The fine steam engine of 130-horse power, having two cylinders and a fly wheel of fourteen tons weight, and five boilers was made at the North just before the war, and brought to that city to be used in a flouring mill. This was purchased as being exactly the motive power required. It was designed to make use of the water power of the canal for all purposes, but its available capacities at that time would not permit this, for the large amount required by the incorporating mills; it was employed at the other and more dangerous buildings, which required a smaller amount of power. Two smaller steam engines--one procured at Macon and the other at Selma--were employed in the Refining building. Two Hydraulic Presses were procured at Richmond; the twelve iron evaporating pans, each holding five hundred gallons, were cast at the large Iron Works on the Cumberland River, in Tennessee. The extensive copper drying pans for the powdered saltpetre, being together forty feet long by nine feet broad, were made at Nashville; the four cast iron Retorts, four feet long by three feet in diameter, with eight cast iron coolers, and twelve sheet iron slip cylinders of nearly the same dimensions, were made at the Augusta Confederate Foundry and Machine Works, where also all the smaller machinery required was constructed. Copper boilers were procured from Wilmington, N. C., being made of large turpentine stills; pumps, pipe and cement from Charleston; sheet copper from Savannah and Nashville; tin and zinc for roofing from Mobile; the larger steam pipes from Hight's Foundry, in Augusta, and the smaller from New Orleans; iron and coal for castings were had from North Georgia and Alabama, and copper from Ducktown, in Tennessee. Thus material was gathered from all the Southern States to unite with the resources of the City of Augusta, to construct the largest and finest Gunpowder Factory to be found in any country. On the 20th of July, 1861, I examined the Augusta Canal and resources of the city, and later selected the location of the Powder Works, beginning at the site of the United States old Magazine, half a mile from the western city limit. Land adjacent was purchased, and also that between the canal and the river for a distance of two miles, so that the different buildings required, might be separated by intervals of at least one thousand feet for safety in case any one of them should have an explosion. It was remarkable that the most favorable conditions required in the erection of an extensive Powder manufactory, were all met at this location, and nowhere else attainable. These are: 1. A central point of the country, for obvious reasons. 2. On a main line of railroad communication, to distribute the products to all parts of the country.