The
consequence was that fortunes were wasted in hopeless experimentation,
and, with Hall's achievement dazzling their eyes, the deluded
fortune-seekers kept on in the face of endless disappointments and
disaster.
And presently there came another tragedy. The Syx mill was blown up!
The accident--although many people refused to regard it as an
accident, and asserted that the doctor himself, in his chagrin, had
applied the match--the explosion, then, occurred about sundown, and
its effects were awful. The great works, with everything pertaining to
them, and every rail that they contained, were blown to atoms. They
disappeared as if they had never existed. Even the twin tunnels were
involved in the ruin, a vast cavity being left in the mountain-side
where Syx's ten acres had been. The force of the explosion was so
great that the shattered rock was reduced to dust. To this fact was
owing the escape of the troops camped near. While the mountain was
shaken to its core, and enormous parapets of living rock were hurled
down the precipices of the Teton, no missiles of appreciable size
traversed the air, and not a man at the camp was injured.
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