ARCHIE- lL'E AMS • W72 / "J* KTyi. B.CLARKE col BOOKSEliLll^tATlONERS 26&28TREM0NTST.& 30 COURT SQ..BOSTON. The Romance of Mining Uniform with this Volume Crown 8vo. Cloth, gilt. THE ROMANCE OF MODERN INVENTION By Archibald Williams This volume deals in a popular way with all the latest inventions, such as Air-ships, Mono- Rail, Wireless Telegraphy, Liquid Air, etc. With 25 Illustrations THE ROMANCE OF MODERN ENGINEERING By Archibald Williams Containing Interesting Descriptions in Non- Technical Language of the Nile Dam, the Panama Canal, the Tower Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Trans-Siberian Rail- way, the Niagara Falls Power Co., Bermuda Floating Dock, etc. etc. With 24 Illustrations. THE ROMANCE OF MODERN LOCOMOTION By Archibald Williams Containing Interesting Descriptions in Non- Technical Language of the Rise and Development of the Railroad Systems in all Parts of the World. With 25 Illustrations. THE ROMANCE OF THE MIGHTY DEEP. By Agnes Giberne A Popular Account of the Ocean : The Laws by which it is Ruled, its Wonderful Powers, and Strange Inhabitants. With 9 Illustrations Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries http://www.archive.org/details/romanceofminingcOOwill The Romance of Mining Containing Interesting Descriptions of the Methods of Mining for Minerals in all Parts of the World By Archibald Williams Author of "The Romance of Modern Invention" "The Romance of Modern Engineering" r ; y " The Romance of Modern Locomotion " With 24 Illustrations London C. Arthur Pearson, Ltd. Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott Company 1905 ,<\ «?- Author's Note The Author gratefully acknowledges the help given him in the compilation and illustration of this book by the Proprietors of Cassiers Magazine; Messrs. Harper & Son ; Messrs. A. Constable & Co. ; Messrs. D. Appleton & Son ; Messrs. Geo. Newnes, Ltd. ; the Ingersoll Sergeant Drill Co.; the Brown Hoisting Machinery Co.; the Burma Ruby Mines, Ltd.; the Bath Stone Firms, Ltd.; the Vulcan Ironworks Co.; W. R. Lawson, Esq.; A. Kirk, Esq.; and W. G. Nash, Esq. In addition he acknowledges his in- debtedness to the many writers whose works have been laid under contribution in the following accounts of some of the most important branches of mining. Contents CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY PAGE The Ages of Man — The Stone Age — The Copper Age — The Bronze Age — The Iron Age — The Steel Age — The discovery of gold, copper, lead, silver, quicksilver, and zinc — Iron and the smiths — Why iron was found so late — Its effects on civilisation — Coal — The precious metals and their influence on exportation— Metallurgy and science— Metallurgy and mechanics — The romance of mining — Dangers of mining — The scope of this book 17 CHAPTER II ANCIENT MINING Features of early mining — Riches of the ancients — The Egyptian mines — The earliest European miner — The Etruscan mines of Campiglia — The Phoenicians — Zimbabwe — The Romans as miners — The Romans in Britain — Aztecs and Peruvians — The development of mining methods — Ventilation — Gunpowder — Hoisting devices — Compara- tive comfort of modern miners 30 CHAPTER III "THE ELDORADO OF THE GREAT WEST " The Sierra Nevada — The result of altering a mill-race — First discovery of gold in California — Booty scented by the public — Gold reaches San Francisco— Sudden rise in wages — Scenes in 'Frisco — Off to the diggings — The Mormons — The mining outfit — Scarcity of water — Disappointed hopes — " Placer " mining — Panning-out — The sluice — Racial feeling — Hardships and disease — Riotous extravagance — What the average miner got — Rough justice — Danger of wealth — Incredible selfishness— Trouble in San Francisco — The trans-continental journey — What Mark Twain saw — Rapid increase in California's population — The miner's restlessness — The sad results — Exhaustion of ' ' placers" — Hydraulic mining — Gigantic "flumes" — How gold is washed out by the hydraulic jet — Devastating effect on the country ... 44 Contents CHAPTER IV THE GOLD-FIELDS OF THE ANTIPODES PAGE First discovery of gold in Australia — A convict's hard luck — Early dis- coveries hushed up — Hargraves finds the New South Wales deposits — The " rush " — Melbourne folk alarmed — Gold found in Victoria — Huge nugget found at Meroo Creek — Its effect on the colony — Victorian gold — Wonderful "pocket" struck — Overcrowding of Melbourne — "Canvas Town" — Rapid growth of Melbourne — Ill- feeling aroused by mining fees — Ballarat riot — Gold-field extravagance — Curious plight of South Australia — Special measures for gold- transport — The great nuggets of Australia 70 CHAPTER V WESTRALIA Sterile character of West Australia — Gold at Coolgardie — A lucky find — Another lucky find — The luck of "Hannan's" — The Westralian fields — Coolgardie — Wind and Dust — Want of Water — "Dry- blowing" — "Hannan's Brownhill" and "Great Boulder" — The Coolgardie Water Supply — A pipe 328 miles long — Description of the pipe line — Effect of Gold discoveries on Australia ... 85 CHAPTER VI THE GOLD-MINES OF THE WITWATERSRAND Gold and War — Value of these mines — Nature of Tramvaal deposits — The Witwatersrand — ' ' Banket " — Value of the "Banket" reef — The gold output — The " Essential Kaffir" — The labour supply — Recruit- ing — Chinamen imported — How the mines are worked — How the ore is treated — The cyanide process — Difference between Rand and other gold mines . . . . . . . . . .96 CHAPTER VII THE ELDORADO OF THE NORTH The Excelsior arrives in 'Frisco Bay — California upset — The Yukon district — The early approaches thither — Forty-Mile — George Car- mack's find — A unique episode in gold-mining history — The reward of laziness — Wonderful earnings — Melting the ground — The " clean- up " — Fortunes made — A rush to the Klondike — The Chilkoot and White Passes — Down the Yukon — Terrible mortality among baggage animals in the White Pass — Growth of Dawson — H igh pri ces — Dawson of to-day — The Klondike " placers " — Mining laws — How Alaska is being opened up — The White Pass Railway — Alaska's future . .110 CHAPTER VIII DIAMOND MINING The high estimation in which the Diamond has always been held — Mythical properties — Actual properties — Its value as compared with that of the Ruby — Diamond-cutting at Amsterdam — The Carat — Varieties of IO Contents PAGE Diamond — India the earliest source of diamonds — Brazil a rival — Minas Geraes — Bahia — An observant shepherd — South African finds — A child's toy leads to the discovery of the Kimberley fields — The diamond "pipe" — Early days in Kimberley — Water invades the mines — The Illicit Diamond Buyer — ' ' De Beers, Limited" — How the Blue Earth is disintegrated — The Pulsator — Kaffir labourers — The Compound — Work below ground — Diamond market controlled by De Beers — Value of Kimberley production — Kimberley in the War — Historic Diamonds — The Great Mogul — The Koh-i-nur— The Pitt — The Orloff— The Cullman 132 CHAPTER IX THE STORY OF THE COMSTOCK LODE Discovery of the Lode — Henry Comstock — Silver ore cast aside as worth- less — An assay proves its true value — " Rush " to the mines — Difficulty of treating ore — Paul's reduction mill — The timbering of the mines — Litigation — Bonanza times — Mark Twain — The Sanitary Flour Sack — Extent of the mines— The overland telegraph — The new highroad — Its maintenance — Rivalry between stage drivers — Accidents — Depres- sion — Labour troubles — Water inroads — The Sutro Tunnel — A mar- vellous engineering feat — Hardships of tunnel-driving — John W. Mackay — The "Virginia Consolidated" — Perseverance brings for- tune — The Big Bonanza — Huge yields — Wild speculation — Scene in the mines — High temperature — A sad contrast — The fate of the Comstock . 154 CHAPTER X THE MINES OF LEADVILLE Fifty years ago — Significant names — Early history — First era of mining — Valuable rubbish — Second era — Great profits — A railway episode — Third and fourth eras 182 CHAPTER XI THE MINES OF SILVERLAND Mexico as a silver producer — What Humboldt found in 1802 — The total production of silver — Huge lumps of solid m^tal — Sensational for- tunes — A lucky priest — A millionaire fiddler — Two fortunate peasants — The " Good Success " Mine — The mines of Zacatecas — The mines of Guanajuato — The Valenciana Mine — The Marques de Rayas — Mexican mining law about depth of claims — Zacatecas wealth . . 189 CHAPTER XII THE REAL DEL MONTE The Real del Monte — Early history — Mexican mining laws — Bustamente and Terreros — The great adit — Huge profits — Kingly favour and great promises — Water again causes trouble — Decline of the Real — English enterprise — Mexican mining mania — Great energy of new- owners — Their mistake — Checked by water — The crash — Third chapter of the mine's history — Below ground — Thefts of miners — The refineries — The patio process — Silver and Silverland . . . 196 II Contents CHAPTER XIII THE COPPER MINES OF THE RIO TINTO PAGE The natural riches of Spain — Early miners — The Carthaginians — The Romans — Blindness of Spaniards — The irony of history — The Rio Tinto — Modern development — Vallejo — Vaillant — Lieberto Wolters — Early company promotion — Report on the Rio Tinto's resources — Samuel Tiquet — Thomas Sanz — The Spanish Government tries its hand — The Marquis de Remise — The Government decides to sell its rights — French invaders — German invaders — Doetsch, Sundheim, and Blum — A gigantic payment — The Rio Tinto Mine — Separation of copper from its ore — Spain's future — "Wanted" .... 211 CHAPTER XIV OTHER FAMOUS COPPER MINES The copper contributions of different countries — The United States — The Lake Superior deposits — History of their discovery — A large mass of solid copper found — Sensational blocks of metal — The Calumet and Hecla Mine — A huge shaft — Machinery at the mine — Refining — A bad speculation — The Montana deposits at Butte — The Anaconda Mine — Bessemerising copper — Arizona — California — The copper mines of Ashio, Japan — Fahlun — Rammelsburg — Splitting rocks with fire — The Burra Burra Mine — British copper mining — A decayed industry — The Parys Mountains, Anglesea — Concluding remarks . 224 CHAPTER XV QUICKSILVER MINING Characteristics of quicksilver — Its uses — Cinnabar — Almaden — Its early history — The workings — Dangers of quicksilver mining — Poisoning — New Almaden — Its discovery — 111 success of first company — Separation of metal from ore — Description of the mine — The miner — The carrier — Sorting the ore — Injuries to health — Mexican mining superstition — Figures relating to New Almaden .... 245 CHAPTER XVI THE TIN MINES OF CORNWALL Cornwall — Its place in history — Phoenician tin merchants — The chief groups of mines — Nature of ore-seams — The Cornish miner — Mining feats — Carclaze mine — Botallack submarine mine — A storm overhead — The Wheal Wherry Mine — A persevering miner — Carbonas — Wheal Vor mine — Patience rewarded at Old Crinnis — Dolcoath — Getting out the ore — The man-engine — Treatment of ore — Uses of tin — Tin statistics .......... 258 12 Contents CHAPTER XVII COAL AND COAL MINING PAGE The importance of coal — Its origin — Its formation — The distribution of coal — Some figures — The coalfields of South Wales — Of the Midlands — Of the Northern Counties — Of Scotland — Statistics — France and Belgian deposits — German coalfields — French perseverance — The coalfields of the United States — Some interesting stories about their discovery — Popular prejudice against anthracite coal — Efforts to over- come it — The poker trouble — Growth of the coal industry in the States — The Connellsville coke fields — Indian seams . . . 274 CHAPTER XVIII WORK IN THE COAL MINES The nature of a colliery — Better than it looks — Former cruelty in the mines — The Mines' Commission — "Winning" and "getting" — Prospecting for coal — The diamond drill — Methods of entering a seam — English coal-beds — Shafts — Their construction — Freezing the strata — Depths reached — How coal is "got" — "Long-wall" and " pillar-and-stall " — Ventilation of a mine — Gigantic fans — The mechanical coal-cutter — Electricity in the mine — Transporting and hoisting the coal — Winding devices — Pneumatic hoisting — Breaking, sorting, and washing — What is done with the fine coal and rubbish — The distribution of coal by rail and vessel — The up-to-date collier 297 CHAPTER XIX THE MINING OF IRON The Jermyn Street Museum — Natural distribution of iron — Classes of iron ores — The Edison separating process — Roman mining — The iron mines of Sussex — Consequent destruction of forests — The decline and fall of the Sussex ironmasters — Coal used as fuel for English smelting- furnaces — Sturtevant — Dud Dudley — Abraham Darby — The Bilbao deposits — Ai'n Morka — Dannemora — Gellivare — The Cerro de Mer- cado — The Lake Superior iron ore beds — Methods of mining — The steam-shovel — Remarkable prices — Transporting iron ore to Pitts- burg — Other iron countries 320 CHAPTER XX MARBLE QUARRIES Carrara — Greek Marbles — The town of Carrara — The quarries — How marble is blasted — Bringing down the hillsides — The lizzatura — Road transport — The miners of Carrara — Marble in Britain, Algeria, and India— The marble beds of Vermont — Electricity in harness . 338 13 Contents CHAPTER XXI STONE AND GRANITE QUARRIES PAGE Bath stone — Early users of it — A stone for country mansions — Ralph Allen and John Wood — The quarries — Their extent — How stone is got — The quarry horse — Its cleverness — Portland stone — Convict v. free labour — A curious custom — Granite — The Aberdeen quarries — The hardness of granite — A record blast — Sawing and turning granite . 346 CHAPTER XXII THE BURMA RUBY MINES The value of the Oriental ruby — Its composition — And qualities — The Burma ruby fields — A curious law — Annexation by Great Britain — Leased by the Burma Ruby Mines Company — Their engineer's difficulties — Attacks on the by on — Spiders Hill — Tagoungnandaing — A fine stone found — Operations in Mogok Valley — Methods of working — Testing the stones — Native miners — The ruby shops of Mogok — Electric power — Troubles from inundations . . . 358 CHAPTER XXIII SALT MINES Salt — Its value as a dietetic — And distribution — Rock salt — Brine springs — The salt industry in Cheshire, Staffordshire, and Worcestershire — The salt mines of Wieliczka — A subterranean city — Art and industry combined — The day's work — Searching the miners for salt — The wonders of the mine — The Letow ballroom — Salt chapels — A vast chamber — A railway station in the depths — A saline Styx — The salt plains of Colorado — Ploughing the salt — A fine sight . . . 367 CHAPTER XXIV SULPHUR MINING The uses of sulphur — Its occurrence — The Sulphur deposits of Sicily — Popacatapetl — A romantic incident — A perilous adventure — Senor Corchado explores the crater — The miners at work — Mountains of sulphur in Japanese territory — Its exploitation — And removal — Grim surroundings 377 CHAPTER XXV THE PERILS OF MINING Dangers incurred by the miner — Fire, falls, poisonous gases, and disease — Falls — Safety catches for cages — Fire-damp — Choke-damp — White- damp — Ventilation the surest safeguard — The safety lamp — Electric lamps — The Wattstown disaster — One hundred and twenty lives lost — Other notable disasters — Extraordinary endurance of entombed persons — John Brown — Giraud — The Snaefell lead mine disaster — A dramatic account of the effects of white-damp .... 385 14 List of Illustrations The Railway Station in the Third Level of the Wieliczka Salt Mines, Galicia . . Frontispiece Hydraulic Gold Mining . . . To face page 68 Drilling Blast-holes in a Rand Mine with Ingersoll Sergeant Air-drills „ 96 A Cyanide Plant at the Rand Mines „ 108 On the Way to the Yukon Goldfields, Summit of the Chilkoot Pass, with Impedimenta o^ Prospectors, April 1090 „ 112 First Tourist Excursion, Pacific and Arctic Railway, July 24, 1898. . ,, 120 "Panning" at the Junction of the El- dorado and Bonanza Creeks, Alaska „ 128 DlGGlNG-UP AND SCREENING THE KlMBER- ley Streets for Diamonds ... ,, 136 a klmberley mlne in the early days „ 1 44 The Motino or Crusher, used in Mexi- can Silver Reduction Works for Breaking Ore into Small Pieces . „ 200 The Mexican Patio Process of Silver Reduction „ 208 A General View of the North Lode "Open Cast" at the Tinto Mine . „ 212 15 List of Illustrations Open-air Calcination Heaps, or Teleros, at the Rio Tinto Mines . . To face page 224 A Mining Surveyor at Work in a Coal Mine „ 280 The Entrance to a Branch-working in a Coal Mine „ 304 A Steam Shovel such as is used in the Lake Superior Iron-ore Open-cast Mines „ 320 A Brown Transporter for Trans- ferring Iron-ore from ship to rail, or vice-versa „ 328 Lowering Massive Blocks of Marble at the Carrara Quarries „ 338 An Ingersoll Sergeant Channelling Machine at Work on a Bed of Marble „ 342 A Huge Stack of Bath Stone at Cors- ham, Wiltshire, piled ready for Re- moval TO ALL PARTS OF THE BRITISH Isles and the Colonies „ 346 An Oolitic Stone Quarry, Indiana, U.S.A „ 352 The Upper "Lift" or Terrace of the Sharbontha Ruby Mine, Mogok, Burma „ 358 Ruby Sorters at work in the Ruby Mines, Burma ,, 362 The Letow Ball-room, cut out of Salt in the Wieliczka Mines . . . ,, 372 16 The Romance of Mining CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY The Ages of Man — The Stone Age — The Copper Age — The Bronze Age — The Iron Age — The Steel Age — The discovery of gold, copper, lead, silver, quicksilver, and zinc — Iron and the smiths — Why iron was found so late — Its effects on civilisation — Coal — The precious metals and their influence on exportation — Metallurgy and science — Metallurgy and mechanics — The romance of mining — Dangers of mining — The scope of this book. Any writer on mining in its general aspect is, when casting about for a starting-point, driven to express what others have said before him — that the history of mining is the history of civilisation. If we try to penetrate into the period when metals were un- known to, or at least unused by, man, all we find of his arts is a few rough scratches on a cavern wall and some stone implements of defence and offence. So we call the era — covering thousands, tens of thousands of years, may be — during which the cave dweller depended for his livelihood on his power of fashioning flints, the Stone Age ; synonymous in our minds with a dark, brutish existence of a creature just sufficiently more intelligent than the 17 B The Romance of Mining " beasts of the field " to survive their attacks and to live by destroying them. The ancients, who looked backwards rather than forwards in search of an ideal existence, spoke of the dawn of history as the Golden Age, the epithet being used metaphorically. All was then peace, plenty, and content. Strife between man and man, between nation and nation, had not yet arisen to mar human existence. Arguing from the social deterioration of their own time, they concluded that far back in the past men must have been of a far nobler stamp, and their lot cast in much more pleasant surroundings. To-day we know too much to take refuge in such imaginations. While deploring the decay of time- honoured institutions and the virtues of the "good old times," we look confidently forward ; and, were we given the choice, should not like to antedate our existence by even one hundred years. From the vantage-ground of knowledge we see that mankind has steadily advanced in spite of temporary set- backs, fighting circumstances ever more successfully by means of the weapons which the Arts and Sciences enable him to forge. The importance of metallurgy is shown by the very fact that, when we wish to divide human history into a few periods, we fly to the metals as the standards by which to measure man's industrial development. The Copper Age succeeds the Stone Age ; then tin is found, and the Bronze Age begins. 