounds will surely be excused.

It is a relief to step out from this chamber
of horrors, to another of my Wizard's
workshops; a long sort of kitchen with an
innumerable quantity of little twinkling
furnace doors, through which we perceive bright
flames of sparkling blue rising in circling
columns to some regions far out of sight.
One of these warm looking cooking places is
opened; and peeping cautiously in, I
perceive the interior to be one long brick chamber,
in which are rows of grotesque vessels
blazing blue and white flames like so many
incantation accessories in Der Freischütz.
Can they be making soup from a collection
of Chinese fireworks, or a warm potage from
lucifer matches?

I am told that those earthen cauldrons
contain portions of nitre or saltpetre mixed
with the dirty-looking earthy stone before
alluded to—in other words, rough sulphur.
These are burnt together; their fumes ascend
into a chimney perfectly air tight; whence
they are conducted by means of earthen tubes
into the huge leaden cisterns in the room just
visited, and which contain a certain quantity
of water. There the nitro-sulphuric fume or
gas is absorbed by water: and, combining
with it, forms sulphuric acid or oil of vitriol.
Of this destructive yet highly necessary
acid, there are not less than half a million
of tons manufactured every year in this
country by my Wizard and his numerous
brethren.

The sulphur stone is brought from one of
the westerly districts of Ireland, whence the
supply is almost unlimited. Every week a
shipload of it is discharged on the banks of
the Clyde, to supply the fiery requirements
of this one particular northerly Wizard.
Every week half a ship's cargo of saltpetre is
poured into his capacious jaws of brickwork,
and every week these rough, unseemly
substances are forced by the magic craft of
chemical science to yield three hundred tons
of potent burning acid.

The larger portion of this terrible liquid is
consumed on the premises in the manufacture
of muriatic acid—better known amongst
housekeepers by the name of spirits of salts
—this acid being required in large quantities
for the production of chlorine gas, forming
the basis of a bleaching powder in extensive
use amongst cotton and linen manufacturers.
Sulphuric acid is also employed in the make
of crystallised soda, produced in immense
quantities by our friends the Wizards for the
use of their manufacturing friends in Glasgow,
Manchester, and other places. A
considerable quantity—not less than four
hundred tons a week—of this acid is concentrated
by distillation in a platinum retort or still;
and, in that state, is sold for many chemical
and domestic purposes.

From the acid rooms I pass forward
through extensive yards teeming with life,
and coals, and sulphur; until I reach a vast
range of hot and smoky buildings, though
devoid of any visible signs of fire. There
are huge, grim chambers of solid masonry
guarded by sooty mortals in the deep silence
of Ethiopic mutes waiting for victims. They
hold cabalistic wands of metal in their hands.
A sign from the deputy Wizard, and one of
these ugly genii flings open an iron doorway
of yawning dimensions, from which glare
out fiercely upon us long spires of red
flickering flame, dancing and twisting about us
in hungry savageness as if they were the
tortured spirits of so many original sea-
serpents.

These warm places are the furnaces in
which shiploads of common salt are blended
with tons of the potent liquor from the
leaden cisterns; and, in that condition,
subjected to violent heat, sufficient to form
from the mixture a substance called sulphate of
soda, or commonly, Glauber Salts. In other
chambers a similar fiery process is going on,
except that there the saline materials are
combined with large quantities of lime and
coal-dust, all of which, being ignited, send
forth terrific flames of a white heat until
they make the beholder wink and blink
again.