James Nasmyth: Engineer; an autobiography Part 27

We returned to the city in time to be present at a most interesting lecture by Hugh Miller on the Boulder Clay.

He ill.u.s.trated it by some scratched boulders which he had collected in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. He brought the subject before his audience in his own clear and admirable viva voce style.

The Duke of Argyll was in the chair, and a very animated discussion took place on this novel and difficult subject.

It was humorously brought to a conclusion by the Rev. Dr. Fleming, a shrewd and learned geologist. Like many others, he had encountered great difficulties in arriving at definite conclusions on this mysterious subject. He concluded his remarks upon it by describing the influence it had in preventing his sleeping at night.

He was so restless on one occasion that his wife became seriously alarmed.

"What's the matter wi' ye, John? are ye ill?" "On no," replied the doctor, "it's only that confounded Bounder Clay!" This domestic anecdote brought down the house, and the meeting terminated in a loud and hearty laugh.

I, too, contributed my little quota of information to the members of the British a.s.sociation. I had brought with me from Lancashire a considerable number of my large graphic ill.u.s.trations of the details of the Moon's surface. I gave a viva voce account of my lunar researches at a crowded meeting of the Physical Section A. The novel and interesting subject appeared to give so much satisfaction to the audience that the Council of the a.s.sociation requested me to repeat the account at one of the special evenings, when the members of all the various sections were generally present. It was quite a new thing for me to appear as a public lecturer; but I consented. The large hall of the a.s.sembly Rooms in George Street was crowded with an attentive audience. The Duke of Argyll was in the chair. It is a difficult thing to give a public lecture especially to a scientific audience.

To see a large number of faces turned up, waiting for the words of the lecturer, is a somewhat appalling sight. But the novelty of the subject and the graphic ill.u.s.trations helped me very much. I was quite full of the Moon. The words came almost unsought; and I believe the lecture went off very well, and terminated with "great applause."

And thus the meeting of the British a.s.sociation at Edinburgh came to an end.

This, however, was not the end of our visit to Scotland.

I was strongly urged by the Duke of Argyll to pay him a visit at his castle at Inverary. I had frequently before had the happiness of meeting the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess at the Earl of Ellesmere's mansion at Worsley Hall He had made us promise that if we ever came to Scotland we were not to fail to pay him a visit. It was accordingly arranged at Edinburgh that we should carry out our promise, and spend some days with him at Inverary before our return home. We were most cordially welcomed at the castle, and enjoyed our visit exceedingly. We had the pleasure of seeing the splendid scenery of the Western Highlands the mountains round the head of Loch Fyne, Loch Awe, and the magnificent h.o.a.ry-headed Ben Cruachan, requiring a base of more than twenty miles to support him,--besides the beautiful and majestic scenery of the neighbourhood.

But my chief interest was in the specimens of high geological interest which the Duke showed me. He had discovered them in the Island of Mull, in a bed of clay shale, under a volcanic basaltic cliff over eighty feet high, facing the Atlantic Ocean. He found in this bed many beautifully perfect impressions of forest tree leaves, chiefly of the plane-tree cla.s.s. They appeared to have been enveloped in the muddy bottom of a lake, which had been sealed up by the belching forth from the bowels of the earth of molten volcanic basaltic lava, and which indeed formed the chief material of the Island of Mull. This basaltic cliff now fronts the Atlantic, and resists its waves like a rock of iron. To see all the delicate veins and stalklets, and exact forms of what had once been the green fresh foliage of a remotely primeval forest, thus brought to light again, as preserved in their clay envelope, after they had lain for ages and ages under what must have been the molten outburst of some tremendous volcanic discharge, and which now formed the rock-bound coast of Mull, filled one's mind with an idea of the inconceivable length of time that must have pa.s.sed since the production of these Wonderful geological phenomena.

I felt all the more special interest in these specimens, as I had many years before, on my return visit from Londonderry, availed myself of the nearness of the Giant's Causeway to make a careful examination of the marvellous volcanic columns in that neighbourhood. Having scrambled up to a great height, I found a thick band of hemat.i.tic clay underneath the upper bed of basalt, which was about sixty feet thick. In this clay I detected a rich deposit of completely charred branches of what had once been a forest tree. The bed had been burst through by the outburst of molten basalt, and converted the branches into charcoal.

I dug out some of the specimens, and afterwards distributed them amongst my geological friends. The Duke was interested by my account, which so clearly confirmed his own discovery. On a subsequent occasion I revisited the Giant's Causeway in company with my dear wife.

I again scrambled up to the hemat.i.tic bed of clay under the basaltic cliff, and dug out a sufficient quant.i.ty of the charred branches, which I sent to the Duke, in confirmation of his theory as to the origin of the leaf-beds at Mull.*

[footnote...

I received the following reply from the Duke of Argyll dated "Inverary, Nov. 19, 1850": --

"MY DEAR SIR--Am I right in concluding, from the description which; you were so kind as to send to me, that the lignite bed, with its superinc.u.mbent basalts, lies above those particular columnar basalts which form the far-famed Giant's Causeway? I see from your sketch that basalts of great thickness, and in some views beautifully columnar, do underlie the lignite bed; but I am not quite sure that these columnar basalts are those precisely which are called the Causeway.

