mixed with huge masses of rock, and crowned by the stately buildings of the Carthusians and fortress of St. Elmo. Add a glittering blue sea to this perspective, with Caprea rising from its bosom, and Vesuvius breathing forth a white column of smoke into the æther, and you will then have a scene upon which I gazed with delight for more than an hour, forgetting that I was perched upon the head of a pine with nothing but a frail branch to uphold me. However, I descended alive, as Virgil's genii, I am resolved to believe, were my protectors.'

CHAPTER XXIII.

ON MINES IN GENERAL.

Perils of the Miner's Life-Number of Casualties in British and Foreign Coal Mines-Life in a Mine-Occurrence of Ores-Extent and Depth of Metallic Veins-Mines frequently discovered by Chance-The Divining Rod-Experimental Borings--Stirring Emotions during their Progress-Sinking of ShaftsPrecautions against Influx of Water-Expense-Shaft Accidents-Various Methods of working Mineral Substances-Working in Direct and Reverse Steps -Working by Transverse Attacks-Open Quarry Workings-Pillar and Stall System Long Wall System-Dangerous Extraction of Pillars-Mining Implements-Blasting-Heroes in Humble Life-Firing in the Mine of Rammelsberg-Transport of Minerals Underground-Modern Improvements Various Modes of Descent-Corfs-Wonderful Preservation of a Girl at Fahlun —The Loop—Safety Cage-Man Machines-Timbering and Walling of Galleries -Drainage by Adit Levels-Remarkable Adits-The Great Cornish Adit-The Georg Stollen in the Harz-The Ernst August Stollen-Steam Pumps-Drowning of Mines-Irruption of the Sea into Workington Colliery-Hubert Goffin -Irruption of the River Garnock into a Mine-Ventilation of Mines-Upcast Shafts-Fire Damp-Dreadful Explosions-The Safety Lamp-The Choke Damp-Conflagrations of Mines-The Burning Hill in Staffordshire.

FEW

EW metals are found in a native state, nor are they commonly scattered in loose masses, nuggets, grains, or scales over the surface of the earth. Hence the seeker's trouble is by no means confined to the task of gathering these masses, or of separating them by washing from the alluvial sand or gravel with which they are mixed; much more frequently they are chemically combined with other substances from which a far advanced state of science is alone able to separate them, or deeply imbedded in subterranean mines, often so difficult of access as to tax for their working all the energies of man and all the resources of his metallurgic skill. The labours of the miner require indeed no less courage and presence of mind than those of the mariner. He no more knows whether he shall ever return from the pit into which he descends in the morning for his hard day's work than the

sailor knows whether he shall ever revisit the port which he is leaving. He is perpetually at war with fire and earth, with air and water, and this eternal strife levies a no less heavy tribute of death and suffering than the storms of the raging seas.

Of

In the year 1867, 1,190 persons perished in our 3,192 collieries, which employ a total of 333,116 workmen. Of these, 286 were killed by explosions; 449 by falls of rock; 211 by other subterranean causes; 156 in the shafts; and 88 above ground. In the same year, 293 lives were lost in the Prussian collieries, where 102,773 workmen find employment. these, 39 perished by fire-damp; 106 by fall of roof; 65 in shafts; 74 by casualties under ground; and 9 by casualties above ground. These melancholy lists may give us some idea of the number of serious but non-fatal accidents which are not mentioned in the official accounts. Every visitor to a coal-mine will meet with many pit lads who have been 'lamed' (or injured) several times in a few years, and who reckon events by the mournful chronology of their various 'lamings.' Collieries, as will be seen in the sequel, are indeed peculiarly liable to frightful accidents; yet the number of lives lost in the inspected ironstone mines of Great Britain, in 1866, amounted to 81. Extending our view to the mines of Austria and Russia, of France and Belgium, of Mexico and Peru, &c., &c., where the same dangers cause, no doubt, an equal amount of death or suffering, we may justly conclude that not a day, probably not an hour, passes that does not doom more than one miner to an untimely grave or to permanent mutilation.