18 Introductory After the Bronze the Iron Age ; and, last of all, we have the Steel Age, in which we live ; though even at the present day there are, in different parts of the world, races still passing through the earlier Ages. The metals serve three important ends. They supply man with the means of making life beautiful ; secure ; and comfortable. The first metal to be discovered was probably gold, which exists in its native, or pure, state in many countries, lies on the surface, attracts the eye, and can be easily secured. What nation first set value by gold we cannot say, but we may reasonably conjecture that the primitive folk, even of the Stone Age, may have beaten this metal, valueless for tools or weapons, into decorations. So that, in one sense, the Golden Age was contemporaneous with the dawn of civilisation. The value of gold arose only when other metals had been added to the list of those mined and worked. Copper, also found pure — though usually com- bined with other elements — must have been known to man at a very early date. By itself, its uses were limited, but when tin was discovered and alloyed with it, the manufacture of bronze altered the history of nations. The stone-users were no match for in- vaders armed with bronze weapons tempered to extreme hardness ; and where stone encountered metal, metal won. Civilisation had now taken a long stride forwards. Bronze could be used for the arts of peace as well, being fashioned into tools, 19 The Romance of Mining agricultural implements; ornaments, and money. So well did the alloy serve man that for long ages he was content with nothing harder and more stubborn. When the Spanish conquerors invaded Mexico in the sixteenth century they found the Aztecs quite ignorant of the uses of iron ; an ignorance which made possible the subjugation of a great race by a mere handful of bold adventurers. After bronze came lead, silver, quicksilver, and zinc. Silver was probably discovered at the same time as lead, since the two metals are often found together. This fact caused the alchemists of the Middle Ages to regard lead as the " mother of silver," and to endeavour to transmute the baser into the more precious metal. Quicksilver, like lead and silver, is commonly found in combination with sulphur, which can be driven off by heat ; and, whether discovered accidentally or otherwise, w T as used by the ancients as a solvent for gold. Who first forged iron must ever remain a mystery. Tubal Cain is mentioned in the Book of Genesis as " an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron." He may have lived 3000 years B.C. The African natives seem to have been acquainted with the use of iron for time immemorial, perhaps long before the days when, in Greece, iron was offered as a prize to the victor in athletic games. The importance of iron, its utility for warlike as well as peaceful purposes, soon won it recognition. The early workers were defined under the names of Vulcan, Hephaestus, 20 Introductory Thor. Legends cling round the ancient smithies, associating the pioneer craftsmen in iron with super- natural powers. Wayland Smith, of the Berkshire Downs, has left behind him, in the pages of u Kenil- worth," a reputation for magic. The family names of Smith, Smythe, Schmidt, Fabri, Lefevre, and their equivalents in many other languages, testify to the high rank of the armourer of the Middle Ages. The late employment of iron is partly accounted for by the circumstance that, though one of the most widely diffused of minerals, it is never found pure ex- cept in the form of meteorites — lumps of iron which have suddenly descended upon the earth from the abysses of heaven. The earliest iron tools were probably made from these " gifts of the gods," which have been found in various sizes ranging from a few ounces up to many tons. Iron ore is so little sug- gestive of the metal it contains that an inexperienced eye would never connect it with the iron and steel of commerce. And even when the relationship had been established by the ancients the extraction of the metal from its matrix was a matter of great difficulty, on account of the numerous impurities of the ore and the high temperature needed for its reduction. We may still see in various parts of the world — China, Africa, the Malay Peninsula — the primitive methods used to separate the iron ; a hearth blown by the winds or a pump of the simplest form ; and the beating on the anvil of a heated metal ball to squeeze out the impurities. Iron thus obtained was 21 The Romance of Mining very valuable. Early warlike nations used it only for the " business edge " of their weapons, which were otherwise of copper or bronze. Just as bronze overcame stone, so iron vanquished bronze in battle. The Romans, and, later, the Alchemists, called iron Mars. In the Bible we read how the Philistines, after their conquest of the Israelites, carried off all the smiths. " There was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel; for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords and spears. But the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his mattock." Gibbon tells us that the Turks owed their position as a powerful invading nation to the iron which, as slaves, they fashioned for their lord, the great Khan of the Geourgen. To quote his own words, "Their servitude could only last till a leader, bold and eloquent, should arise, to persuade his countrymen that the same arms which they forged for their masters might become, in their own hands, the in- struments of freedom and victory. They sallied from the mountains (A.D. 545) ; a sceptre was the reward of his advice ; and the annual ceremony, in which a piece of iron was heated in the fire, and a smith's hammer was successively handled by the prince and his nobles, recorded for ages the humble profession and rational pride of the Turkish nation." From that time onward victory has declared for the nations who have known how to combine discipline and 22 Introductory strategy with invention in the employment of iron. The Roman's short stabbing sword and protected shield against the shieldless barbarian ; the armour- clad Spaniard against the naked Mexican ; the fire- arms of Europe against the spear, arrow, and club of savages ; the armour-plated warship against the " wooden walls " — in every case iron suitably fashioned wins the day. Even among highly civil- ised nations every advantage of metallurgical science is eagerly seized to strengthen defences and make weapons more deadly. Mere numbers do not now prevent defeat. Steel plates must be of the toughest; cannon and rifles must belch out the greatest possible number of missiles with the greatest possible accuracy. The mechanism of war must be reliable in every way. As M. Simonin wrote some decades ago, " In the contests which will unhappily long continue to take place, victory will henceforth generally remain with those who produce steel in the largest quantity and of the finest quality," — words which were echoed by Mr. Andrew Carnegie when he said that predo- minance must be in the hands of the nation which can manufacture the cheapest ton of steel. Our age, the Steel Age, could not be better named. Whichever way we look, steel confronts us. We move over it, shaped as rails or bridges. It enters more and more into the construction of our houses. The machinery which transports us from place to place, clothes us, feeds us, caters for our luxuries, is wrought from steel. And the wealth of nations 23 The Romance of Mining is derived chiefly from steel, either directly or in- directly. Hand in hand with steel advances coal, without which it would be impossible to make full use of the metal. Steam-power waits on both. In fact, the triumvirate of steel, coal, and steam mutually support one another. Steam raises coal ; coal smelts iron ore ; iron ore yields material for the steam-engine ; and so round the circle again. So great is the part played by coal in modern civilisation that the "bottled sunshine" of past ages may claim almost equally with steel to give a name to the present period in the history of mankind. Enormous as has been the effect of iron on the fortunes of human society, we cannot forget the im- portance of the intrinsically more precious metals. Their unalterability, their beauty, and their variety have won them a place in our regard which, so far as we can see, nothing will ever be able to diminish. Associated as silver and gold have been with princely magnificence, they appeal to our aesthetic sense. The figures which stand out from history often, in part at least, owe their fame to the glamour of great wealth. What more striking personage has been immortalised by Holy Writ than King Solomon, in whose days silver " was nothing accounted of " ; whose palaces and thrones were decked with gold ; whose argosies sailed home laden with the gold of Ophir ? The precious stones and marvellous riches which loom so largely in the " Arabian Nights " con- 24 Introductory tribute as much as personal -adventure to the fascina- tion of that book. Gold has been the magnet that has attracted the conqueror and the explorer. Time after time, India, the land of gold and diamonds, has had to bow to the invader, informed through travellers' tales of the wealth of the country. Gold took the Spaniards to Mexico and Peru.. Gold drew hundreds of thousands to California, Australia, South Africa, Alaska. Unfurl the golden standard where you will, a huge army soon collects under the banner, and, after exhaust- ing the minerals, turns to the agricultural develop- ment of the country. But for the reputed riches "of Ormuz and of Ind," exploration and colonisa- tion of the world by Europeans would have been delayed for centuries. The advance of science has been so greatly stimulated by metallurgy, and in turn metallurgy owes so much to scientific discovery, that we can hardly conceive of the one without the other. The alchemy of the Middle Ages, which vainly strove to change the baser into the nobler metals, laid the foundations for modern chemistry, which helps on the one hand to trace and extract metal from its ore, and on the other shows how metal may serve mankind in a thousand ways. The influence of mining on mechanical arts is no less striking. Out of the ladder and bucket has gradually been evolved the winding engine which whirls men and ore at twenty miles an hour from the depths of the 25 The Romance of Mining earth. The air or water-driven drill has replaced the stone or bronze hammer of the ancient miner. Electric lamps have ousted in large degree the candle and flickering oil-boat. Tramways do with ease what once caused basket-carrying men much toil and pain. The mechanical coal-cutter does the work of a hundred picks. Dynamite blasts into fragments huge masses that formerly would have been cleft laboriously with wedges. In spite of his conservatism the miner finally adapts to his use any invention which has proved beneficial to those who work on the earth's surface. And in return he has shown how mountains may be burrowed through for the passage of the locomotive. The Simplon Tunnel and the prehistoric underground galleries of Italy and Spain are more closely related than one may think. To those who can see romance in industry, what a field does mining open ! The story of the metals is bound up with phenomenal individual success, and equally gigantic failures. In a day the pauper becomes a prince, and he who fancied himself a prince finds himself a pauper. A humanity which takes pleasure in risking wealth on the cast of dice, on the running of a horse, or on the quotations of the Stock Exchange, cannot but be enthralled by the sudden ups and downs inseparable from the exploita- tion of new mines and virgin countries. Who has not, at one time or another, felt the desire to take pick and shovel and go on the trail of the miner 26 Introductory in the hope that he may prove a Marshall, a Har- graves, a Godoy, a Gould, or a Drake ? From every corner of the globe come sensational, and often true, stories of men who in a lucky moment have grasped a secret worth millions of pounds. The world is large, and for every fortune that has been made a hundred still remain for the prospector. Even when wealth has to be won by continuous and quite everyday work at the point of drill and pick the conditions of life are such as to appeaL to the imagination. The great brotherhood of miners — the sturdy Cornishman, the lithe Italian, the stubborn, superstitious German, the hardy, sombreroed Asturian, the Chilian barratero, calm and impassive, the excit- able Frenchman, the thrifty, patient Chinaman — is surrounded by perils and hardships. It was not without reason that the miners of the Harz peopled their mines with malicious gnomes, and prayed to Saints Nickel and Kobold before descending into the depths. Fire, water, poisonous gases, falling roofs, breaking ropes and ladders, are the terrors which the miner faces without thought as part and parcel of the risks of his calling. Yet for the out- sider the bravery and resource shown by the a toilers of the deepest deep " in the presence of disaster help to weave a romance as real as that of the battlefield. And that, in spite of its hardships, mining has a fascination for the worker, is proved by the un- willingness of a miner to relinquish his calling in favour of any other. 27 The Romance of Mining The following pages, while touching the chief branches of the mining industry, must necessarily omit reference to many of the great treasure-houses of the world. Special prominence has been given to the precious metals, because their discovery and working has witnessed the most stirring scenes in mining life. As Mr. Fossett writes in his "Colorado" : u There has been a fascination and romance attending the search of the precious metals, and time intensifies rather than diminishes the feeling. Under the magic influence of gold and silver dis- coveries a spirit of enterprise has been engendered that has brought about the accomplishment of results as unexpected as they were grand and wonderful. The wilderness is peopled, states are founded, and almost an empire established where the presence of civilised man was unknown but a few years ago." The reader will also be glad to hear of the source and supply of some of the most valuable varieties of jewels, round which romance clings even more abundantly than round the metals, since individual stones have had their histories. We have the whole world to roam over ; so excursions are made into those spots where typical or prominent instances of the mining of various minerals are to be found. Mining, here used in its widest sense, in- cludes operations on the surface as well as those underground ; and extends to those substances which are extracted from the earth without recourse to shafts and tunnels. 28 Introductory Enter a jeweller's shop and take note of the minerals ranged around. Could they speak, what stories they might have to tell ! There is the gold of many countries ; the silver of Mexico, Nevada, Spain, Bolivia, Mexico ; the tin of Cornwall and Malacca ; the copper of Lake Superior ; the platinum of Colombia or the Ural Mountains ; the diamond of Brazil and Griqualand ; the ruby of Burma ; the turquoise of Persia ; the emerald of Peru ; the sapphire of Ceylon. Even in an ironmonger's the metal displayed hails from many lands — the British Isles, France, the United States, Germany, Austria, Russia, Sweden, Italy, Spain, and Siberia. In the stonemason's yard English sand- stone jostles Italian marble and Scotch granite and Welsh slate. On the grocer's shelves English salt stands close to Sicilian sulphur. Let us go and see how these diverse substances were discovered ; how they are won to the use of mankind ; how the people live who exhume them ; and what are and have been the difficulties encountered before Nature's mineral riches are poured by land and sea into the lap of civilisation. 29 CHAPTER II ANCIENT MINING Features of early mining — Riches of the ancients — The Egyptian mines — The earliest European miner — The Etruscan mines of Campiglia — The Phoenicians — Zimbabwe — The Romans as miners — The Romans in Britain — Aztecs and Peruvians — The development of mining methods — Ventilation — Gunpowder — Hoisting devices — Comparative comfort of modern miners. Before embarking on detailed accounts of the various branches of mining as conducted to-day, we shall do well to consider briefly the earliest stages of the industry, when it was being gradually evolved and organised by the old and great peoples of the earth. Three facts seem to stand out clearly in respect of ancient mining: (i) That India was the centre, at least in the Old World, from which radiated the first advances in the science of extracting minerals, to pass successively through Egypt, Phoenicia, and the Archipelago, to Greece and Italy, whence they penetrated to Germany, Gaul, and the British Isles ; (2) that among the ancients mining was not con- sidered honourable toil, and, therefore, had to be performed by slaves — hence a nation had to become a conqueror before it could set up as a mine-owner j (3) that gold was the metal to which the earliest 30 Ancient Mining miners turned their serious attention, copper coming second, and tin third. As we have already noticed, iron made an appearance very late, when metallurgy had developed so far that the Egyptians and other races were able to perform many operations with bronze tools which, for lack of knowledge how to temper the copper alloy to a requisite hardness, we could not imitate to-day without recourse to steel. We may safely assume that mining was practised in eastern countries for three or four thousand years before the Christian era. Gold, won from the earth by washing alluvial deposits, just as is still done in many localities, steadily accumulated in the royal coffers of a kingdom until, in order to put it to some practical use, it was fashioned into objects of worship or the paraphernalia of a court. " In Babylon there were three great statues of beaten gold, two of them 40 feet high, and the third probably of similar dimensions, though sitting. Be- sides these there was an altar, 40 feet long and 15 feet broad, covered with gold plates and several massive bowls and censers. From the weights given it has been calculated that the raw metal in these constructions weighed about 2,700,000 ounces, or about £1 1,000,000." l We know, too, that Darius was able to wring a yearly tribute of over .£2,500,000 out of his satrapies. David and Solomon devoted huge quantities of the metal to the adornment of the temple and the royal palace. The Athenians reared 1 Cassier's Magazine. 