The water used for brewing purposes is that of the Thames, pumped by a steam engine, on the same ground where Shakespeare's Globe Theatre stood three hundred years ago. One hundred and fifty thousand gallons of beer can be brewed from this water, daily. There are two engines of 100 horse power each, which are nearly a hundred years old. The furnace shaft is 19 feet below the surface and 110 above it. The malt is carried from barges at the river-side, by porters, and deposited in enormous bins, each of the height and depth of a three-story house. Rats are fond of malt, but to keep them off a staff of sixty large cats are constantly employed on the premises, and all these cats are under the supervision of a big-headed or chief cat, with a long moustache and Angola blood. [Illustration: CATS RECEIVING RATIONS.] It is quite a sight to witness the anxious solicitude of this Chief Cat for the honor of the house of Barclay & Perkins, and for the discipline of his subordinate cats, the chief being a Thomas of the purest breed. Thirty-six tons of coal per day are used here for brewing purposes, and the malt is stored in a huge room, with light windows, called the Great Brewhouse, built entirely of iron and brick. There is no continuous floor, but looking upwards, whenever the steaming vapor rises, there may be seen, at various heights, stages, platforms, and flights of stairs, all occupied by the Cyclopean piles of brewing vessels. There are also huge buildings next to the brewhouse, with cooling floors, into which is pumped the "hot Wort," as it is called, or beer. The surface of the floor in one of these buildings is 10,000 feet square, and I saw men with gigantic wooden shoes swimming about in this beer, which looked like a vast lake. The beer is sometimes cooled by passing it through a refrigerator which has contact with a stream of cold spring water. The cold beer is then allowed to ferment in vast rooms or squares, as large as an ordinary block of houses,--which are made to hold 2,000 barrels. It is a strange sight to look at one of these lakes of beer, the yeast rising in masses like coral reefs in a southern sea,--upon the surface of the water, and these rock-like elevations yield, after the force of the yeast is spent, to the slightest wind, giving it the appearance of a vast ocean of beer in a storm. There is one huge vat for porter that will hold 5,000 gallons, which at selling price is worth £12,000. The Great Tun of Heidelberg holds but half of this quantity. One thousand quarter-hundreds of malt are brewed daily by Barclay & Perkins. [Sidenote: THE GREAT PORTER TUN.]