But if mining is attended with a lamentable amount of individual suffering, the benefits derived from it by mankind in general are so important that the whole fabric of modern civilisation may be said to rest upon its basis.

Coal and the useful metals rule the world. Wherever they occur in large masses they establish the prosperity of a people on the surest foundations; and England is in a great measure indebted for her high station among the nations of the earth to the treasures hidden beneath her soil.

A large mine displays unquestionably some of the most interesting scenes of human activity. The restless industry

pervading its subterranean caves and galleries impresses the visitor with feelings of wonder akin to those which he experiences when he first sets foot on a man-of-war; and if he feels giddy on seeing the sailor climb the loftiest masts, the sight of the yawning abyss into which the miner undauntedly descends seems terrible to his unaccustomed eye; and as he penetrates further and further into the recesses of this unknown world, his sensations are not rendered more agreeable.

The intricate passages branching out into a mysterious distance; the vaults and high halls faintly illumined here and there by a glimmering lamp; the dark forms emerging every now and then from some obscure recess, and then again plunging into night, like demon shades; the clanking of hammers, the rushing of waters, the creaking of wheels, the monotonous sound of machinery, or the loud explosion which, repeated by subterranean echoes, rolls like muttering thunder from vault to vault, the oppressive air in the low galleries, through which he can only move in a stooping position; the fear of being crushed any moment by a falling rock, or shivered to atoms by fire-damp combustion,-all combine to produce an impression which can seldom be made by any scenes above ground.

The admiration which this imposing spectacle necessarily calls forth in his mind increases when he reflects how much skill and experience was required, and how many improvements and inventions had to be made, before mining could be brought to its present state of perfection.

Ores sometimes occur, like coal, in layers or beds, running parallel with the strata of the inclosing rocks, or in prodigious irregular masses. Most commonly, however, they are found in veins traversing the rocks in every conceivable direction, and filling the crevices and chasms which former terrestrial revolutions have rent in the hard stone. From the wild and titanic powers that have here been at work, it may easily be imagined how irregular the direction of these veins must be, and under how many various forms they must appear. Here they are horizontal, there vertical; here they form thin layers, there they fill chasms several hundred feet thick. Sometimes they split into several minor branches, or make

abrupt bends, and frequently they have been rent, torn, or displaced in every possible manner by subsequent revolutions.

Their length is as various as their thickness or their direction. Some are short, while others traverse the rocks to a distance of many miles. Thus the argentiferous veins in the neighbourhood of Clausthal, in the Harz, are three leagues long, and the famous Veta Madre, or chief lode of Guanaxuato in Mexico, has been traced for a length of eight miles.

With regard to depth, the lower extremity of hardly a single mineral bed or vein of any note has as yet been pointed out, though many have been worked to a considerable depth. Thus, one of the pits of St. Andreasberg, in the Harz, is 2,485 feet deep, though, on account of its high situation in the mountains, not much more than 280 feet below the surface of the sea, while, in the coal mines of Valenciennes and Liège, the deepest shafts are sunk from 1,300 to 1,600 feet below the level of the ocean. The shaft of the colliery of Sacrée Madame, near Charleroi, is 800 yards deep, and that of Dukinfield Colliery 2,050 feet.

The great difficulty of carrying on mining operations at great depths will, probably, for ever prevent most metalliferous veins from being followed to their origin in the bowels of the earth; for while on high mountains the rarefaction of the atmosphere prevents respiration, the increasing pressure or impurity of the air at a depth of four or five thousand feet below the level of the sea must necessarily hinder the free expansion of the lungs. The weakness of our organisation soon sets limits to our progress, whether we wish to rise into the air or to penetrate into the interior of the earth; and it is only on spiritual wings that we soar aloft to the stars, or wander through the mysterious depths of our planet.

How have the ores been collected or precipitated in the veins or strata where they are often found in such enormous quantities? Partly they ascended as vapour from unknown depths, and then were condensed in the crevices, mixing with the gangue or the stones which filled the volcanic chasms; and partly their solutions, of which the mineral springs of the present day afford us so many examples, permeated the porous rocks, and saturated them on cooling, or were forced to relinquish their valuable contents by some more powerful chemical