31 The Romance of Mining over their citadel an enormous gold and ivory statue of the goddess Athene. In the New World the same accumulation went on through the ages, there being no gold currency to absorb the gold, so that the Spanish conquerors on their arrival in Mexico and Peru found vast treasure worth a desperate struggle for its ownership. It must not be supposed that the Old World as a whole, or even contiguous countries, kept abreast in the art of mining. As we can see at the present time, some races have retained the most primitive processes, while others have advanced. The China- man of the interior of China extracts his iron from its ore in the same way as his ancestors did before him for countless generations. The rock drill and ponderous ore-crushing stamp exist contemporane- ously with the stone hatchet. Therefore, in speaking of ancient mining, we should remember that its development was local and spas- modic, though the general tendency throughout the world was forwards. We naturally look to the Egyptians for the earliest mining work that can be even approximately dated. The copper mines of Sinai are the most ancient of which history makes mention. According to docu- mentary accounts they were worked from 5000 B.C. to about 1200 B.C. There still exist the tunnels, furnaces, crucibles, and parts of the tools used by these toilers of the dim past. That the Egyptians knew of iron thousands of years ago is suggested by 32 Ancient Mining sculptures of what are supposed to be iron smelting furnaces, but as these particular sculptures do not date further back than 1500 B.C., the introduction of iron would, even if the treatment of that metal is indicated, still be very greatly posterior to the mining of copper ; and we are left to wonder how the Egyptians carved the great granite blocks that now attract tourists in crowds to the Valley of the Nile. The earliest European workings may have been the Spanish. Among the copper lodes of the Asturias human skulls of a prehistoric type have been dis- covered near mining implements of flint. When metallurgy was dawning in the Italian peninsula, the old Etruscans drove galleries through the rocks of Campiglia, in search of copper. " There are/' says M. Simonin in H Underground Life," " excavations large enough to hold a six-storied house with ease. These vast chambers communicate with each other by means of narrow galleries, or rather passages, in which a person can scarcely crawl. The barren rocks, left as rubbish or waste in the excavations, have hardened and become cemented together under the pressure of the overlying beds, and by the earthy debris of the mine. These artificial masses can only be broken by blasting, like those blocks of concrete which are thrown into the sea in the construction of breakwaters. The wooden props are still in place, rotted, or rather carbonised, by a sort of slow decomposition of the vegetable tissue ; all the smell they give out may be recognised as that of the 33 c The Romance of Mining evergreen-oak and the chestnut, which are always grown in the country. Fragments of vases, lamps, and amphorae, which are found in the rubbish, are connected with Etruscan art. Wedges and bronze picks have also been met with in the mines, afford- ing proofs that these works date from a period when iron was not commonly used for ordinary purposes. . . . Enormous masses of rubbish cover the flanks of the mountains where the ancient pits have been opened, and over an extent of several miles follow two parallel courses marking the outcrops of the veins. In the valleys there are still enormous heaps of cinders on the very sites of the ancient foundries." Though these mines have not been worked for pos- sibly 3000 years, they show a comparatively advanced stage of mining art. The very marks of the tools still remain in the rock, as fresh as if they had been made yesterday. The Phoenicians played so important a part in the spread of civilisation through the Mediterranean countries, and even beyond the Pillars of Hercules, as the ancients termed the Straits of Gibraltar, by trading and exploiting the mineral deposits known to them, that we may pay special attention to their operations. Before the Phoenicians first visited Spain the inhabitants had worked the silver, lead, and copper mines of Huelva, Cordova, Seville, and Malaga, in the southern parts of the peninsula. The Canaanitish traders, getting access to the coast direct, and to the 34 Ancient Minin g inland regions (generally called Tarshish) by the Guadalquiver, drove a profitable trade with the natives in the metals mentioned. As soon as they had established themselves firmly they either com- pelled the natives to work the mines for them, or imported slaves from their own territories bordering the Mediterranean. They must have obtained huge quantities of metal if Diodorus of Sicily is not exaggerating when he states that even the anchors of ships returning from Spain were of silver — a state- ment which reminds us of the silver cannon sent by Pizarro from Peru to Spain. The historian says further that "the avarice of the Carthaginians (Phoenicians) led them to seek for and work mines in all parts of the Peninsula, and that it was from this source they obtained the means with which to combat, and for a long period stubbornly resist, the ultimately superior forces of mighty Rome." It is, unfortunately, impossible to distinguish the Phoeni- cian from the Roman operations which immediately succeeded them. But we may be sure that many thousand tons of copper, tin, and silver were ex- tracted during the Punic occupation, the zenith of their activity probably being the period when Solomon sent his ships to Tarshish. Naturally adventurous voyagers, the Phoenicians coasted round the Atlantic shores of Spain and France, and finally reached the westernmost part of England, where they did a brisk trade in tin with the savage Cornishmen. We shall refer to 35 The Romance of Mining this sphere of their activity more fully in a later chapter. In Rhodesia, at Zimbabwe, are ancient ruins of great extent, and old mines from which large quantities of gold were extracted by the people that raised the huge fortress there. Legend has long associated this region with the Ophir of King Solomon ; and Mr. Rider Haggard, in his u King Solomon's Mines," has drawn an imaginative pic- ture of the excavations driven through the mountains in the time of that monarch. More recently fact has succeded fiction. Mr. Theodore Bent, after a careful examination of Zimbabwe and its surround- ings, pronounced that during one period of its earliest history the Phoenicians occupied Rhodesia, and that to them are largely due the galleries and pits which can be counted by the thousand all over the country. The gold was not merely won from the " outcrops " of veins. Shafts were sunk to a depth of even 150 feet, and levels were driven from there along the veins. The Rhodesian miners also knew the use of fire to crack and splinter the rock, before attacking it with tools. They brought up the quartz, ground it in mills, and washed the particles of gold out of the rubbish in hollows still visible along the river bed. Bent found rows of crushing- stones and mortar-holes at which the African slaves wore out their miserable lives. The gold thus obtained was smelted and cast in soapstone moulds for conveyance to the coast, 36 Ancient Mining whence it probably went by sea to the Red Sea, and overland to Palestine. When at last the Phoenicians had to quit their South African colony they walled- up the entrances to some of the mines before they went. " Outside others, heaps of quartz stand stacked ready for removal. Tools are found at the bottom of shafts, as if abandoned by the workers in a panic, curious flint tools, stone axes and wedges, as well as very ancient iron chisels, hammers, wedges, and trowels. The quartz-crushers are thrown down near their basins. A pile of skeletons at the Mundie ruins gives evidence of a flight or massacre ; cakes of gold lying by their waists may once have been held in a belt." 1 In Europe the Romans took up the Phoenician workings after the destruction of Carthage. During their occupation of Spain, from 210 B.C. to about 425 A.D., they busied themselves with the mining of gold, silver, and copper. Spain became the Roman Siberia, to which slaves were sent by thousands to end their days in the mines. Polybius says that 40,000 men worked the mines of New Carthage alone. From Pliny and Titus Livius we learn that 20,000 pounds' weight of gold came annually from the Iberian Peninsula. Little is said of the copper workings, though these, especially in the Rio Tinto districts, must have been enormous. The heaps of slag and cinders which, near the Rio Tinto and Tharsis mines, almost rise to the dignity of 1 " The Romance of Modern Exploration," p. 262. 37 The Romance of Mining hills, have been calculated to contain upwards of 30,000,000 tons of ore and rubbish. Gonzalo Tarin, a Spanish expert, estimates that it took the labour of 10,000 slaves working for 45,000 days to amass this huge quantity of " dump " ; and that during the Roman occupation over 10,000,000 tons of copper were extracted from Huelvan mines. The Romans drove miles of tunnels through the hills, and hollowed out great chambers in the ore-body. Their mining skill is suggested by the water-wheels and other devices found in the underground work- ings, and by the remarkable regularity of the exca- vations. When Julius Caesar invaded England in the year 55 B.C. he wrote: "They [the Britons] use brass money and iron rings of a certain weight. The provinces remote from the sea produce tin, and those upon the coast iron, but the latter in no great quantity. Their brass is imported." After their experience of Spanish mines the Romans were encouraged to seek mineral treasures in " Ultima Thule." They have left traces of their activity in many parts of the kingdom. In Cornwall they ex- tracted tin. In Northumberland, Derbyshire, York- shire, Cheshire, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, the Wye Valley, and the Forest of Dean, they mined lead. Pliny, in referring to this metal, says li It is extracted with a great labour in Spain and through- out the Gallic provinces. But in Britannia it is found in the upper stratum of the earth in such 38 Ancient Mining abundance that a law has been spontaneously made, prohibiting any one from working more than a certain quantity of it." The Mendip Hills, Somersetshire, are pitted with Roman lead mines. The slag left by the Romans has been re-smelted in recent years and has yielded large quantities of metal. Copper was raised near Oswestry ; gold in Caermarthenshire ; iron in several counties. Rude furnaces and masses of iron slag have been found overgrown by peat or buried beneath accumulations of soil. Roman mining in Britain reached a fairly high standard of excellence. In Cornwall there still exists an adit, or tunnel, driven from the bottom of a hill into a lode to drain off the water. The work is dis- tinguished by the symmetry of the arch and the careful masonry of the stones which line it. Passing to the New World, we find but few traces of distinctly ancient mining. Until the coming of Europeans, the methods of extracting ore were mostly very primitive in both North and South America. In the copper districts of Lake Superior the aborigines used only stone hammers and perhaps bags of hide to remove the metal hacked off the great lumps of it which here and there showed above the surface. In Central America tombs have been opened containing stone chisels, awls, and polishers, with which the old inhabitants of Panama attacked the gold "placers," or surface deposits, ages before the arrival of the Spaniards. The Aztecs of Mexico and the Peruvians had con- 39 The Romance of Mining siderable knowledge of mining, though ignorant of the uses of iron. With bronze tools they burrowed into the hills and took out gold, silver, tin, and copper in large quantities. Of the Peruvian methods Prescott writes, " They did not attempt to penetrate into the bowels of the earth by sinking a shaft, but simply excavated a cavern in the steep sides of the mountain, or, at most, opened a horizontal vein of moderate depth. They were equally deficient in the knowledge of the best means of detaching the precious metal from the dross with which it was united, and had no idea of the virtues of quicksilver —a mineral not rare in Peru — as an amalgam to effect this decomposition. Their method of smelting the ore was by means of furnaces built in elevated and exposed situations, where they might be fanned by the strong breezes of the mountains. The subjects of the Incas, in short, with all their patient persever- ance, did little more than penetrate below the crust, the outer rind, as it were, formed over those golden caverns which lie hidden in the dark depths of the Andes." 1 Both nations managed, however, to amass much treasure for their rulers. When Cortes divided the spoils of Mexico he had to deal with gold and silver plate worth .£1,417,000; while Pizarro in Peru melted down three and a half million pounds worth ! It is probable that the treasure captured was but a fraction of the total ; since the vanquished would 1 " The Conquest of Peru." 40 Ancient Mining have hidden many of their precious possessions as soon as they found what the Spaniards came for. Under the conquerors European methods increased the yield of the mines so greatly that Spain took the foremost place among the nations of the sixteenth century in wealth and power. The science of mining has advanced gradually with the increase of mechanical knowledge. Until the invention of gunpowder, and in many places for a long time afterwards, the shafts and levels were driven entirely by means of picks and wedges. The labour must have been infinitely more tedious and painful than it is to-day, when, in spite of all our modern appliances, a miner's life is one of the hardest possible. As Dr. John A. Church has said : 1 " The old mines were horrible working places. The galleries were low, tortuous, so poorly supported that accidents by caving of the roof were probably frequent. They were lighted by pine knots or by lamps, made only of a clay saucer filled with ill- smelling vegetable oil or tallow, in which a bit of rush, pith, or rag, floating, served for wick ; and they were without ventilation to carry off the dense smoke from these lamps and the effluvia arising from severe labour. Even after centuries of experience, when mining had become a great industry, the con- dition of the mines was deplorable." One of the greatest hardships was the want of a current of fresh air to reduce the heat of the galleries 1 Cassier's Magazine, March 1899. 41 The Romance of Mining and provide pure oxygen for the workers' lungs. In the sixteenth century rough ventilating fans were constructed — the vanes sometimes edged with feathers — to create a draught in the galleries. About the same time pumps were installed to free mines of water, a task previously only possible, and that on a very limited scale, by the raising of buckets with windlasses or on men's backs. We may sup- pose that gunpowder was not used below ground until methods of ventilation were fairly perfect, since its poisonous fumes would have rendered stagnant air quite unbreathable for a long time after an explosion. The ladder still survives in many mines as the sole means of descent and ascent, involving an im- mense amount of extra fatigue. Steam power only was able to give quick transit, first in the "man- engine," such as is still used in Cornwall, and after- wards in the rope-hoisted cage. Steam was also harnessed to ventilating and pumping machinery, and later to that for lighting. But for explosives and steam, modern deep-mining would have been absolutely impossible. Man now sinks shafts 5000 feet down into the earth, and from the bottom burrows horizontally. He sends copious currents of air to the lowest depths ; pumps out the water, if need be ; and leads compressed air and elec- tricity through a maze of pipes and wires to work machine-drills which, in combination with high explosives, relieve the miner of a large part of the toil otherwise necessary to secure the minerals. 42 Ancient Mining As we shall read in future pages, the underground workers of to-day have hardships and perils to en- counter, but in comparison with the surroundings of those who first explored the deep treasure-houses of Nature, theirs is a comfortable and happy lot. 43 CHAPTER III THE ELDORADO OF THE GREAT WEST The Sierra Nevada — The result of altering a mill-race — First discovery of gold in California — Booty scented by the public — Gold reaches San Francisco — Sudden rise in wages — Scenes in 'Frisco — Off to the diggings — The Mormons — The mining outfit — Scarcity of water — Disappointed hopes — " Placer " mining — Panning-out — The sluice — Racial feeling — Hardships and disease — Riotous extravagance — What the average miner got — Rough justice — Danger of wealth — Incredible selfishness — Trouble in San Francisco — The trans-continental journey — What Mark Twain saw — Rapid increase in California's population — The miner's restlessness — The sad results — Exhaustion of " placers" — Hydraulic mining — Gigantic " flumes" — How gold is washed out by the hydraulic jet — Devastating effect on the country. Parallel to the coast of Upper California, at a dis- tance inland of about 200 miles, runs the Sierra Nevada, a continuous and lofty range marked by a line of dominant peaks, many of which are over 14,000 feet high. It has an average width of about eighty miles, and its western slopes are more gentle than the eastern, which abound in precipitous declines. From the mountains many streams hurry west- wards to join a main river, called the Sacramento, flowing into the San Francisco Bay. On their way these tributaries cut through mighty deposits of gravel, which in the course of the ages have been detached from the heights and distributed along the valleys. From the latitude of San Francisco north to Oregon 44 The Eldorado of the Great West the strata of the range have received a liberal salting with gold at the hands of Nature ; and the water has separated huge quantities of it from its bed, to strew it in the river courses and in gulches through which streams no longer flow. This huge auriferous belt on the Sierra's western slope is the Eldorado of the West. One January day in 1848 a Mr. Marshall was making alterations at his saw-mill on the Americanos River, which enters the Sacramento at a point where the town of the same name now rises. The tail-race of the mill being too narrow to allow the water to run off in sufficient quantities to get full work out of the wheel, he threw the mill-wheel out of gear, and suddenly let the whole body of water behind the dam loose into the race. This operation consider- ably enlarged the narrow channel, and a mass of sand and gravel was carried off by the force of the current. Captain Sutter, a neighbour, thus related what followed to Dr. J. Tyrwhitt Brooks, one of the pioneer miners : * il Early in the morning after this took place, he was walking along the left bank of the stream, when he perceived something which he at first took for a piece of opal — a clear transparent stone, very common there — glittering on one of the spots laid bare by the sudden crumbling of the bank. He paid no attention to this : but while he was giving directions to the workmen, having observed several 1 Vide "Four Months among the Gold Finders in Alta California," p. 40 foil. 45 BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY CHESTNUT HILL, MASS. The Romance of Mining similar glittering fragments, his curiosity was so far excited that he stooped down and picked one of them up. ' Do you know/ said Mr. Marshall to me, ' I positively debated with myself two or three times whether I should take the trouble to bend my back to pick up one of the pieces, and had decided on not doing so, when, further on, another glittering morsel caught my eye — the largest of the pieces now before you. I condescended to pick it up, and to my astonishment found it was a thin scale of what appears to be pure gold.' He then gathered some twenty or thirty similar pieces, which on examina- tion convinced him that his suppositions were right. His first impression was that this gold had been lost or buried there by some early Indian tribe — perhaps some of those mysterious inhabitants of the west, of whom we have no account, but who dwelt on this continent centuries ago, and built those cities and temples, the ruins of which are scattered about these solitary wilds. On proceeding, however, to examine the neighbouring soil, he discovered that it was more or less auriferous. This at once decided him. He mounted his horse, and rode down to me as fast as it would carry him with the news." Captain Sutter was soon convinced by the speci- mens shown that an epoch in Californian history had been opened. Of course the first thing for the two lucky men to do was to keep the discovery to them- selves. They visited the mill and poked about among the sand with such good results that they soon had 4 6 The Eldorado of the Great West collected an ounce of the precious metal. The next day they went further up the stream, and found that gold existed along the whole course, not only in the bed of the main stream, but also in the now dried- up gulches and creeks leading into it. Indeed, gold appeared most plentiful in the ravines, for Captain Sutter picked out of a dry gorge with his knife a lump of solid gold scaling nearly one and a half ounces. Unfortunately for the discoverer and his friend, the mill workpeople had scented booty. A Kentuckian, suspecting that " something was up," dogged the prospectors about, and searched for the object of their wanderings, so that when they returned to the mill they were astonished, not to say disgusted, by the labourers running up with flakes of gold, which an Indian, who had previously worked in a mine in Lower California, had immediately recog- nised as the "true stuff." The secret had thus become public property in a very few hours. Such a piece of news soon spread, and hard on its heels came actual proof of its truth in the shape of gold flakes sent down to San Francisco. On May 8 a man entered the town with twenty-three ounces of gold. People at once began with one voice to talk of nothing but the new " placers " — a Spanish term signifying spots where gold is found mixed with alluvial deposit. Parties were formed at once to visit the diggings, and individuals started off alone with shovels, mattocks, and pans to dig the metal 47 The Romance of Mining out. The talk soon bred a perfect furore. All the workpeople struck. Out of fifty new buildings in course of construction only about half-a-dozen were not