I had never heard before that the Giant's Causeway rested on chalk, which all the basalts in your sketch do.

[Image] The Astrologers Tower--A Day Dream. By James Nasmyth.

(Facsimile.)

"I have been showing your drawing of 'Udolpho Castle' and 'The Astrologer's Tower' to the d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland, who is enchanted with the beauty of the architectural details, and wishes she had seen them before Dunrobin was finished; for hints might have been taken from bits of your work. --Very truly yours,

ARGYLL."

In the year following the meeting of the British a.s.sociation at Edinburgh, the great Exhibition of all nations at London took place.

The Commissioners appointed for carrying out this n.o.ble enterprise had made special visits to Manchester and the surrounding manufacturing districts for the purpose of organising local committees, so that the machinery and productions of each might be adequately represented in the World's Great Industrial Exhibition. The Commissioners were met with enthusiasm; and nearly every manufacturer was found ready to display the results of his industry. The local engineers and tool-makers were put upon their mettle, and each endeavoured to do his best. Like others, our firm contributed specimens of our special machine tools, and a fair average specimen of the steam hammer, with a 30 cwt.

hammer-block.

I also sent one of my very simple and compact steam-engines, in the design of which I had embodied the form of my steam hammer--placing the crank where the anvil of the hammer usually stands. The simplicity and grace of this arrangement of the steam-engine were much admired.

Its merits were acknowledged in a way most gratifying to me, by its rapid adoption by engineers of every cla.s.s, especially by marine engineers. It has been adopted for driving the shafts of screw-propelled steamships of the largest kind. The comparatively small s.p.a.ce it occupies, its compactness, its get-at-ability of parts, and the action of gravity on the piston, which, working vertically, and having no undue action in causing wearing of the cylinder on one side (which was the case with horizontal engines), has now brought my Steam Hammer Engine into almost universal use*

[footnote...

Sir John Anderson, in his Report on the machine tools, textile, and other machinery exhibited at Vienna in 1873, makes the following observations: --"Perhaps the finest pair of marine engines yet produced by France, or any other country, were those exhibited by Schneider and Company, the leading firm in France. These engines were not large, but were perfect in many respects; yet comparatively few of those who were struck with admiration seemed to know that the original of this style of construction came from the same mind as the Steam Hammer.

Nasmyth's Infant Hercules was the forerunner of all the steam hammer engines that have yet been made from that type, which is now being so extensively employed for working the screw propeller of steam vessels."

The Commissioners, acting on the special recommendation of the jury, awarded me a medal for the construction of this form of steam-engine*

[footnote...

The Council of the Exhibition thus describe the engine in the awards: -- "Nasmyth, J., Patricroft, Manchester, a small portable direct-acting steam-engine. The cylinder is fixed, vertical and inverted, the crank being placed beneath it, and the piston working downwards.

The sides of the frame which support the cylinder serve as guides, and the bearings of the crank-shaft and fly-wheel are firmly fixed in the bed-plate of the engine. The arrangement is compact and economical, and the workmanship practically good and durable."

(See ill.u.s.tration of the design, page 424.) ...]

as it was merely a judicious arrangement of the parts, and not, in any correct sense of the term, an invention, I took out no patent for it, and left it free to work its own way into general adoption.

It has since been used for high as well as low-pressure steam-- an arrangement which has come into much favour on account of the great economy of fuel which results from using it.

A Council Medal was also awarded to me for the Steam Hammer.

But perhaps what pleased me most was the Prize Medal which I received for my special hobby--the drawings of the Moon's surface. I sent a collection of these, with a map, to the Exhibition. They attracted considerable attention, not only because of their novelty, but because of the accurate and artistic style of their execution. The Jurors, in making the award, gave the following description of them: "Mr. Nasmyth exhibits a well-delineated map of the Moon on a large scale, which is drawn with great accuracy, the irregularities upon the surface being shown with much force and spirit; also separate and enlarged representations of certain portions of the Moon as seen through a powerful telescope: they are all good in detail, and very effective."

My drawings of the Moon attracted the special notice of the Prince Consort. Shortly after the closing of the Exhibition, in October 1851, the Queen and the Prince made a visit to Manchester and Liverpool, during which time they were the guests of the Earl of Ellesmere at Worsley Hall. Finding that I lived near at hand, the Prince expressed his desire to the Earl that I should exhibit to Her Majesty some of my graphic lunar studies.

On receiving a note to that effect from the Countess of Ellesmere, I sent a selection of my drawings to the Hall, and proceeded there in the evening. I had then the honour of showing them to the Queen and the Prince, and explaining them in detail. Her Majesty took a deep interest in the subject, and was most earnest in her inquiries.

