The Opelousas courier., 1893-02-18

\N/ ton hall of the Columbian
Z Y Exposition next year il
filled with representation
of systems aud methods of moving the
worlds products it will have a few, says
a Cleveland (Ohio) letter to the New
York Advertiser, that will surpass in
unique and peculiar interest the sight
that may be seen daily at the ore ports
of Lake Erie.
The discovery of extremely rich and
almost ~inexhaustible deposits of Bessemer
ore in the Lake Superior districts a
quarter of a century ago, as well as more
recently, has been followed by the
growth of a that is unrivaled
of it's kind in the world, and nowhere
to-day will such mountains of rich ore
be found heaped ready for the trans
forming fire of the furnaces as at Cieve.
land, Ashtabula. Fairport and Buffalo
and at South Chicago, on Lake Michi-
gan.
The ore, being less bulky than coal,
can be carried farther than the coal in
the journey toward each other, so that
but little ore is reduced in the .
peninsula of Michigan. Much OF it
meets the coal at Chicago and Cleve-
land, but the greater part is carried to
the Mahoning Valley and Western Penn
sylvania furnaces. AS the lakes are
open for savigation but seven months in
the year, it is necessary to find a storage
place for the ore required to supply che
furnaces during the winter months. AS
cordingly, at Cleveland, Ashtabula and
Fairport miles of docks have been built,
lining the narrow rivers that put into the
lake at these points, and here, during
the summer, Is unloaded hundreds of
thousands OF tons of iron ore and gradu-
ally forwarded to the furnaces by rail.
It ls almost impossible to appreciate
the magnitude Of this great traffic with
out a walk along the docks between
great ranges of iron ore hills, thirty and
forty feet in height, only q few railroad
tracks separating them like narrow val
leys, and overhead a great steel frame
work of ore hosting machines. The
rattle of the steel buckets as they are
raised from the holds of the great black
hulled vessels by the docks and go
creaking on the cantilevers back to
whatever point the engineer has elected
to dump them ~startles one, and the
stranger lodges involuntasily as they
rush backward and forward oper bis
head.
half hidden behind the ranges of red,
brown or sparkling gray ore, the colors
varying with the qualities, is the pony
engine operating cache set of hosting
machines, putting and kissing away,
adding a familiar element to the strange
scene. Now a train of fat. cars comes
creeping along, drawn BY a snorting
switch engine. In each car are q dozen
fills of those great ton buckets, looking
like such a light load, as compared with
The heaping coal cars SO usual In other
places, yet testing the strength of the
gondolas quite as fully. A red dust rises
and falls, and the laborers are covered |
with it. Their clothes are GENEROUS red, |
boots the color of the tanbark piles they |
knew az leather, and sweat burrows are
down their dusty faces and through the
rust tlnged boards.
The unloading of a vessel at one of
these docks is rapid work. ALI the lake
ore carriers have six and many of them
eight matches, and when they come to
the dock a hosting machine is put to
work in each. The great buckets are
filed below, while the others are drawn
up and emptied, sometimes being carried
back on the overhead railway Of the
cantilevers three hundred feet or more.
THIS it Is possible to take two thousand
tons-enough to load one hundred and
fifty ordinary fat cars-from q vessel in
six o eight hours.
Few persons can appreciate what I
/, 500, 900 tons of ore means without
having it put in some more familiar
shape. The docks at this port, where
amount or more is received every
year, have a river frontage Of over two
miles, and are from $50 to 2s5 feet
Here is heaped hills of fine red
aud brown hematite, like SO much ocher.
gravel, or the coarser Jumps OF
sparkling gray magnetic ore, varying
widely in quality and price.
The casual observer as he walks along
can distinguish but four or five, or at
most half a dozen, grades of ore. But
experts know that these immense conical
piles are strictly classified, and that up.
ward of eighty different grades have
their place in the market lists. But how
much is /, 500, 900 tons of orea Loaded
on fiat cars thirty-6ye feet long and
carrying fifteen tons each it would make
q train 700 miles long, or more than five
times the distance from Cleveland TO
Pittsburgh Yet this is but about one.
third the iron oreIaid down at Lake
Erie ports every summer. The total
would more than fill two trains of such
Fat cars extending from Chicago to New
York Cityi
Besides this great ore traffic, which
annually amounts TO 900, 000, 600 or mora
in value, there is shipped from the ports
of Lake Erie an immense amount of coal,
both anthracite aud bituminous, to Chi
cage, Milwaukee, Duluth and smaller
where it is stored for shipment
west during the winter months.
This requires q very different set OF
and in extent they exceed the ore
Cleveland leads in the amount
of bituminous coal shipped, handling
over 1000, 900 tons annually.
The coal docks are over two miles In
but narrow, and the coal il usu.
ally loaded directly from the cars by
means of derricks that handle great
buckets holding half a ton or more. The