bereft of artisans ; the majority of whom, to- gether with lawyers, storekeepers, and merchants, were bitten by the fever. On many a door could be seen a paper bearing the legend, " Gone to the diggings." Wages increased by leaps and bounds. The people who remained behind could ask their own terms. Salesmen and shopmen got 2300 to 2700 dollars a year, with board ; and even boys received salaries which in the pre-mania days would have satisfied the heads of large departments. But while many houses were being deserted, fresh inhabitants poured in by sea, many having come across the Isthmus of Panama to a point where they could take ship. Up spr?ng a host of canvas booths to accommodate the new- comers. In the better parts of the town stupendous taverns, gambling houses, and other buildings com- manded huge rents ; anything up to 100,000 dollars a year. " Skirting the beach," writes an eye-witness, 1 " was a vast collection of tents, called the ' Happy Valley ' — since more truly designated the ' Sickly Valley ' — where filth of every description, and stag- nant pools, beset one at every stride. In these tents congregated the refuse of all nations, crowded to- gether ; eight people occupying what was only space for two. Blankets, firearms, and cooking utensils were 1 Mr. William Shaw. 48 The Eldorado of the Great West the only worldly property they possessed. Scenes of depravity, sickness, and wretchedness shocked the moral sense, as much as filth and effluvia did the nerves ; and such was the state of personal insecurity that few * citizens ' slept without firearms at hand. The constant wearing of arms by such a disorderly set, amongst whom quarrels were frequent, caused many disputes to terminate disastrously ; but the un- settled state of the country, and the many desperate characters prowling about, made it necessary to be armed for self-protection — the weaker party was only sheltered from oppression by a loaded revolver, as there was no assistance to be expected from others. Steel and lead were the only arguments available for redress, and bystanders looked on unconcernedly at acts of violence ; the cause of the dispute, or the justice of the punishment inflicted, being seldom inquired into." A poor man arriving in San Francisco had small chance of comfort. Even if he possessed a fairly heavy purse, it soon lost its weight in a city where a good meal cost three dollars, even if the owner kept clear of the many gambling hells which kept open house for the allurement of " greenhorns." In the 'fifties San Francisco was very inaccessible as compared with its position to-day at the termini of several great transcontinental lines. To get thither from the east coast the traveller had a choice between a tedious sea journey round the Horn ; a partly sea and partly land route via the Panama 49 D The Romance of Mining Isthmus — across which a road and subsequently a railway were driven ; and a land march of some 3000 miles. Nevertheless, the distant Sierras soon teemed with a population of many thousands. Most of the immigrants, at least during the first two years, came in from the coast ; while a minority worked across the trackless plains, braving the hostility of the Indians and the many physical difficulties of a passage through a waterless, track- less, and arid region. Many a bloody battle was fought between the white gold-seeker and the scalp- loving Crow, Pawnee, or Sioux. Though the lighter colour eventually prevailed, the natives, well skilled in the arts of treachery and ambuscade, often murdered parties of their natural foes, and escaped with their gory trophies into the fastnesses of the mountains. Shortly after the discovery of gold a large emigrant band of Mormons entered California across the Rockies. Without wasting time they made straight for the Americanos River, and began washing out the golden flakes and dust which permeated the bed of the stream. They did not have the valley to themselves for long, since the miners from San Francisco were now on the march to the " Mormon Diggings," as they were called after the first- comers. The miners leaving San Francisco for the gold- fields often banded together for mutual protection and help. The perils of the journey were such as 5° The Eldorado of the Great West to render the passage of a solitary person a terribly risky business. Before starting, the more prudent gold-seekers equipped themselves with an outfit : viz., tent, spades, mattocks ; axe, blankets, hides ; coffee, sugar, whisky, brandy ; knives, plates, forks, pots and kettles. If funds permitted, a horse or two would be added to the list as beasts of burden, and any one who could afford it purchased a mount for his personal use. For some days the track up country lay through an undulating, park-like region, where sycamore, oak, and cypress offered grateful shelter from the burning sun. Then the landscape changed, and bare sand-hills replaced the green vegetation. Horrible dust-storms filled the eyes and mouths of the travellers ; hot winds parched their skin till it cracked ; and to these discomforts were added the pangs of thirst. On one occasion a party met a straggler who offered them a flask of brandy — priceless at the " diggings " — in exchange for just half-a-pint of water. The barter was refused, because water was excessively scarce among the party ; and the poor wretch learnt that the necessaries of life are after all superior to its luxuries. Here and there they fell in with men returning from the mines, broken in hope and health, who prophesied ruin to any one who entered the diggings, and advised a retreat before it was too late. Such advice, as may be imagined, was quite unheeded, 5* The Romance of Mining for the prospect of rinding gold appeared to blind everybody who had not yet tried his luck at the game to all considerations of possible physical collapse. Travellers had to reckon with the Indians, ever on the alert to steal a horse or any other possession of the white invader. At night watches were set, and if the guard, overcome by the fatigues of the day, nodded at their post, an animal or two would probably be missing when daylight returned. The strains of such a journey often let loose evil passions ; and men who had started from San Francisco bound together by solemn pledges to stick to one another, would quarrel and separate, each endeavouring to be first at the diggings. But the roughest path has an end ; and at last weary eyes were gladdened by the sight of tents lining the banks of a stream. A canvas erection of unusual size indicated a " store," where Indians, Oregon trappers, with skin tanned to the consistency of a buffalo's, Spanish Dons of the old school, hatchet-faced Yankees, keen-eyed as the eagle, jostled one another as they exchanged their gold- dust for food and tools. We may now turn our attention to the gold- saving methods employed at the Californian " placers." At first operations were confined almost entirely to the shallow or surface diggings, where the gold lay at, or just below, the surface. Not until the superficial stratum was pretty well played out was serious attention paid to the deeper 52 The Eldorado of the Great West placers, which could be worked only through long tunnels and shafts. The principal implements used for shallow work- ing are the pick and shovel, pan, cradle or rocker, and the sluice. The pan, about twelve inches in diameter at the bottom, is of stamped iron, and much resembles the ordinary dairy milk-pan. To extract gold from the earth with which it mingles, the pan is filled with the " dirt " and taken into the water — a stream, tub, or pool, as the case may be. It is submerged, and the miner works the dirt with his hands until the lumps have crumbled ; then, holding one side of the pan rather higher than the other, he gives it a peculiar circular motion which produces a rotatory current and causes the lighter portion to pass over the lip, the heavier particles remaining behind. The earthy element is thus gradually eliminated, and the pebbles are picked out by hand, until only a small residue remains, which is either pure gold, or gold mixed with a small quantity of sand. The residue is then care- fully dried in an iron vessel, and the earthy dust can be blown away, leaving nothing but pure gold. . Panning is slow and laborious work, so that those who had money or skill sufficient to provide themselves with a rocker — or " gold canoe," as the Indians styled it — resorted to this less primi- tive method of washing. The rocker resembles a child's cradle. About six inches from the top is a drawer, with a bottom of perforated iron. Earth 53 The Romance of Mining is thrown by one man into the drawer and well flooded with water to break up the lumps. A second miner rocks the cradle backwards and for- wards till the finer contents of the drawer fall through into the sloping tray below, on which are cross bars, called riffles, to arrest the gold. Much more scientific than either of these simple contrivances is the " sluice," a long, slightly in- clined trough, through which water flows rapidly. Its dimensions vary according to circumstances. In some cases only a single trough, ten to twelve inches deep, fifteen to twenty wide, and twelve feet long, would be used ; but as each trough tapers towards its lower end, any number can easily be fitted one into the other to form a continuous sluice thousands of feet in length. The trough bottom is well pro- vided with riffles, sometimes charged with mercury to catch the particles of gold ; the more mercury being needed the finer the separation of the metal dust. Sluice washing is, if possible, carried on with- out interruption day and night, for weeks, even for months. Then comes the u clean-up." The gold, either " free " or amalgamated with the mercury, is carefully scraped from the riffles and washed clean in a pan. Amalgam has to be squeezed in buckskin or canvas, which allows the liquid mercury to pass, but retains the solid amalgam. This is put into a retort, and subjected to great heat until all the mercury has vaporised and been led into a condenser, where it resumes its liquid form. The gold thus obtained is 54 The Eldorado of the Great West very porous, or " spongy " ; and must be melted down and run into bars to be fit for sale. In '49 and '50 the rocker and pan did most of the work. The toil was severe, in the case of the pan, which required constant stooping, while the constant immersion of the hands rapidly macerated the skin and made them very painful. The rocker saved the hands this injury, and, by employing several sets of muscles, enabled the miner to keep on working without much physical discomfort. By a rule of the diggings, when a party operated a cradle, a nugget weighing over half-an-ounce was considered to be the private property of the person who found it, and was not added to the common fund of metal. Since several nationalities occupied the diggings race-feeling became acute. The Americans, who predominated numerically, showed their teeth to the " coloured " miners, and, if their property were worth the trouble, often drove them away. These ejectments sometimes resulted in serious fighting, as the injured party was always ready to resort to stealthy retaliation under cover of night. Nor was there much love lost between the white gangs. At the Mormon diggings a quarrel broke out over a sluice which damaged the claims lower down the valley. The sluice owners refused com- pensation to the injured diggers, who, accordingly, raided the aggressors. Knives, picks, rifles and pistols were freely used. Heads were smashed in, limbs lopped, bullets flew ; and in a few minutes 55 The Romance of Minin g the ground had all the appearance of a miniature battle-field. No truthful picture of these early camps can, unfortunately, be a pleasant one. Even in the hot season the nightly dews were so heavy that blankets would be saturated by the morning. In the rainy season a deluge fell, against which the frail erections of earth and canvas afforded little shelter. Owing to exposure, hard work, and poor food, disease stalked in many shapes among the miners. The most prevalent complaints were dysentery, fever, and ague, for which little help could be procured, since the few doctors present charged exorbitant fees, and medicine was practically non-existent. Every now and then a poor wretch, mad in the delirium of fever, would rush frantically from his tent and attack anybody who came in his way. " One morning," writes Mr. Shaw, " I took a stroll round the tents ; a most ominous silence prevailed ; of the busy crowds not one was to be seen at work ; all was as still as an hospital. We had not been the only sufferers ; sickness universally prevailed, seem- ingly as infectious as the plague. In every tent lay sufferers in various stages of disease ; out of two hundred, at least twenty had died, and not more than sixty were able to move ; those convalescent would be seen gathered together in the stores. Those who were too ill to frequent scenes of dis- sipation excited my compassion ; they lay huddled together in tents, moaning and cursing, many of 56 The Eldorado of the Great West them dying, with no one to attend to their spiritual or bodily wants ; and I cannot but think that many died from sheer starvation, or mere want of attend- ance." Side by side with this dreadful suffering existed riotous extravagance. The few fortunate diggers gambled deeply, staking their bags of gold dust against the turn of the cards. Being men of no education, they imagined that lavish expenditure of their easily- won wealth would raise them in the estimation of their less fortunate fellows. Accord- ingly, they might be seen seated on rough benches, breaking off the necks of champagne bottles, to quench the thirst arising from a diet of sardines, lobsters, and other luxuries — all, of course, pur- chased at famine prices. Under the circumstances it is not surprising that the store-keepers, who never did a hand's turn of gold-washing, made the largest fortunes. A spade which cost originally one dollar might fetch thirty at the diggings. Thirty -four pounds of biscuit, salt beef, beans, and flour cost fifty dollars ; and at one time, when scurvy pre- vailed, and fresh vegetables had run out, the lucky importer of some potatoes sold them at a dollar apiece, to be eaten raw, like apples I With respect to the richness of the diggings, many stories have been told which greatly exaggerate the reality. In a few instances immense finds were un- doubtedly made by pioneers, but the average product of ahard day's work would not exceed fifteento eighteen 57 The Romance of Mining dollars. Of the thousands who visited the " placers " only about one-third became resident diggers ; and higher up in the Sierras, beyond what was after- wards recognised to be the limit of the gold-bearing belt, the early miner made long and wearisome journeys over the crests of snowy mountains, and even into the arid deserts beyond, without ever seeing the colour of gold. Thousands worked like slaves, and won their ounce or so daily from the river deposits ; but living was so expensive that these returns only sufficed to keep body and soul together. Many diggers, hoping for richer finds, stayed on until their small stores of dust had vanished into the store or saloon, and it became absolutely necessary to retire, beaten, from the struggle. Though robbery and violence were only too pre- valent at the diggings, a very rough justice awaited anybody caught committing a theft. The first dozen men who came up constituted themselves into an informal jury, and passed summary sentence : the loss of one or both ears, with hanging in reserve for serious offences. Sometimes the Indians made a night raid, massacred the occupants of outlying tents, and decamped with their food, clothes, and other possessions. A band of avengers having been collected, they went on the track of the depredators, guided by some old trapper well versed in back- woods craft. As often as not the Indians were run to earth, and treated with a severity that instilled 58 The Eldorado of the Great West into them so wholesome a dread of the white man and his " thunderstick," that the natives in certain districts ceased to raid, and entered the service of their former enemies. Even if a man amassed wealth it was apt to be a source of great personal danger to him. He was watched and followed about on the chance of an opportunity occurring of putting him quietly out of the way. Bands of desperadoes roamed the country, ready to swoop down on the lucky miner returning with his hoard to San Francisco. Dr. Tyrwhitt tells of a big American who had accumulated a very large amount of gold, and who suspected that every visitor to his tent was on robbery bent, and acting as a spy. Any harmless person who looked in accordingly re- ceived notice to quit in a few seconds if he did not wish to receive a dose of lead from the ever ready rifle or revolver. The gold-fever bred a selfishness that sounds almost incredible. Help was refused to the dying. When death at last released the poor sufferer, his living comrades often refused to cease work for a few minutes to give the corpse burial, preferring to let it become the prey of the coyotes. A visitor to the mines had good reason for arguing that when gold comes in at the door all human sympathy flies out of the window. After the lapse of a few months serious trouble brewed in San Francisco. While labour was still scarce wages reached fabulous figures ; but with a 59 The Romance of Mining great influx of broken miners these prices could no longer be maintained, though the cost of provisions and other necessaries showed no signs of diminish- ing. Discontent prevailed among the lower classes. Nightly meetings took place, at which agitators made furious tirades against employers and those fi foreigners " who ventured to sell their labour at cheaper rates than the mob approved of — i.e. for less than ten dollars a day. Poor fellows suspected of being " blacklegs " were taken to a high cliff, called the " Tarpeian Rock," and hurled on to the beach below, used as a common burying-ground, where the sand brought in by the rising tide per- formed the office of sexton. Yet, in spite of all this inhumanity and villainy, the town was rapidly increasing, and in the face of labour troubles lofty warehouses rose to the very edge of the hills behind the towns. Fine hotels, huge business houses, and public offices were erected, and eagerly rented by far-seeing people whose sagacity told them that the gold-rush would be followed by occupations more steadily prosperous than " placer " mining. For five years the " rush " continued. Men poured in from all sides. The terrible trans-continental journey was undertaken by thousands of immigrants who started from St. Louis or Omaha on the Missouri, pushed along the Platte River, crossed the Rockies, encountered the horrors of the Great Salt Lake Desert, and, after a final struggle with the Sierra Nevada, dropped down into the Land of Promise, their 60 The Eldorado of the Great West numbers sadly thinned by wounds, accidents, disease, hunger, and thirst. Mark Twain, writing of this route, and the Great Desert in particular, said : * " It was a dreary pull, and a long and thirsty one, for we had no water. From one extremity of this desert to the other, the road was white with the bones of oxen and horses. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that we could have walked the forty miles and set our feet on a bone at eveiy step ! The desert was one prodigious graveyard. And the log-chains, waggon-trees, and rotting wrecks of vehicles were almost as thick as the bones. I think we saw log-chains enough rusting there in the desert to reach across any State in the Union. Do not these relics suggest something of an idea of the fearful suffering and privation the early immigrants to California endured ? " It is impossible to say how many miners were actually at work in California at the time of the greatest excitement, but 50,000 is the figure suggested for 1850. In 1852 and 1853 this number had pro- bably doubled ; and as the new-comers found the rich deposits of surface gold ready to hand the total output of these years marked the highest level of the Californian output, — some 65 million dollars' worth per annum. Memorable among the richest u strikes " of those days are those of the Stanislaus, Americanos, Yuba, and Feather Rivers, where the fortunate owners washed out from one to five thousand dollars a day ! 