The Sun.
London, England, 1871-02-15 00:00:00

GREAT GUNPOWDER BLAST.

A gunpowder blast was fired successfully at Borraw
Granite Quarries, Argyleshire, on Monday. The mines
for this blast have been in course of formation for eighteen
months. The face of the rock that was operated upon
ran in an angle of 45 degrees from the sea at Loch
Elive, which at that point washes the base of the mountain.
Ben Durinish, in which the granite quarries are situated.
At a distance of sixty feet from the end of the rock next
Loch Elive a horizontal entrance mine was driven in from
the face of the rock to a distance of fifty feet. This mine
was about four feet in height by two feet six inches in the
centre, terminating in a narrow bottom, giving it the form
of an egg-shaped sewer. It was situated about nine feet
above the level of the quarry floor, and had a superincum-
bent mass of rock above it about eighty five feet
in height. At the inner end of this mine
a heading was branched off to the right, thirteen feet in
length, from it the gunpowder chamber was excavated.
This chamber was nine feet in length, by five in breadth,
and four feet high ; and in it were deposited two-and-half
tons of gunpowder. A heading was also formed to the
left of this mine, twenty feet in length, and a gunpowder
chamber excavated, seven feet long, five feet. broad
and four feet high in which there were deposited 13/4 tons of
gunpowder, the charge being in all four tons. The head-
ings and the mine were all carefully built up with rubble-
stone, and Roman cement, into which building the electric
wires were placed, protected in wooden casements. On
the stemming up of the mine a powerful galvanic battery
was erected 100 yards distant from the mouth of the
same. From this, point Mr. Sims, the lessee of the quarry,
crossed the loch to go to the island twenty yards
distant,with the cord for working the battery. Shortly
before two o'clock the signal shot was fired
to intimate that all was ready. At two o'clock the battery
was set in motion ; and instantly the whole mass of rock
operated upon was on the move. There was no report or
noise, merely a silent bursting and pressing forward of
innumerable pieces of as it existed in its natural
formation. The quantity o: displaced is computed by
measurement to be eighty thousand tons, being the largest
quantity which Mr. Sims has had displaced during his
eighteen years' experience of this system.

Augustus Applegarth, the inventor of the steam
printing-press, died at Dartford on Friday, at the age of
eighty-four. For his invention of Bank-notes that could
not be forged he received from the Bank authorities
£lB,OOO. He also invented a machine for printing six
colours at once.

The Prussian cadet colleges are hencefotth to
admit day scholars in addition to the regular boarders.
The object of this regulation is to provide for the many
vacancies caused by the war. It is the first time, says a
Berlin correspondent, that the sanctum of military schools
has been thrown open to the public, and it indicates the
greater want of officers, as a Prussian need not have been
to a military school to be qualified to pass his examination
as a lieutenant.
On Monday evening a collision of a calamitous
nature occurred on the river Mersey, near Egremont
Ferry. The Guion steamer Wyoming, bound for Arderica,
was swinging to the flood tide, and while so doing
the Morocco, one of the Cunard Company's
Mediterranean boats, with a cargo ;on board
valued at about £150,000, in attempting to pass
her stern, had her deck swept fore and aft on the
starboard side, and her water-tight compartments ripped
open. The Morocco immediately began to sink, and was
towed on to the beach, where she disappeared in four
fathoms of water.

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