“No giants in sight yet,” said Billy.
“It’s your eyes that are not seeing,” returned Mr. Prescott. “That boat herself is a giantess. Watch.”
Hardly had the great boat been made fast to her moorings before, in some mysterious way, the hold of the ship opened wide from stem to stern.
Then somebody touched a lever somewhere, and over the hold swung a row of buckets that, opening like two hands, grabbed into the ore, and seizing tons of it, swung back to the dock. A touch of another lever unloaded it into huge storage bins.
“Billy Bradford,” said Mr. Prescott, “weren’t those the hands of a giant?”
“Sure, sir,” answered Billy, who stood staring in wonder.
“That ore,” said Mr. Prescott, “came from a surface mine up in the pine woods of Lake Superior, a thousand miles away.
“Perhaps, gentlemen, you may like to know that the American supremacy in iron is largely due to those open pit mines up in Minnesota.
“Much of the ore in that region is so near the surface that a steam shovel can easily strip off the ‘overburden’ of the soil and the roots of pine trees.
“When that was done, giant hands seized that ore, lifted it up, and loaded it into bins, high up on the bluffs.