1 " Roughing it," chapter xx. 6l The Romance of Mining But such spots as these were very limited in area, like the rich u pockets " found in the mountains, where gold had accumulated most amazingly. One of the pockets yielded 60,000 dollars in two weeks ; another just double that amount in three months ; while smaller deposits, laid bare in several instances by rooting hogs, panned out 5000 dollars and up- wards. As soon as the richest bars and gulches had been worked over, a spirit of restlessness affected the miners, who were, as Mark Twain says, lt no simper- ing, dainty, kid-gloved weaklings, but stalwart, daunt- less young braves, brimful of push and energy, and royally endowed with every attribute that goes to make up a peerless and magnificent manhood — the very pick of the world's glorious ones." Mr. Twain is evidently here referring only to the more respectable part of the population, as the immigrants certainly contained a high percentage of thorough- going scoundrels, who, if not villains to begin with, rapidly developed into such under the deteriorating influences of gold-mining. Yet in his pages, and in those of Mr. Bret Harte, we are able to detect the kindliness that often concealed itself under a rough and forbidding exterior. The man who was ready to draw his " gun " on little provocation, could also lend a helping hand to a mate in time of need. These folk, wrought to a pitch of nervous frenzy by the myriad reports flying about, were only too easily induced to leave a locality of moderate wealth, 62 The Eldorado of the Great West and to plunge into the unknown beyond the moun- tains. After months of fruitless searching for the advertised li inexhaustible focus of gold/' they would return — those who had not succumbed to privation — poverty-stricken and ragged, to find the claims they had left already occupied by fresh arrivals. A great "rush" of this description took place in 1855, to the Kern River, 250 miles south of San Francisco. Three years later 20,000 men picked up their traps and stampeded to the Fraser River, denuding Cali- fornia of a large proportion of her workers. The sufferings of this misguided mob were terrible ; their success very moderate. By 1855 the " shallow placers'' had been almost exhausted. The pan and rocker no longer brought out enough gold to render their use profitable. There remained, however, the deeper placers and the " lode " gold, embedded in a quartz matrix. So, while a thousand little mushroom mining cities, deserted by their busy population, crumbled into ruins amid the deathly silence of the valleys, a hundred more rose elsewhere, occupied by men bent on continuing the search with a more scientific equipment, and a different organisation of labour. We will therefore turn our attention to — Hydraulic Mining, with which is connected the second chapter of Cali- fornian metallurgical history. In some of the valleys the prehistoric glaciers 63 The Romance of Mining accumulated beds of gold-bearing gravel to a thick- ness probably unparalleled in the rest of North America. Inasmuch as the greater part of the gold sinks to the bottom of a bed, it can be reached only by shafts and tunnels, unless the whole mass is in some manner disintegrated, washed, and carried off by water. If you have ever watched a fire-engine at work you must have been impressed by the force with which the water jet strikes an object against which it is directed. Imagine such a jet turned on to a bank of crumbling gravel, and you have the essen- tial idea of hydraulic mining. In order to carry out such operations successfully an abundant supply of water under very high pres- sure is needed. To this end special companies were formed in California to bring water long distances from mountain lakes or rivers, through ditches, troughs, or pipes, to the scene of operations. As the channel is built on a much gentler gradient than that of the valley along the sides of which it runs, by the time it reaches the mine it may have a " head " of some hundreds of feet. From the end of the channel the water is led down through pipes of decreasing diameter to nozzles, three to six inches in diameter, which fire it against the gravel bank with enormous power. An expert has stated that a strong man could not possibly strike a crow-bar through a six- inch jet of water coming out under a 300-foot " head " ! This is extraordinary, though a fact ; and 64 The Eldorado of the Great West men and animals have been killed by the jets at a distance of 200 feet or more from the nozzle! The " flume " companies expended huge sums on this kind of work in the 'sixties. In Nevada County is the Grand Trunk line of the Eureka Lake and Yuba Canal Company, running from four small lakes near the summit of the Sierra to North San Juan, sixty-five miles away. The Eureka lake supplies most of the water. A granite dam two hundred and fifty feet long and seventy feet high was built across the valley to impound 930 million cubic feet of water. The main trunk carrying the water to the mines is eight feet wide by three-and-a-half deep, and has a fall of about one foot in a hundred. Not far away runs the South Yuba Canal, sixteen miles of which cost about 600,000 dollars. It passes through several tunnels. " One of these," writes Mr. T. F. Cronise, 1 " sixty feet in length, cost 6000 dollars ; another, 3800 feet long, having cost 112,000 dollars. The flume, seven miles long, runs for one and a-half miles through a gallery worked into the side of a precipice of solid rock one hundred feet high — the cliff being so impending that the workmen had to be let down from the top to commence drilling and blasting, an expedient not at all uncommon in the construction of these works in other parts of the state. . . . From the main trunk ditch-branches ramify, carrying water over an immense tract of country, supplying a vast number of mills, hydraulic 1 "The Natural Wealth of California." 65 E The Romance of Mining and sluice claims. This company has thrown dams across the outlets of four lakes situated near the summit of the Sierra, using them as reserves for supplying their canals in the dry season. One of these dams, constructed of solid masonry, 42 feet high and 11 50 feet long, has increased the volume of Meadow Lake more than tenfold — this lake, formerly a mere pond, now being, when full, more than a mile and a quarter long by half a mile wide." This company spent 1,130,000 dollars on their works, but in twelve years netted 1,400,000 dollars in receipts. Placer County boasts the Auburn and Bear River Canal, 290 miles long, which cost 670,000 dollars ; Amador County has a 400,000 dollar ditch of 66 miles ; Calaveras County, a 50 miles ditch, which cost 350,000 dollars ; and in Tuolomne County runs the 40-mile Big Oak Flat, and the 3 5 -mile County Water Company's aqueduct, costing 600,000 dollars and 550,000 dollars respectively. Since 1870 even larger pipe lines have been laid; in most cases with a very good result to the owners and users. Having secured water, the hydraulic miner has done only part of the work preparatory to an attack on the gravel-bed. The whole of this must be detached, broken up, robbed of its gold, and carried right away, without any cessation of labour. When the mining ground has been selected, a tunnel is driven into it from a neighbouring ravine 66 The Eldorado of the Great West through the rock, approaching the gravel on a steady up grade of about one in eight. The tunnel of a large working measures 7 feet in height and as many in width ; its length ranges from a few hundred feet to several miles. In the latter case it becomes a big engineering feat, accomplished only by the help of scientific calculations and proper rock- boring tools, and necessitates a heavy capital out- lay. This will account for such tasks not figuring in earlier Californian mining days. The upper part of the tunnel is so driven that its end lies fifty to a hundred feet below the gravel- bed. A shaft is then sunk to meet it, and the " way out" is clear. All along the bottom of the tunnel and far down the ravine into which it empties is laid a large sluice, 2 J feet wide, and of sufficient height to handle all the water that the hydraulic pipes can deliver. Between the blocks the miners pour tons of mercury to catch and absorb the fine particles of gold. The jet is now directed against the earth round the shaft's mouth, which, under the continuous action of this enormous mechanical force, quickly crumbles away, and falls into the shaft. Even big boulders weighing half a ton or more are shifted, and make the plunge, splintering themselves and any- thing on which they alight, thus acting as an auto- matic crushing machine. A deep trench is gradually opened along the bed, and then the walls receive attention. If very lofty, they are worked in two 67 The Romance of Mining stages, the upper crumbling easily, while the lower may have to be blasted with explosives before the water can affect it. Tunnels are driven horizontally through it, and from them shafts right and left to receive the explosive, which breaks off huge masses of the conglomerate, and disintegrates them suffi- ciently to be affected by the jet. Every month or so comes the " clean-up." In some cases the returns are very heavy, averaging a thousand dollars and upwards per diem. Clean- ups of one hundred thousand dollars are recorded. And the metal is won comparatively cheaply, each cubic yard treated costing but one-hundredth of the labour-bill for panning. Of course, in hydraulic as in other forms of gold-getting, there are failures, which are ruinous in proportion to the outlay on preliminary engineering. The effect of hydraulicing on the country is, from the scenic point of view, appalling. " Tornado, flood, earthquake, and volcano combined could hardly make greater havoc, spread wider ruin and wreck, than are to be seen everywhere in the track of the larger gold-washing operations. None of the interior streams of California, though natur- ally pure as crystal, escape the change to a thick yellow mud, from this cause, early in their progress from the hills. The Sacramento is worse than the Missouri. Many of the streams are turned out of their original channels, either directly for mining purposes, or in consequence of the great masses 68 The Eldorado of the Great West of soil and gravel that come down from the gold- washings above. Thousands of acres of fine land along their banks are ruined for ever by the deposits of this character. A farmer may have his whole estate turned into a barren waste by a flood of sand and gravel from some hydraulic mining up stream ; more, if a fine orchard or garden stands in the way of the working of a rich gulch or bank, orchard or garden must go. Then the torn- out, dug-out, washed to pieces and then washed over side-hills, masses that have been or are being subjected to the hydraulics of the miners, are the very devil's chaos indeed. The country is full of them among the mining districts of the Sierra Nevada, and they are truly a terrible blot upon the face of Nature." This picture is from the pen of an author i who traversed the country in 1868, and what he saw then can be seen to-day on a still larger scale. Pro- bably in no part of the world has water been so ex- tensively employed to maltreat Nature's arrangements as it has in California, the home of hydraulic mining. Of the quartz mines nothing need be said here — since the methods of separating gold from rock will be fully treated in a following chapter — except to refer to the huge amounts of metal that the lodes of the Sierra have yielded ; especially the Great Quartz Vein or " Mother Lode," which has been traced for 80 miles, and has been worked to an enormous depth. 1 Mr. Samuel Bowles, "Our New West." 69 CHAPTER IV THE GOLD-FIELDS OF THE ANTIPODES First discovery of gold in Australia — A convict's hard luck — Early discoveries hushed up — Hargraves finds the New South Wales deposits — The "rush" — Melbourne folk alarmed — Gold found in Victoria — Huge nugget found at Meroo Creek — Its effect on the colony — Victorian gold — Wonderful "pocket" struck — Over- crowding of Melbourne — " Canvas Town " — Rapid growth of Melbourne — Ill-feeling aroused by mining fees — Ballarat riot — Gold-field extravagance— Curious plight of South Australia — Special measures for gold-transport — The great nuggets of Australia. A convict working in New South Wales during the 'thirties produced one day a small lump of gold which he professed to have found in the earth ; but being unable to point out the spot to the people, he was haled before a magistrate and awarded one hundred and fifty lashes as the penalty of having melted down a gold watch. The magistrate apparently did not reason that a man who had stolen a watch would hardly be fool enough to publicly exhibit the gold of its case as metal discovered in its natural state. But those were days when suspicion and punishment walked hand-in-hand among the " ticket-of-leaves." Thus inauspiciously began the discovery of gold in Australia. In 1839 Count Strzelecki reported to Sir G. Gipps, the then Governor of New South Wales, that in the Vale of Clwydd he had found a deposit of auriferous sulphuret of iron, containing an 70 The Gold-fields of the Antipodes insufficient proportion of the precious metal to repay the cost of extraction. Two years later Dr. W. B. Clarke, a Sydney resident, detected gold in the vicinity of the New South Wales capital ; but, like the Count, he was asked by the Governor to keep the find secret on account of the difficulty of maintaining order among 45,000 convicts that would ensue were the news spread abroad. At this time Australians were occupied with the pursuits of sheep and cattle raising. They knew nothing of gold-fields, for the Californian treasures had not yet come to light. When, therefore, a shepherd now and then walked into a town with a few ounces of gold which he had laboriously picked out of the rocks, he was regarded in much the same light as the unfortunate convict, and set down as a robber. The better educated colonists, who owned large sheep-runs, little knew that, as they went their rounds, they were literally treading on gold. Eight years before the actual discovery of gold in 1851, a Mr. H. Anderson, while walking over his sheep- station at Ballarat with a neighbour, noticed a small piece of shining white quartz streaked with a glit- tering yellow substance. " Here's gold I " he cried, handing the lump to his companion, who said, " Tut-tut, man, golden nonsense I " and made Mr. Anderson so mistrustful of his own judgment that he heaved the quartz at a pair of laughing jackasses near by, and thought no more of the matter. The scientific statements made with regard to the 7 1 The Romance of Mining existence of gold by Count Strzelecki, Dr. Clarke, and Sir Roderick Murchison during the 'forties might have produced no results for many a long day, had not gold been discovered thousands of miles away in California, whither a large part of the Aus- tralian population had migrated. Among the gold- seekers was a Mr. E. H. Hargraves, who noticed the resemblance between the geological formation of the Californian deposits and certain districts with which he was acquainted in Australia. In 1850 he returned home to prove whether the pickaxe and cradle could not be used with good effect in the Antipodes. Work- ing at Summerhill Creek, near Bathurst, in February 1 85 1, he discovered gold, and applied to the authori- ties for a reward in compensation for the hardships and expenses which he had had to meet. The Govern- ment, only too anxious to check the emigration to California, offered him a handsome sum if he would show the gold-bearing locality ; and on his referring them to the Lewis Ponds, Summerhill, and to the Mac- quarie River, a. sum of money was given him, which two years later was increased to .£10,000 and a pension. As in California, the first scent of a gold-field was the signal for a " rush." From Sydney a mob of men, women, and children trooped through the Blue Mountains, leaving whole streets deserted, to be bought up by foreseeing speculators, who in a few months got their money back tenfold. Sydney became a second San Francisco, with the same tremendous rise of prices for both labour and the 72 The Gold-fields of the Antipodes necessaries of life. Servants vanished into the back country. Government salaries were doubled to keep the various staffs from unavoidable debt and in- solvency. In short, only a few persons remained behind, and those few had to be well paid. So great was the emigration from Victoria to New South Wales that the Melbourne authorities became alarmed. Something must be done to check the draining away of all labour from the colony. A reward was offered to any one who should find gold within 200 miles of the capital. People soon came to claim the money. Gold had been discovered at the Plenty River, on the Yarra-Yarra, in the Pyrenees Range, and finally in August 1851 at Ballarat. Melbourne and Geelong were at once overtaken by the fate of Sydney in an aggravated form. They became like deserted villages. Geelong was so stripped of its males that women crowded to the doors to view any stray man who might happen to pass through ; the case of California exactly re- versed 1 There men paid heavily in gold dust for the privilege of a peep at a member of the gentler sex through the cracks of a shanty. In four months the population of Geelong sank from 8291 to 2850 souls i This state of things existed only for a short time, as emigrants from China, Tasmania, South Australia, and Europe soon began to pour into Melbourne at the rate of 2000 a week. Of these immigrants a large proportion were very undesirable, being ex- convicts from Tasmania, men returned from Cali- 73 The Romance of Mining fornia, and the scum of adjacent colonies. Disorder grew rife at the gold-fields, where a wild forest, "honeycombed with hundreds of thousands of ready-made graves/' tempted the villain who envied a lucky digger to hurl him, wounded to death, into the hole from which he had scooped a fortune. Ballarat, Bendigo, or Sandhurst, and Mount Alexander were the great foci of attraction. The terrible roads leading to these diggings turned into dust or mud beneath the tramp of tens of thousands of people, all on treasure-hunting bent. Accounts of huge nuggets unearthed from time to time kept the excitement at fever pitch. Hungry crowds settled like locusts on claims, and without waiting, in many cases, to obtain a licence, began digging for dear life, aided by the rocker or pan. Fortunes were made quickly, as Australia, and particularly Ballarat, is notable for the coarseness of its gold, which seems in this continent to have largely escaped the grinding to powder so noticeable in California. One man, who had saved up ^ioo, invested the sum in as many acres of land, which two years later he sold to the diggers for .