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In the Orkney Isles, heating and cooking were accomplished with fires of peat and cow chips. Annual peat-cutting was a tiresome but relatively safe ordinary task where Orcadians dug up their kindling from the ground with precision. The uniformly-cut pieces were neatly stacked and given a sufficient drying time before being carried home on two-wheeled horse-drawn carts. In contrast, there were coal, wood, and corncobs available for Hawesville fireplaces and stoves to aid in boiling water, warming houses in wintertime, and to enable meal preparation throughout the seasons. Unlike the harmless summer routine in Orkney, extracting needed fuel was a year-round hazard at unsafe mines of the Illinois Tract coal fields in western Kentucky which produced cannel coal, so named because of its candle-like illumination when ignited. Called "parrot coal" back in Scotland, the gaseous cannel coal produced a crackling or chattering noise while burning. Blacksmith JOHN TAYLOR had become genuinely familiar with recovering fossil fuels, both peat-harvesting of Scotland and coal-mining of America. |
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