第80章

And now for Buffalo, and the elevators. I trust I have made it understood that corn comes into Buffalo, not only from Chicago, of which I have spoken specially, but from all the ports round the lakes: Racine, Milwaukee, Grand Haven, Port Sarnia, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, and many others. At these ports the produce is generally bought and sold; but at Buffalo it is merely passed through a gateway. It is taken from vessels of a size fitted for the lakes, and placed in other vessels fitted for the canal. This is the Erie Canal, which connects the lakes with the Hudson River and with New York. The produce which passes through the Welland Canal--the canal which connects Lake Erie and the upper lakes with Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence--is not transhipped, seeing that the Welland Canal, which is less than thirty miles in length, gives a passage to vessels of 500 tons. As I have before said, 60,000,000 bushels of breadstuff were thus pushed through Buffalo in the open months of the year 1861. These open months run from the middle of April to the middle of November; but the busy period is that of the last two months--the time, that is, which intervenes between the full ripening of the corn and the coming of the ice.

An elevator is as ugly a monster as has been yet produced. In uncouthness of form it outdoes those obsolete old brutes who used to roam about the semi-aqueous world, and live a most uncomfortable life with their great hungering stomachs and huge unsatisfied maws.

The elevator itself consists of a big movable trunk--movable as is that of an elephant, but not pliable, and less graceful even than an elephant's. This is attached to a huge granary or barn; but in order to give altitude within the barn for the necessary moving up and down of this trunk--seeing that it cannot be curled gracefully to its purposes as the elephant's is curled--there is an awkward box erected on the roof of the barn, giving some twenty feet of additional height, up into which the elevator can be thrust. It will be understood, then, that this big movable trunk, the head of which, when it is at rest, is thrust up into the box on the roof, is made to slant down in an oblique direction from the building to the river; for the elevator is an amphibious institution, and flourishes only on the banks of navigable waters. When its head is ensconced within its box, and the beast of prey is thus nearly hidden within the building, the unsuspicious vessel is brought up within reach of the creature's trunk, and down it comes, like a musquito's proboscis, right through the deck, in at the open aperture of the hole, and so into the very vitals and bowels of the ship. When there, it goes to work upon its food with a greed and an avidity that is disgusting to a beholder of any taste or imagination. And now I must explain the anatomical arrangement by which the elevator still devours and continues to devour, till the corn within its reach has all been swallowed, masticated, and digested. Its long trunk, as seen slanting down from out of the building across the wharf and into the ship, is a mere wooden pipe;but this pipe is divided within. It has two departments; and as the grain-bearing troughs pass up the one on a pliable band, they pass empty down the other. The system, therefore, is that of an ordinary dredging machine only that corn and not mud is taken away, and that the buckets or troughs are hidden from sight. Below, within the stomach of the poor bark, three or four laborers are at work, helping to feed the elevator. They shovel the corn up toward its maw, so that at every swallow he should take in all that he can hold. Thus the troughs, as they ascend, are kept full, and when they reach the upper building they empty themselves into a shoot, over which a porter stands guard, moderating the shoot by a door, which the weight of his finger can open and close. Through this doorway the corn runs into a measure, and is weighed. By measures of forty bushels each, the tale is kept. There stands the apparatus, with the figures plainly marked, over against the porter's eye; and as the sum mounts nearly up to forty bushels he closes the door till the grains run thinly through, hardly a handful at a time, so that the balance is exactly struck. Then the teller standing by marks down his figure, and the record is made.

The exact porter touches the string of another door, and the forty bushels of corn run out at the bottom of the measure, disappear down another shoot, slanting also toward the water, and deposit themselves in the canal boat. The transit of the bushels of corn from the larger vessel to the smaller will have taken less than a minute, and the cost of that transit will have been--a farthing.

But I have spoken of the rivers of wheat, and I must explain what are those rivers. In the working of the elevator, which I have just attempted to describe, the two vessels were supposed to be lying at the same wharf on the same side of the building, in the same water, the smaller vessel inside the larger one. When this is the case the corn runs direct from the weighing measure into the shoot that communicates with the canal boat. But there is not room or time for confining the work to one side of the building. There is water on both sides, and the corn or wheat is elevated on the one side, and reshipped on the other. To effect this the corn is carried across the breadth of the building; but, nevertheless, it is never handled or moved in its direction on trucks or carriages requiring the use of men's muscles for its motion. Across the floor of the building are two gutters, or channels, and through these, small troughs on a pliable band circulate very quickly.

They which run one way, in one channel, are laden; they which return by the other channel are empty. The corn pours itself into these, and they again pour it into the shoot which commands the other water. And thus rivers of corn are running through these buildings night and day. The secret of all the motion and arrangement consists, of course, in the elevation. The corn is lifted up; and when lifted up can move itself and arrange itself, and weigh itself, and load itself.

I should have stated that all this wheat which passes through Buffalo comes loose, in bulk. Nothing is known of sacks or bags.

To any spectator at Buffalo this becomes immediately a matter of course; but this should be explained, as we in England are not accustomed to see wheat traveling in this open, unguarded, and plebeian manner. Wheat with us is aristocratic, and travels always in its private carriage.

Over and beyond the elevators there is nothing specially worthy of remark at Buffalo. It is a fine city, like all other American cities of its class. The streets are broad, the "blocks" are high, and cars on tramways run all day, and nearly all night as well.