£120,000! and there are plenty of instances recorded in which a single stroke of the pickaxe or blow of the spade enriched the worker for life. One of the most remarkable nuggets came to light very early in 185 1, at Meroo Creek, New South Wales. An Australian black, employed as a shepherd by Dr. Kerr, amused himself with gold-seeking while tending the sheep. He happened to see a speck of 74 The Gold-fields of the Antipodes some substance glittering on the surface of a quartz boulder, and chipped off a piece with his tomahawk, and there, embedded in the rock, lay a mass of gold which, when placed on the scales, weighed 102 lbs. 9 oz. — a value of over ^4000 sterling 1 The arrival of this nugget in Bathurst — the centre of the New South Wales industry — produced a furore which has been thus described by a local newspaper : " Bathurst is mad again. The delirium of golden fever has returned with increased intensity. Men meet to- gether, stare stupidly at one another, talk incoherent nonsense, and wonder what will happen next. Since the affair was blazoned to the world several gentle- men of our acquaintance have shown undoubted symptoms of temporary insanity. Should the effect be at all proportionate in Sydney to its population, the inmates of Bedlam Point may be fairly reckoned as an integral part of the population." Victoria has contributed by far the largest pro- portion of gold found in Australia. The diggers got from the alluvial workings no less than 2,738,404 oz. in 1852, and 3,150,021 oz. during the following year. To quote totals, between 1851 and 1895, Victoria was responsible for 60,155,047 oz. ; New South Wales for 11,421,544 oz. ; while Queensland, which only entered into serious competition as late as i860, came in a good third with 10,604,031 oz. For the first two colonies 1851 and 1852 were the golden years, since they witnessed the working over of the rich alluvial deposits. Probably the best 75 The Romance of Mining record for washing comes from Mount Alexander. A party of five men had sunk six holes to depths ranging from thirty to sixty feet, without success ; and they were so disheartened that they determined to give up after one more attempt. Before the seventh hole was three yards deep they " struck it rich/' with a vengeance. In eight hours 120 lbs. troy weight of virgin gold was amassed, giving the lucky men ^5000 to divide between them ! Such u strikes " were, of course, the exception ; and October 1851 saw many folk returning disgusted to Melbourne ; people who were unfit for the busi- ness, — who had tried their hands, and found that, instead of getting gold easily by merely scratching the surface, they must work hard for it, experiencing meanwhile much hardship and privation. Yet even their dismal accounts did little to stem the tide of immigration. Melbourne could not house all the new-comers who poured in by every boat. Hotels and lodging-houses overflowed. A city of tents — aptly named Canvas Town — rose on the south side of the Yarra-Yarra. "The scenes in Canvas Town were such as to jar upon the feelings of even the un- refined ; and in that huddled assemblage there were many delicate and sensitive persons plunged by cir- cumstances into a vortex which the master of the tent or hut had not anticipated. For the water- police, and the female immigrants who arrived under contract, hulks were secured in the bay." 1 1 G. W. Rusden, " History of Australia." 76 The Gold-fields of the Antipodes The hardships of this mode of life soon rendered it imperative to provide decent shelter for those who needed a refuge. Public and private subscriptions were raised to build an u Institution for Homeless Immigrants." The buildings, though rough, were a cleanly contrast to the disgusting confusion of Canvas Town, and were gladly used by nearly 8000 people in one year. All this movement of population had lasting effects. Before twelve months had passed, Melbourne had doubled her numbers ; in a decade she rose from a small town of about 25,000 souls to a large city of 190,000 inhabitants. Land which before the n rush " cost .£68 per acre changed hands, thirty years later, at .£80,000 ; and to-day is scarcely purchasable. A writer speaking of the 1857 Melbourne says : "Only three short years ago, this undulating surface (North Melbourne) was covered with grass, and dotted over with gum trees. The traveller, as he sallied forth to the bush, in those days gone by, would turn his nag when at the highest spot, to take a last view of the thriving capital of Victoria and the bright blue water beyond, where some considerable shipping already well attested the progress of a flourishing young colony. Since then, however, all had been changed into a wild and tumultuous development. The waters of Hobson's Bay were scarcely visible be- neath a forest of five or six hundred vessels. The grassy glades of North Melbourne were now a hard and dusty surface, cut up everywhere with roads, 77 The Romance of Mining and disturbed with the incessant noise of the traffic to the interior." 1 No country has been more opened up by its gold industry than has Australia. Gold brought settlers, who, after the first rushes, turned from precarious metal-seeking to more monotonous, but at the same time more certainly productive pursuits. Immense sums were spent on roads, railways, and other public works, which dotted the country over with large towns distinguished by their fine buildings, streets, parks, gardens, and reservoirs. The very areas on which a solitary shepherd earned a scanty meal by tending vagrant flocks, and where the emu stalked, or the kangaroo listened for the approach of an enemy, are now busy centres of industry, whose history opens with the word " Gold," but now records the advance of many-headed Industry. An unfortunate feature of the early mining days was the ill-feeling aroused by the collection of dig- ging fees. The goldfields swarmed with people only too ready to applaud the fiery eloquence of the pro- fessional agitator, devoted to the breeding of quarrels between the miner and the Government Goldfields Police. Many men refused to take out licences ; others grumbled at the amounts which they were called upon to pay ; and so acute became the excite- ment that in 1854 Ballarat won notoriety as the scene of a serious armed collision. On the 6th October a miner named James Scobie was killed in 1 William Westgarth, "Victoria and the Australian Gold Mines." 78 The Gold-fields of the Antipodes a scuffle ; and public suspicion fastened itself on one Bentley, an ex-convict from Tasmania, who kept a disreputable public-house called the Eureka Hotel. A mob burnt his house, and would have lynched the proprietor had not the police stepped in and rescued him, to be afterwards tried and sentenced to three years' penal servitude. Three persons, who had been arrested on the charge of burning the Eureka Hotel, received much lighter punishments ; but the Ballarat people, considering the sentence unjust, demanded their release. On this being refused, the agitators got to work and spread sedition, which terminated in a conflict between the mob and the military forces under Captain Thomas. Several pri- soners were taken by the soldiers. A mass meeting unanimously chose an Irishman, Peter Lalor, as the popular chief ; and on the 30th November all work was suspended preparatory to a second attack on the Government forces. The rioters fired into the camp. Three days later Captain Thomas took the offensive, carried the Eureka stockade, behind which the rebels had entrenched themselves, and made 125 prisoners, besides killing a few dozen of the defenders. The prisoners were despatched to Melbourne for trial ; but instead of being awarded the penalties they so richly deserved they were pro- nounced " not guilty " by the twelve " good men and true," who saw in their conduct not an act of treason but the deeds of heroes. So low had law and order fallen in Victoria ! 79 The Romance of Mining Goldfield history, like other history, repeats itself. Melbourne and Sydney were formidable rivals to San Francisco and the inland diggings in their scenes of extravagance. Though some miners quietly amassed wealth, the majority of the lower class acted up to the saying " Easy come, easy go." Mr. Rusden in his interesting volumes gives us a vivid sketch of the Australian spendthrift. u For- tunate gold scrapers flung their money broadcast in scenes of luxury and debauchery. Stories were told that many of them scorned to take change from a barber when tossing him a pound sterling ; that a roughly dressed man called a cab which he required for the day ; that when the driver replied that the man could not have it unless for more than he would like to pay — seven pounds — the novus homo threw him ten pounds, and told him to light his pipe with the difference ; and that in the very drunkenness of enjoyment of their wealth many diggers lit their pipes with bank notes." * The shopkeepers did a roaring trade, especially with men about to be married, whose one ambition was to deck their brides in the most expensive silks, satins, and laces that money could buy. The more civilised criticism, "That is very dear," gave place to the complaint, "Haven't you anything dearer than that?" and the shopman was, of course, equal to the occasion. One of the most peculiar features of the Australian gold- rush — the strenuous efforts made by the different 1 " History of x\ustralia," ii. 543. 80 The Gold-fields of the Antipodes colonies to keep their population at home — has already been hinted at. Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, was deserted by thousands who in 1 85 1 started for the Victorian diggings. Houses were abandoned, property became unsaleable, and business of all kinds was utterly strangled. As the emigrants carried with them all the cash they could raise, the banks, drained of gold, had to contract their circulation. And when some miners returned with 50,000 pounds' worth of the metal, they found themselves in the extraordinary plight of being unable to sell it, because there was no money available for its purchase ! The Government, to cut the Gordian knot, authorised the issue of notes against the ingots, at the rate of seventy-one shillings to the ounce, the notes to be legal tender ; and in the following year permission was obtained from England to coin gold tokens of five pounds, two pounds, one pound, and ten shillings respectively. Paper money then decreased, while credit and confidence were at once restored. To facilitate the return of the population, and to ensure the influx of goldw on by South Australians into their own colony, the authorities cut a road through the " scrub " for a hundred miles, and organised a system of convoys to escort gold from Victoria to South Australia. Crowds of emigrants willingly paid the two per cent, charge made for transport. The first convoy returned with 6000, the second with 19,235, the third with 28,206 ounces ; so that this colony, which in forty-five years mined 81 F The Romance of Mining only half a million ounces from her own territory, quickly amassed wealth which, when the rush was over, led to a rapid development of the country. Australia is as rich in u lode " gold as in " free " gold. The quartz of the mountains has yielded very remarkable returns ever since the miners overcame their antipathy to improved machinery. Occasional veins carried so much metal that the use of a mere hand hammer proved remunerative. The Mount Lyell lodes contained from fifteen to twenty ounces to the ton of rock. The quartz quarried on the surface was not, at first, sent to mills to be crushed. Only fragments from which gold peeped received attention ; and even after mills were erected the methods of treatment were so imperfect that only the richest quartz yielded a profit. But with im- proved processes as much as .£4000 a week became quite ordinary earnings for a well-situated mill. Australian gold-mining owes so much of its romance to the large nuggets which, especially in Victoria, brought sudden fortune to some miners, that a page or two will be devoted to these interest- ing masses of metal. The formation of nuggets has been explained in various ways. Some authorities suppose that they have grown in the alluvium, and have been gradually increased by deposits of metal from the chemically charged water which for ages percolated the stratum. Others are unwilling to accept this theory ; preferring to believe that nuggets are the result of fusion. The problem has not yet received a definite solution. It 82 The Gold-fields of the Antipodes is certain, however, that Australia's nuggets are never likely to be surpassed in size. Appended is a list of the largest specimens, the date and place of their discoveries, and their respective weights 1 : — Nugget. Date of Discovery. Place. Weight in Oz. i. " The Welcome Stranger " Feb. 5, 1869 Dunolly, Victoria 2268 2 1 ' Welcome Nugget " ... June 15, 1858 Ballarat 2217 3 " Blanche Barkly " August 27, 1857 Kingower, Victoria 1741 4 Jan. 31, 1857 Ballarat 1619 5 1857 Dunolly 1363 6 Nov. i, 1858 Bursadong, N.S.W. 1286 7 July 1851 Bathurst 1272 8 Sept. 8, 1854 Ballarat 1 177 9 Jan. 20, 1853 ,, 1117 10 June 1855 Maryborough 1034 ii Jan. 22, 1853 Ballarat IOII 12 Heron Nugget March 29, 1855 Mt. Alexander 1008 13 August i860 Ballarat 834 14 March 1857 Kingower, Victoria 810 is i860 >> 11 805 16 February 1861 i> n 782 17 Oct. 22, 1856 Daisy Hill, Victoria 715 18 May 1856 Taradale, Victoria 648 19 May 1858 .1 11 648 20 Oct. 22, 1855 Mclvor, Victoria 645 21 Feb. 1, 1854 Ballarat 625 22 April i860 Castlemaine, Victoria 600 23 October 1852 Bendigo 573 24 March 6, 1855 Ballarat 571 25 ' ' Nil Desperandum " November 1857 ,, 540 26 Jan. 15, 1858 Maryborough 537 27 1856 Taradale, Victoria 524 23 March 1855 Ballarat 480 29 1853 ,, 37i 30 February 1853 ,, 368 31 1851 Bathurst 366 32 "Dascombe " January 1852 Bendigo 338 33 1854 ,, 338 34 i860 Castlemaine 304 35 1852 Bendigo 288 36 May i860 Kingower 230 Compiled from a list made by Mr. William Birkmyre. 83 The Romance of Mining It is unnecessary to describe life in the goldfields, because what has already been said of the Californian diggings applies in a large degree to their Australian counterparts. The parallel is continued into the later history of the two countries ; for a large pro- portion of those people who came to seek gold re- mained to take up sheep farming and agriculture, on which the real prosperity of both Eldorados ultimately rests. 8 4 CHAPTER V WESTRALIA Sterile character of West Australia — Gold at Coolgardie — A lucky find — Another lucky find — The luck of " Hannan's " — The Westralian fields — Coolgardie — Wind and Dust — Want of Water — "Dry-blowing" — ''■Hannan's Brownhill " and "Great Boulder" — The Coolgardie Water Supply — A pipe 328 miles long — Description of the pipe line — Effect of Gold discoveries on Australia. Rapid as has been the development of Eastern Australia since the first discovery of gold, an even more remarkable rate of progress is transforming the — till comparatively lately — waste expanses of the most western colony. At the time when diggers first swarmed into New South Wales and Victoria, West Australia was a mere No Man's Land, unin- habited except by aborigines and a handful of convicts ; and probably only a very few people ever suspected that among the sandhills lay treasure which, thirty-six years later, should open for Australia a second era of gold-mining. The Kimberley field, in the most northerly part of the colony, was located in 1882, and lt pro- claimed" in 1886. But it was not till May or June of 1892 that Messrs. Bayley and Ford, starting from Southern Cross, set out on their memorable journey which resulted in the discovery of the Coolgardie goldfield, where they obtained 2000 ounces by 85 The Romance of Mining merely smashing up the quartz with rude imple- ments. Though their search was deliberate, the actual find was, as so often happens in the history of mining, a matter of pure accident. Bayley had long prospected without success, and was returning to Perth, the capital, very much "down in the mouth," when the lucky moment arrived. His horse became restless in the night, and began to kick and plunge so vigorously that Bayley went out to coax the animal into quietude. Whilst on his way he stumbled over what he at first thought to be a stone, but which proved on examination to be a huge mass of pure gold ! A claim was at once pegged out, and in four weeks .£10,000 had been realised. This claim stands near the centre of the town which, after the inevitable "rush/' sprang up like a mushroom and was christened Coolgardie, a name familiar to the ears of many people who take little interest in mining affairs. The Pilbarra Goldfields, half-way up the west coast, owe their origin to an equally trivial incident. " It appears," says Mr. A. G. Charleton, in The Engineering Magazine, " that a discerning youth of tender years picked up a stone to throw at a cow (some say a crow), and, noticing that it contained gold, reported the fact to the ' Warden.' This gentleman was so excited at the news that he flashed the intelligence by wire to the then Governor of the Colony, informing him that a lad had picked up a stone, to throw it at a crow — but forgetting to add 86 Westralia that he had seen gold in it ! The Governor, much surprised, but moved with curiosity, wired back : ' Yes ; and what happened to the crow ? ' (or cow). This elicited explanations which led to the pro- clamation of the district as a goldfield, and in conse- quence of the rush that followed in the same year (1888) 3493 ounces of gold were obtained." Twenty-four miles from Coolgardie is Kalgoorlie mine, otherwise known as " Hannan's," the scene of many wonderful " finds," notable among which was that of a man who, to while away his time one Sunday, began to prospect under his tent and struck a rich " pocket." Unfortunately for him, he was so excited that he gave away the secret before he had pegged out his claim, and therefore forfeited all rights to ground other than what his tent actually covered. Through accidents such as these West Australia, shut off by the desert from the eastern diggings, came into her own, despite the prophecies of geolo- gists that the colony could not, according to scientific laws, contain any gold whatsoever. There are now seventeen recognised fields in West Australia : Kimberley, Pilbarra, West Pilbarra, Ashburton, Gascoyne, Peak Hill, Murchison, East Murchison, Mount Margaret, Yalgoo, North Coolgardie, Yilgarn, Coolgardie, Broad Arrow, East Coolgardie, North- East Coolgardie, and Dundas. Each field contains many mines, and between them they cover a total area of 324,569 square miles — eight times that of England ! So much for the geologists ! 87 The Romance of Mining The Coolgardie fields, on which our attention will be centred in the following pages of this chapter, lie about 350 miles east of Perth, on a plateau elevated more than 1200 feet above sea level. The plateau is crossed by a succession of sandy ridges, their crests separated by shallow valleys running north and south. Sandstorms and flies are its chief draw- backs. Whirlwinds, called " willy-willies " by the aborigines, spring up suddenly, spin madly along, seizing in their vortex dust, paper, and any other small objects which they may meet, and as suddenly die down. Unpleasant as they are, the high winds, which blow continuously for weeks together, are worse. An idea of their effect on the population may be gathered from the fact that fences four feet high have been completely buried by the sand- particles they sweep along in less than two years. The great need of Western Australia is water. The annual rainfall averages but a few inches. Hence mining has, in many districts, to be carried on in a fashion accommodated to natural conditions. Water being absent, but wind very present, the shallow diggings are worked by the " dry-blowing ' ; method. After the alluvium has been well shaken to bring the larger lumps to the surface for removal, the workman pours a panful of the u dirt " from a height of four or five feet into a second pan on the ground at his feet. He stands edge-ways to the wind, which blows away some of the dust but allows the heavier gold to fall perpendicularly. The pro- 88 Westralia cess must be repeated until only a little rubbish containing the gold is left. Then the miner begins to blow with his mouth, and as soon as he has removed what he can in this manner, he finishes off the separation with a little of his precious water. Corresponding to the cradle of river gold-washers is the "dry-blower," consisting of a couple of slant- ing frames fixed on legs so that the miner can shake the contents backwards and forwards, like a servant sifting ashes and cinders. The dirt, fed into a hopper having a bottom pierced with large holes, passes down the inclined screens, on the way losing its finer particles, which fall through. The coarser stuff passes over the end, while the gold flakes and nuggets collect behind the riffles placed to catch them. The fine matter is treated by hand in the manner already described. Twelve hundredweight of dirt can be treated by a " dry-blower " of this kind in one hour. More elaborate patterns, fitted with bellows to produce an artificial air current, handle several tons in the same time. u Hannan's Brownhill " and " Great Boulder " are two of the principal lode mines. Their yields have been prodigious. In "The Land of Gold" Mr. Julius Price describes these two properties as he saw them a decade ago, when operations had only recently been begun by the proprietary companies. He descended the main shaft of Hannan's Brownhill, and, he says, " I was astonished to find that the whole place was positively sparkling with gold. I 8 9 The Romance of Mining had often pictured to myself what a gold mine would be like, but in my wildest dreams I had never imagined anything to equal this. The man (a miner) must have knocked out at least a hundred pounds' worth of ore during the few minutes I had been watching him in this veritable Aladdin's Cave. It absolutely made my mouth water to take up some of the lumps of stone lying loosely at my feet, whilst I could not help trying to realise the feelings of this poor digger, finding himself quite alone and surrounded by all this untold wealth which he was getting out for the benefit of others, whilst he him- self was only earning .