As the great
guns were raised from the pits in which they had been cast, and were
declared ready for proof, Decatur ordered each one to be loaded with
repeated charges of powder and ball, and pointed into the woods. Then,
for miles between the grazed and quivering boles, crashed the missiles
of destruction, startling bear and deer and squirrel and raccoon, and
leaving traces of their passage which are even still occasionally
discovered. The cannon-balls themselves are now and then found imbedded
in the sand of the forest. In this manner the guns were tried which were
to thunder the challenge of America against the dens of Mediterranean
pirates.
Hanover, too, in its day of pride, furnished many a city with its iron
tubes for water and for gas, many a factory and workshop with its
castings, many a farmer with his tools, but the glow of the furnace is
quenched forever now. The slowly gathering ferruginous deposits have
been exhausted, and three years have elapsed since the furnace-fires
were lighted. The blackened shell of the building stands in cold
decrepitude, a melancholy vestige of usefulness outlived. In consequence
of the stoppage of the works, Hanover has lost seven-eighths of its
population, and only about fifty inhabitants remain in the white
cottages grouped about the Big House, who are employed in agricultural
labors and occupations connected with the forest.
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