The Prince Consort' said that the drawings opened up quite a new subject to him, which he had not before had the opportunity of considering. It was as much as I could do to answer the numerous keen and incisive questions which he put to me. They were all so distinct and cogent. Their object was, of course, to draw from me the necessary explanations on this rather recondite subject. I believe, however, that notwithstanding the presence of Royalty, I was enabled to place all the most striking and important features of the Moon's surface in a clear and satisfactory manner before Her Majesty and the Prince,

I find that the Queen in her Diary alludes in the most gratifying manner to the evening's interview. In the Life of the Prince Consort (vol. ii. p. 398), Sir Theodore Martin thus mentions the subject: -- "The evening was enlivened by the presence of Mr. Nasmyth, the inventor of the steam hammer, who had extensive works at Patricroft.

He exhibited and explained the map and drawings in which he had embodied the results of his investigations of the conformations of the surface of the Moon. The Queen in her Diary dwells at considerable length on the results of Mr. Nasmyth's inquiries. The charm of his manner, in which the simplicity, modesty, and enthusiasm of genius are all strikingly combined, are warmly dwelt upon. Mr. Nasmyth belongs to a family of painters, and would have won fame for himself as an artist --for his landscapes are as true to Nature as his compositions are full of fancy and feeling--had not science and mechanical invention claimed him for their own. His drawings were submitted on this occasion. and their beauty was generally admired.*

[footnote...

In his lecture on the "Geological Features of Edinburgh and its Neighbourhood," in the following year, Hugh Miller, speaking of the Castle Rock, observed: --"The underlying strata, though geologically and in their original position several hundred feet higher than those which underlie the Castle esplanade, are now, with respect to the actual level, nearly 200 feet lower. In a lecture on what may be termed the geology of the Moon, delivered in the October of last year before Her Majesty and Prince Albert by Mr. Nasmyth, he referred to certain appearances on the surface of that satellite that seemed to be the results, in some very ancient time, of the sudden falling in of portions of an unsupported crust, or a retreating nucleus of molten matter; and took occasion to suggest that some of the great slips and shifts on the surface of our own planet, with their huge downcasts, may have had a similar origin. The suggestion is at once bold and ingenious."

The next time I visited Edinburgh was in the autumn of 1853.

Lord c.o.c.kburn, an old friend, having heard that I was sojourning in the city, sent me the following letter, dated "Bonally, 3rd September,"

inviting me to call a meeting of the Faithful:

"MY DEAR Sir--Instead of being sketching, as I thought, in Switzerland, I was told yesterday that you were in Auld Reekie. Then why not come out here next Thursday, or Friday, or Sat.u.r.day, and let us have a Hill Day? I suppose I need not write to summon the Faithful, because not having been in Edinburgh except once for above a month, I don't know where the Faithful are. But you must know their haunts, and it can't give you much trouble to speak to them. I should like to see Lauder here. And don't forget the Gaberlunzie.--Ever,

H. c.o.c.kBURN"*

[footnote...

James Ballantine, author of The Gaberlunzie's Wallet. In August 1865 Mr. Ballantine wrote to me saying: "If ever you are in Auld Reekie I should feel proud of a call from you. I have not forgotten the delightful day we spent together many years ago at Bonny Bonally with the eagle-eyed Henry c.o.c.kburn!"

The meeting came off. I collected a number of special friends about me, and I took my wife to the meeting of the Faithful. There were present David Roberts, Clarkson Stanfield, Louis and Carl Haag, Sir George Harvey, James Ballantine, and D. O. Hill--all artists.

We made our way to Bonny Bonally, a charming residence, situated at the foot of the Pentland Hills.*

[footnote...

The house was afterwards occupied by the lamented Professor Hodgson, the well-known Political Economist.

The day was perfect--in all respects "equal to bespoke." With that most genial of men, Lord c.o.c.kburn, for our guide, we wandered far up the Pentland Hills. After a rather toilsome walk we reached a favourite spot. It was a semicircular hollow in the hillside, scooped out by the sheep for shelter. It was carpeted and cushioned with a deep bed of wild thyme, redolent of the very essence of rural fragrance.

We sat down in a semicircle, our guide in the middle. He said in his quaint peculiar way, "Here endeth the first lesson." After gathering our breath, and settling ourselves to enjoy our well-earned rest, we sat in silence for a time. The gentle breeze blew past us, and we inhaled the fragrant air. It was enough for a time to look on, for the glorious old city was before us, with its towers, and spires, and lofty buildings between us and the distance. On one side Arthur's Seat, and on the other the Castle, the crown of the city. The view extended far and wide--on to the waters of the Forth and the blue hills of Fife.

The view is splendidly described by "Delta": --

"Traced like a map, the landscape lies In cultured beauty, stretching wide: Here Pentland's green acclivities,-- There ocean, with its swelling tide,-- There Arthur's Seat and gleaming through Thy Southern wing, Dull Edin blue!

While, in the Orient, Lammer's daughters,-- A distant giant range, are seen; North Berwick Law, with cone of green, And Ba.s.s amid the waters."

Then we began to crack, our host leading the way with his humorous observations. After taking our fill of rest and talk, we wended our way down again, with the "wimplin' burn" by our side, fresh from the pure springs of the hill, whispering its welcome to us.

We had earned a good appet.i.te for dinner, which was shortly laid before us.

The bill of fare was national, and included a haggis:

"Fair fa' your honest sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the puddin' race!

Weel are ye wordy o'a grace As lang's my arm!"