£3, 10s. per week!" At the time of his visit the manager had under lock and key from twenty to thirty tons of pure gold ! This brief account of Westralian mines — brief it must be, through limitations of space — may fitly con- clude with a glance at a huge engineering feat which has been performed in the interests of the goldfields. In almost all other gold-bearing districts of the world the metal has been found not far from a stream or natural reservoirs. We have already alluded to the great Californian system of pipes and flumes ; and the reader will remember that some of these aque- ducts are of great length. Unfortunately for Western Australia, the climate and configuration of the ground are such as to make it impossible to store rain water in sufficient quantities within easy reach of the mining centres. For separating gold dust from gravel and sand wind may serve ; 90 Westralia but the quartz-crushing mills cannot do their work without a plentiful supply of water. Furthermore, where a scarcity prevails, disease, especially typhoid fever, is rampant. The Government therefore determined to fetch pure water from the nearest copious springs. These happen to be in the Darling Range — near the coast — three hundred and thirty miles distant. The difficulty of piping the liquid is seriously increased by the fact that the Coolgardie district lies very high, practically a thousand feet above the source of supply ; not to mention the existence of intervening belts of even greater altitude. Truly an immense undertaking, the execution of which ranks among the greatest engineering feats of an engineering age ! The contract for the piping, which figured at .£1,025,124 — went to two Australian firms, Mr. Meysham Ferguson, of Melbourne, and Messrs. G. & C. Hoskins, of Sydney. Mr. Ferguson in- vented the " locking-bar " pipe, used thoughout on the scheme. The peculiarity of this form of pipe is that it is made of steel plates of semi-circular section fastened together along their edges with two longitudinal " locking-bars " of soft steel, the flanges of which are pressed on to the edges of the plates until a tight joint is effected. Owing to the absence of rivets and overlapping plates this type of conduit is quickly made and offers remarkably small frictional resistance to water passing through it. In com- 9i The Romance of Mining parison with cast-iron or " built-up " pipes it also scores under the heads of water-tightness, strength, and economy in hauling and handling. By the courtesy of the proprietors of Cassier's Magazine we are permitted to quote the following description of this colossal work. The Helena River was the site chosen to provide the supply for the fields, the flow being impounded at a point five miles from Mundaring Station and about twenty-five miles from Perth. Seventeen localities in all were inspected, and the position of the present dam site, where the hills converge to a narrow space and the country for miles round is flattened out, was apparently the best. The top of the dam is 753 feet in length, traversed by a neat iron lattice bridge over the crest, which is 100 feet above the bed of the river. The dam tapers in thickness from 75 feet at the river bottom to 10 feet at the top. As a maximum the sheet of water will be thrown back six or seven miles. The quantity of water is set down at 4,600,000,000 gallons. Alongside the dam is a tower which gives access to a number of valves allowing the water to be drawn off at various levels, while at the foot of the wall a scour valve permits the removal of any silt which may accumulate. Exterior to the dam and a little lower down the gully is the first pumping station, and the second one is only a mile and a half from it, but 400 feet above it. Here is situated a receiving tank with a 92 Westralia capacity close to half a million gallons. In all there are eight pumping stations and eleven tanks or reservoirs, with capacities from half a million to 12,000,000 gallons. The main service reservoir is 308 miles from the dam, and its capacity is 12,000,000 gallons. The minor service reservoir at Coolgardie holds a million, and the Mount Charlotte reservoir at Kalgoorlie, two million gallons. Receiving tanks of one million capacity were built at five of the pumping stations. A reserve tank for railway purposes was also built at a point along the route, and there are two regulating tanks holding 500,000 gallons. The level of the water at the lowest off-take at the dam reservoir is 340 feet above the sea, but so rough is the country and rising, that within a little over three miles an altitude exceeding a thousand feet is reached. Twenty-four miles from the dam the regulating tank is 1065 feet above sea-level, and then it gradually drops 100 feet in the 12-mile interval. The next regulating tank is only 476 feet above the sea. After this the water flows by gravitation for 42 miles until it empties into the reservoir, which is 700 feet above the sea. The next pumping station, 63 miles away, is 980 feet above sea level, and 32-J miles farther on is No. 5 pumping station, 1293 feet above sea level. The level varies only 32 feet within the next section of 46 miles, which terminates at No. 6 station. In another short length of 32 miles 93 The Romance of Mining a rise of 56 feet is experienced over the last. No. 7 section is 45 miles, and finds a rise of only 26 feet to No. 8 pumping station. Twelve miles farther is the site of the main service reservoir, at 1 6 10 feet above the sea, and 1270 feet above the lowest take-off of the Mundaring reservoir. From there the Coolgardie reservoir is 10J miles, and the level 15 15 feet above the sea, so that the water will drop 95 feet to Coolgardie, and from there to Mount Charlotte at Kalgoorlie, 27 miles away, there is a further drop of 160 feet, for the last reservoir is 1325 feet above the sea. Here, at a distance of 325 miles from the dam, the pipes at present terminate, but before long they will be extended " farther east." Through the 30-inch pipe — the longest in the world — five million gallons flow daily into the heart of the sandy desert. We shall hear no more of Coolgardie folk paying 2s. 6d. per gallon for their water, or of store-keepers guarding the water-bottle more jealously than the whisky-jar. Abundance has been brought from a distance equal to that separating London from Berwick-on-Tweed ; not to a huge metropolis, but to a mining town of a few thousand inhabitants. And what was the wizard which conjured up the scheme ? Gold ; already the creator of railways from the coast into the far interior. The magnetic influence of the precious metal has in half a century opened up Australia in a manner even more striking than the development 94 Westralia of the Great West after the Californian discoveries. Open your map of Australia and trace the railways. You will then follow in the steps of the gold-seekers, who plodded painfully on foot where the iron-horse now snorts with its heavy burdens. 95 CHAPTER VI THE GOLD-MINES OF THE WITWATERSRAND Gold and War — Value of these mines — Nature of Transvaal deposits — The Witwatersrand— " Banket "—Value of the " Banket " reef— The gold output — The "Essential Kaffir" — The labour supply — Recruiting — Chinamen imported — How the mines are worked — How the ore is treated — The cyanide process — Difference between Rand and other gold mines. South Africa ! These words spell two things for the world in general and for Englishmen in particular — Gold, the producer of War ; War, the consumer of Gold. Search the pages of history through and through, and where will you find a conflict approaching the great Boer war in magnitude, which can be directly traced to the hatred bred between nations by the rich treasures that have for ages lain hidden beneath the earth ? The rights and wrongs of that dreadful struggle between the unprogressive, but by no means des- picable, Transvaal farmer, and one of Europe's greatest powers, we are not called upon to discuss here. Both nations fought with the courage of their convictions, determined to decide, whatever might be the cost, whether South Africa should belong to the Boer or to the Englishman. The wounds, physical and mental, received by the combatants are scarcely 9 6 o -^Q i4i;376 ster- ling. While the fighting lasted, these wonderful mines lay idle in most cases, the prey of inleaking water which there were no pumps to stem, for the workmen had either fled from the country or were carrying rifle and bandolier in its defence. Divi- dends fell to zero point. Thousands of shareholders found themselves forced to sell their scrip at a ruinous loss. But with the advent of British rule the pumps got to work again ; stamps were repaired and added to ; all available labour — its amount sadly diminished by the wealth that the Kaffirs had accumulated as camp followers — collected ; and the Transvaal goldfields entered on the second era of their history. The Transvaal mines are practically all reef mines. We have, therefore, no romantic stories of wonderful "finds" such as play so large a part in the annals of Orange Land and of the Antipodes. The Lydenburg 97 G The Romance of Minin g district first attracted notice in 1876. The De Kaap goldfields were discovered in 1884; and in 1885 a man named Arnold, working on the farm Langlaagte, broached the riches of the marvellous Witwatersrand deposits. Johannesburg, city of dust and gold-dust, was founded the following year, and in one decade a community of a few hundred people had swelled to a large town, which the census returns estimated to contain 107,000 inhabitants. Land increased prodigiously in value. Boers who had hitherto lived frugally on their farms suddenly blossomed out as the favourites of fortune. What, then, is this district with the long name ? The Witwatersrand is a range of hills running east and west, which separates the Limpopo basin on the north from the Vaal basin on the south. At some period early in the earth's history subterranean agencies heaved up the surface of the plateau, until the strata were broken and so much bent that their edges were exposed. The strata consisted of quartz, sandstone, and igneous rocks, sandwiched between which are layers of conglomerate, which from their appearance the Dutch named " banket/' or almond- rock. The conglomerate contains very finely-divided gold, auriferous iron pyrites, copper, zinc, and anti- mony. At the " outcrop " — i.e. the points at which the edges of the sandwich are exposed — the conglomerate is easily reached, and surface working is possible ; but the farther the miner gets horizontally from the 98 Gold-mines of the Witwatersrand outcrop the deeper he must go before he strikes the gold-bearing deposits. Owing to the il banket " strata being fairly close together, a single vertical shaft may cut through several in succession at various depths. For the first year or two in the history of the Rand goldfields deep-level mining was practically ignored, because the ore was not considered to be worth the expense of sinking deep shafts. Accordingly, atten- tion was confined to claims within a few hundred feet of the outcrop. But when the conglomerate proved very rich, and when, in January 1890, the May Deep Level shaft struck the main reef at a considerable distance from the outcrop, the price of deep-level claims rose rapidly, and "the dividing line between valuable gold-mining claims and valueless veldt receded farther and farther from the outcrop." 1 Experts have estimated that at 5000 feet from the outcrop the vertical depth will be only 2000 feet ; at 8000 feet, rather more than 4000 feet ; and at a distance of three miles about 7000 feet. The " Simmer and Jack," sunk from a point 4000 feet horizontally from the outcrop of the Main Reef, struck it when the shaft had reached a depth of 2400 feet, or rather less than half a mile. As conditions in the Transvaal appear to be very favourable to deep mining, there are no physical difficulties to prevent the sinking of shafts one and a-half miles deep. So far as operations have been carried, the reef has proved very reliable, being struck 1 ''The Gold Mines of the Rand," Hatch & Chalmers. 99 The Romance of Mining within a few feet of the calculated depth. Mr. Hays Hammond, one of the greatest authorities on the metallurgy of the Transvaal, contributes the follow- ing opinion to Cassiers Magazine : — " It is estimated that for every mile in length along the course of the reefs, down to a vertical depth of iooo feet for the dip of these reefs, gold to the value of about .£10,000,000 will be extracted. This is a conservative estimate — at least as applied to the central section of the Rand. If we assume these conditions to obtain to a depth of 6000 feet verti- cally, we have the enormous sum of .£60,000,000 for each mile in length. It is not unreasonable to suppose that these conditions will be maintained along most of the central section, say for a distance of ten miles, in which case we would have an auri- ferous area, within practicable mining depths, con- taining upwards of -£600,000,000 value of gold. It is less safe to make any prediction of the gold product to be expected from the east and west sections ; but it is perfectly safe to say that the output of these sections would very greatly augment the amount I have named. Messrs. Hatch and Chalmers, well known engineers of extensive South African experience, compute the available gold from these portions of the Rand at .£200,000,000." A treasure well worth winning ! During the eight months preceding the outbreak of the Boer war in 1899 the Witwatersrand produced £12,405,032 sterling. But for the necessary stoppage of the 100 Gold-mines of the Witwatersrand mines the year's take would have touched twenty millions sterling, a figure that rivals those of the most palmy days of California and Australia. No less than 71 per cent, of the yield came from the central (Johannesburg) section of the Rand ; and 24 per cent, was raised from the deep-level workings. The total gold product of the Rand in that year represented a quarter of the gold mined throughout the world; and with a steady development South Africa will undoubtedly take first place among all Eldorados. From other goldfields those of the Transvaal differ in one important particular, viz., in the labour used. Here all purely manual, and some skilled work, is performed by natives. The Kaffirs, or "boys," as they are universally called in South Africa, drill, shovel, lay tracks, do the timbering, tramming, ore- sorting, stoking, &c. Skilled labourers, such as fitters, carpenters, engine - drivers, are of white nationalities, and command very high wages. The " Essential Kaffir " well deserves his adjective. Without his help the gold-mines could never have been developed, as the climate, though healthy, soon tells upon the European or American who has to do hard physical work below ground. There is the further difficulty that where white and coloured men are engaged on the same job, the nature of their respective duties must be clearly separated, the white directing, the others obeying. If well supervised, the Kaffir can use the pick or drill as effectively as he did 101 The Romance of Mining his assegai before the white man put a stop to inter- tribal raiding. A problem which African mine-owners have had to face from the beginning is that relating to the supply of labour. By nature the Kaffir is a lazy fellow, well content to till his little maize plot — or, rather, let his wives till it — sit in the sun, and smoke. His one incentive to labour under the sway of the white man is the desire to accumulate wealth which will enable him to buy wives — or more wives if he be already married — an estate, and the finery in which he loves to deck himself out — the " top-hat " of civilisation forming an important item in his wardrobe. Before the war over 100,000 natives were at work in the mines. The war either frightened most of these away, or gave them em- ployment as bullock-drivers. Those who went stayed away ; those who remained in the Transvaal earned sufficient money to retire for a long time to their kraals. So that when the fighting was over labour became very scarce. Experts estimated the shortage of hands for the mines alone to reach 129,000 ; and agriculture to be proportionately handicapped. It had been found necessary, as early as 1893, to establish a Native Labour Department for providing an adequate inflow of workmen. The northern parts of the Transvaal were first tapped by white men who travelled about engaging the Kaffirs to work under contract for stated periods of service. A depot was established at Pietpotgieter's Rust ; another 102 Gold-mines of the Witwatersrand at Zandfontein, and a third at Pretoria, the intervals being broken by buildings to serve as shelters and rest-houses for the gangs travelling south. Every recruit had to be vaccinated, fed, and housed. From Pretoria the Kaffirs were carried by train to the Rand, where they occupied the compounds adjoining each mine. The system worked very well, as it protected the natives both on their journeys and when " in residence " at the gold-fields. But, unfortunately, licences for the sale of alco- holic drinks were freely granted by the Boer autho- rities to traders in the compounds, who did a brisk business with the Kaffir, to whom " fire-water " is the summum bonum of life, and to be indulged in as freely as funds permit. So, while on the one hand some men made fortunes out of the traffic, on the other the efficiency of native labour was so much impaired as to provide the u Uitlanders " with a genuine grievance against the Boer Executive, which looked callously on. The recruiting system has been revived, but not with its former success. For two years depression reigned supreme in Johannesburg ; the mines were many, but the labourers were few. At the end of December things had become so desperate that Sir George Farrar moved a resolution in the Transvaal Legislative Council to the effect that the Govern- ment should introduce an Ordinance " providing for the importation of indentured unskilled coloured labourers to supplement the labour supply of the 103 The Romance of Mining Witwatersrand." The matter was referred to the Home Government, and, after warm discussion in the House of Commons, the Transvaal received per- mission to introduce Chinese labour under certain restrictions. Round the question of the " yellow invasion " violent controversy has raged ; those favouring the importation of Celestials urging that without some such measure the Transvaal must lapse into bankruptcy, and the supply of African labour could not possibly meet the demand ; their op- ponents warmly upholding the view that with time Kaffirs would flock in, and that in the meanwhile much greater use might be made underground of labour-saving machinery, which is strikingly absent from some South African mines. Anyhow, a batch of 1047 Chinese arrived on June 10, 1904, en route to the New Comet Mine, and before the end of the year 19,444 pigtails wagged in the compounds of the Rand. There is no workman in the world to beat the Chinaman for docility, quickness, and industry. He has already made his mark on the output ; and very probably the Kaffir, seeing that he no longer has the mine-owner at his mercy, may become scared and seek a job before all the berths are filled up. From the labour question, which has become the peg for partisan orators to hang up their wares on, let us divert our attention to the actual working of the mines. The Rand is dotted over with tall chimneys, huge 104 Gold-mines of the Witwatersrand wheels, and ugly buildings containing mills, hoisting engines, and pumps. These indicate the mouths of shafts, which are vertical or inclined, according to the position of the property. We will suppose that the particular mine taken as typical of the Rand u propositions," as a Yankee would say, is at a distance of 500 feet from the outcrop of the reefs, runs 2000 feet east and