He counted four separate furnaces. Two were on one side, and seemed to
be merely large ovens with flaming mouths. These he was told were the
"leers" where the newly made glass-ware was annealed. Then near each
end of the building, standing by the great chimneys, like dwarfs beside
giants, were two small round furnaces, blazing at several mouths, called
"glory-holes," at which men and boys appeared constantly heating and
reheating articles of glass to be worked.
The great chimneys themselves, however, were what
most astonished Lawrence. They resembled circular brick towers, with
port-holes of fire; their tops disappearing through the high, broad-arched,
strongly raftered roof. In the port-holes men were thrusting iron rods,
and taking out lumps of melted metal, and shaping them on tables, or blowing
them into globes, or dropping them into moulds. "These then," he thought,
"are the big furnaces; and those port-holes must be the necks of the
melting-pots."
"We are now standing right over the cave," said
the gaffer. "This furnace has eleven arches; the other has eight; and
in each arch is set one of these pots, such as you saw. The crown of the
furnace is built over them, so as to reflect the heat down on to them,
and the flues carry it all around them. Look in and see the melted metal."
Lawrence, shielding his eyes with his hand, advanced
to one of the port-holes, and saw what seemed a pot of liquid fire within,
of intensely dazzling brightness.
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