west, and 1000 feet north and south. Being so near the outcrop, the portion of the reef underlying the pro- perty dips at a big angle to the horizontal. The manager therefore sinks a vertical mainshaft near the boundary vertically nearest to the reef ; and when the reef has been struck continues the shaft parallel to the reef in the stratum beneath it. From the shaft, at different levels, usually 150 feet apart, " cross - cuts " are made north and south into the reef, and from these again " drives " are cut east and west through the reef itself. The drives are connected by "winzes," which, together with the drives, divide the reef into blocks — called " stopes " — of ore. The operation of cutting out the blocks, removing the valuable parts, and filling in the cavities with the rubbish, or with material lowered from above, is termed " stoping." tl Underhand " stoping signifies the method of working downwards from an upper drive to the drive below, while " overhand " stoping expresses the reverse process. In the first case — underhand stoping is most usual on the Rand as being more easily learnt by unskilled 105 The Romance of Mining labourers — the ore is shot down the nearest winze to the level below, where it is caught in cars, and transported through the cross - cuts to the shaft. The latter has a section varying in dimensions within timbers from n feet by 5 feet to 26 feet by 6 feet ; is strongly timbered at the sides, and divided into several compartments for skips and cages. Should overhand stoping be adopted, the roof of the level is strongly timbered or protected by a strip of reef left over it. The miners then get to work, hacking at the roof, passing good stuff through a vertical " ore pass " into the cars in the level below, and building up a sloping bank of rubbish which has its upper face parallel to the lower surface of the stope. Sometimes " breast stoping " is preferred, i.e. attacking the block almost vertically, so that it may be termed a very perpendicular variety of the underhand method. Ore is loosened with the aid of dynamite placed in the bottom of holes drilled by hand or machinery. The high price of this commodity, when the Boers held the monopoly of supplying it, was one of the chief causes of friction between the Uitlanders and the Pretorian Government. The " banket " is made up of white quartz pebbles cemented together by a bluish substance containing iron pyrites and gold. In the beginning of things the three materials were probably merely mixed without adhesion ; but at some later period, when 106 Gold-mines of the Witwatersrand the granite pushed up the reefs, great heat forced and combined them into their present condition. When a reef is very thin — sometimes it dwindles to a few inches — the miners are obliged to hack away a sufficient amount of the native rock on both sides to give them room to work in. A part of this useless material serves to form " stulls," or supports, between the walls of the lode. From the mines the ore is wound up in skips and tipped automatically into ore bins or trucks, which carry it off to the sorting-house. There it is fed into a hopper, washed, and dropped, a little at a time, on to the sorting table or sorting conveyor, according to the practice of that particular mine. The former is a circular, revolving counter, 30 feet or more in its external diameter ; the centre being an open space 6 yards in diameter. " Boys " stand all round on both sides and, as the table slowly revolves, pick off all the rubbish. A scraper is continually shooting what passes their inspection into a crushing machine, which pounds it into lumps about the size of road-mending granite. In some mines the table is replaced by an endless- belt conveyor, an American invention. After the preliminary crushing the ore is trans- ported by trucks or indiarubber belts to the mills, where great stamps stand in a double row, each stamp fed by its own bin. A heavy vertical bar, shod at the bottom with a steel shoe 9 inches in diameter, and furnished with a projection near the 107 The Romance of Mining top, is raised and dropped 90 times a minute by a cam on a horizontal revolving bar. It falls about 9 inches, and crushes the ore, fed by a hopper, against a steel die of equal diameter. Altogether, the pestle weighs upwards of 2000 lbs. The pulverised material, called pulp, passes through fine screens on to inclined copper plates coated with mercury, which swallows most of the fine gold, and, when fully saturated, is retorted to separate the metals. About 40 per cent, of the gold stays in the " tailings," which have to be treated chemically. They are first shaken in a u Frue " vanner, an endless belt which is given a lateral and a progressive motion simultane- ously, while a stream of water passing over the stuff removes the lighter portions — called " slimes." The " concentrates," or heavier parts, are now lifted by buckets on the circumference of an enor- mous wheel into a trough, through which they flow into the cyanide vats, of a capacity of some hundreds of tons each. The vats are filled with a solution containing 2.25, 2.0, or 1.0 per cent, of cyanide of potassium, which, like mercury, has a great affinity for gold. After soaking in this solution for a week, the concentrates are drained, the solids being cast out on to the tailing heaps which plague Johannes- burg sadly during high winds, and the solution is taken to the precipitation boxes. The gold must now be separated from the cyanide, with which it has chemically combined. So to the potassium is thrown food which it likes even better than gold, 108 Gold-mines of the Witwatersrand — zinc ; and as it absorbs this it lets go of the more precious metal. The gold settles in a shining deposit, which is dried and melted in crucibles. And so, at the end of several days, there is seen a solid ingot containing 80 per cent, of gold and 10 per cent, of silver. This short account shows the reader how vastly more complicated reef mining is than placer mining. The simple pan, rocker, or sluice, have been replaced by machinery of a high order, and by chemical pro- cesses discovered after much careful laboratory re- search. The prevalence of machinery, the absence of the individual miner working for his own hand, the good supply of water, the abundance of provisions and other necessaries, all distinguish the Witwaters- rand from the goldfields of Australia and America. Almost from the very first days, the Transvaal gold has been attacked by companies backed up by capital, under conditions which lacked the usual hardships of the goldseeker's lot. 109 CHAPTER VII THE ELDORADO OF THE NORTH The Excelsior arrives in 'Frisco Bay — California upset — The Yukon district — The early approaches thither — Forty-Mile — George Carmack's find — A unique episode in gold-mining history — The reward of laziness — Wonderful earnings — Melting the ground — The "clean-up"— Fortunes made — A rush to the Klondike — The Chilkoot and White Passes — Down the Yukon — Terrible mortality among baggage animals in the White Pass — Growth of Dawson — High prices — Dawson of to-day — The Klondike "placers" — Mining laws — How Alaska is being opened up — The White Pass Railway — Alaska's future. One July day in 1897 a small steamer, the Excelsior, steamed into San Francisco harbour with a cargo that would have shamed many a Spanish galleon of old times. The passengers were miners, their faces scarred by much hardship and privation. About their personal appearance there was beyond this nothing remarkable ; but they brought with them, tied up in sacks, skins, old clothes, tins, jam- pots, and every imaginable article that would hold it, gold dust, — precious gold dust and nuggets, a full ton in weight. From that moment millions of tongues began to wag about the marvellous Tom Tiddler's ground in Alaska and North-West Canada, where gold could be got almost for the trouble of picking it up. So the report ran, and gossip soon bred a fever which caused men of all classes to quit no The Eldorado of the North their work and hurry off to secure in the distant goldfields, after a few months' labour, enough wealth to furnish them with a comfortable livelihood for the rest of their lives. The " rushes " to California and the Australian goldfields in the middle of the century were paralleled, even if not surpassed. Phy- sical obstacles could not deter the adventurer — clerk, mechanic, government official, or aristocrat, the thirst for the precious metal blinded his eyes to the coming and well-known terrors of precipitous, snow-clad mountains. Off he went, full of hope, but often miserably supplied with a proper outfit, destined, in many cases, to leave his bones in the passes, or at the bottom of the swirling Yukon. The lucky few made their fortunes in these early years of the boom, but they were the few. Before proceeding to an account of the Yukon goldfields as they are to-day, let us glance at the early history of the discovery of the vast gold- bearing gravel regions which cover many thousands of square miles on both banks of the mighty Yukon, a river ranking very high among the great streams of the world in point of both length and volume. For sixteen hundred miles the Yukon is navigable by craft of the size of the largest Mississippi steamers, and for five hundred miles above that by boats of half that size. Rising in the lakes on the north flank of the St. Elias Range, at about the 6oth parallel of north latitude, the river makes a huge sweep northwards ; at Fort Yukon, 350 miles north, in The Romance of Mining just touches the Arctic Circle ; and bends southwards again to its mouth. About 1600 miles up from the sea is the great gold-scattered tract to which men are hurrying, 300 miles nearer the Pole than St. Peters- burg. At midsummer twenty-two out of the twenty- four hours are brightened by the sun, shining down with almost tropical heat. At midwinter darkness claims an equal proportion of the day, and cold lays an icy grip on the country which is not slackened for months. Herein lies the main difference be- tween the early Klondike and the other great gold- fields of the world. A man might be lost in Cali- fornia, Africa, or Australia, and yet manage to find his way out. But not so here, " Once in always in," after the winter had commenced ; and to lose one's way was to perish. Until recent years the Klondike region — as large as France — was practically a terra incognita, traversed by a few Esquimaux, Indians, and half-breeds, and here and there a white fox-hunting trapper. The bears had the district pretty well to themselves. In or about 1878 the first gold-prospector entered the country, and from that time onwards small parties of miners made their way into the Klondike over the Chilkoot Pass from Dyea at the head of the Lynn Canal. From the outset gold was found in the bars of the Lewes River (the upper Yukon) and its tributaries, but generally in unremunerative amounts, considering the conditions under which mining had to be conducted in a region so re- 112 ? 45 SO ^ ^ ^ ■*- cP s ~ co- ^2 ts g § 00 *- ■a Kq The Eldorado of the North a busy shipbuilding port, turning out more boats in a given time than probably any other town in the world, large or small. The skilled and the unskilled were hewing and caulking, all bent upon the one common theme of having a boat, and by means of it reaching Dawson or some place in near proximity to the goldfields. No more inspiring lesson teaching man's ingenuity and determination could be found than this one of Nature's shipyard. One and all seemed to have got suited and fitted, and within a period of some two months not less than two thousand craft— sail boats, scows, and canoes, many of the lighter ones brought bodily over the passes — were launched upon the still icy waters of Lake Bennet." * Leaving the lakes, the voyager entered the Upper Yukon, and soon reached the Grand Canon Rapids, nearly a mile long, where the river is suddenly con- tracted to a width of ioo feet. The waves run high, and if the boat should be swamped, there is little chance of getting out, as the sides are sheer rock. From here to the White Horse Rapids, known as " the Miner's Grave," from the many casualties that have taken place in their turbulent waters, is very bad going. At the Rapids a portage must be made. Lake Le Barge is next reached, a lovely piece of water with practically no current flowing through it. Then the river again, and its strong stream carrying the boat sixty to seventy miles a day. On 1 "Alaska and the Klondike," A. Heilprin. 121 The Romance of Mining past Little Salmon River to Five Fingers Rapids, Rush Rapids, and Rink Rapids, after which the dangers of travel are pretty well over, and the Klon- dike is reached at last. Should the White Pass have been chosen, the difficulties of the mountains were lessened, partly because the gradients are not so severe, partly be- cause it has an altitude of over iooo feet less than the Chilkoot. The distance, about forty miles from Skagway, the port of landing, could, under favour- able circumstances, be covered in a day and a half. From Lake Bennet the route is the same as that already described. During the "rush" of '98 this Pass was largely used ; and sad traces of man's cupidity remained to mark the event. " The Desert of Sahara," writes Mr. Heilprin, after crossing the Pass in 1898, "with its lines of skeletons, can boast of no such exhibition of carcasses. Long before Bennet was reached, I had taken count of more than a thousand unfortunates (horses) whoje bodies now made part of the trail ; frequently we were obliged to pass directly over these ghastly figures of hide, and sometimes, indeed, broke into them. Men whose veracity need not be questioned assured me that what I saw was in no way the full picture of the 'life' of the trail; the carcasses of that time were less than one-third of the full number which in April and May gave grim character to the route to the new Eldorado. Equally spread out, this number would mean one dead animal for every 122 The Eldorado of the North sixty feet of distance ! The poor beasts succumbed not so much to the hardships of the trail as to lack of care and the inhuman treatment which they received at the hands of their owners. Once out of the line of the mad rush, perhaps unable to extricate them- selves from the holding meshes of soft snow and of quagmires, they were allowed to remain where they were, a food offering to the army of carrion eaters which were hovering about, only too certain of the meal which was being prepared for them. Often- times pack-saddles, and sometimes even the packs, were allowed to remain with the struggling or sunken animal — such was the mad race which the greed of gold inspired." After the 1897 rush Dawson, the "Francisco of the North," as it has been called, sprang up on the right bank of the Yukon in the angle between that river and the Klondike. On the opposite side of the Klondike is the town named after it. Early in 1897 Dawson was only a small group of huts, housing a few hundred miners. No less than 5000 entered the Yukon country in the summer of that year, and about 40,000 in the summer following. By the autumn of 1898 Dawson counted at least 20,000 inhabitants, and had all the usual features of a " boom " town. That is to say, most of the build- ings were of a somewhat ramshackle nature ; and prices ruled high. Supplies came in very irregu- larly by steamers from St. Michael's. The popula- tion was not a mere horde of prospectors intent 123 The Romance of Mining upon acquiring gold at all costs, but a medley in which Counts, naval and military officers, scientists, lawyers, pressmen, and storekeepers jostled one another. You had your choice of three weekly newspapers, several theatres (of a sort), an almost unlimited number of saloons, and a couple of banks. The insecurity of life and property usually associated with mining towns did not exist here, thanks mainly to the efficiency of the Canadian Mounted Police. So much did people trust one another, that if a purchaser entered a store, he said what he wished to have, threw his bag of gold-dust on the counter, and turned his back while the storekeeper weighed it out. To watch him would have been flagrantly " bad form," as implying mistrust of his honesty. One storekeeper did take a mean advantage of a customer ; and he was promptly removed in a manner resorted to in communities where rough justice and revolvers form judge and executioner. A Dawson hotel was not much to look at in those days ; but what it lacked in comforts it made up for in charges. A guest-room was generally innocent of looking - glass, washing apparatus, candlestick, window-panes (replaced by canvas). But for what it could boast in the way of a bed 26 shillings a night might be asked. Board cost about 20 shillings more a day. Yet as regards the commissariat the figure is not excessive in view of current prices. Mr. Heilprin details some of these: oranges and lemons 75 cents apiece ; apples 25 cents ; potatoes 124 The Eldorado of the North and onions 75 cents the pound ; butter 1 dollar the pound ; eggs, presumably fresh, but ordinarily with a stale inheritance, 2J dollars per dozen ; Bass's ale 2\ dollars a pint ; sugar 30 cents a pound. Water-melons, for which the Yankee has a loving tooth, could not be bought for less than 25 dollars each ; and in scarce times a cucumber fetched 5 dollars. Hay touched tremendous prices — 1400 dollars per ton. All this has, of course, been changed by the im- provement in methods of communication. From the middle of May till the middle of October about fifty-five stern-wheel steamboats ply between Dawson and St. Michael's. The pilots know the snags, bars, and channel-ways of the Yukon as well as those of the Mississippi. As the river in its broader parts has a current of only three miles an hour, the powerful engines drive the boats up the 1600 miles in about nine days, and down in a much shorter time. When the river freezes, the sleigh traffic begins over the smooth ice at its edge, both from St. Michael's and from the upper lakes inside the passes. Marvellous indeed is the change that has come over the township. " It has," says a writer in The World's Work, speaking of the year 1903, " a splendid system of waterworks, a local telephone system, and long-distance connections with the principal mines ; telegraphic communication with the world, churches of every denomination, large Federal and Municipal buildings, and good schools. . . . The streets are I2 5 The Romance of Mining all thoroughly lighted by electricity. Lines of steam- boats along the wharves, loading and unloading, and steam dredges at work in the river, give an animated aspect to the water-front. Three years ago the in- habitants of Dawson lived principally on dried and canned meats and German sliced evaporated potatoes. To-day fresh meat is brought in, frozen in winter, and in refrigerator cars to White Horse in summer, and all vegetables are grown in market gardens near by. Nothing pleases the Dawson citizen more than to entertain a sceptical visitor from the South at table with lettuce, asparagus, green peas, or celery, cauliflower, cabbage and carrots, according to the season, grown in his own rear-yard." 1 About three miles up the Klondike River from Dawson is the Bonanza Creek, the scene of the first important finds. Following the Bonanza thirteen miles or so the Eldorado Creek is struck. The trail formerly used by the miners was much impeded by morasses, through which the pedestrian ploughed his way, trusting to his high waterproof boots to keep out most of the wet. But matters have been much improved since then, and the claim-owner reaches his property without much trouble. In winter sleighs are largely used over the streams, up which a good dog-team will make the journey to Eldorado in three hours. A few words about the Klondike " placers " or surface claims. To the prospector the Eldorado 1 November 1903. 126 The Eldorado of the North looked unpromising enough, with its dense over- growth of bushes, trees, and moss. He might easily have passed through the valleys without suspecting that under that shaggy mantle lay vast quantities of " gravel " — pebbles chipped off the rocks of the region by water and worn to smoothness — among which lurked mingled clay and gold, the latter in- creasing in bulk at bed-rock level. A " creek ,; claim, i.e. one including a length of the stream, is 250 feet long, measured in the general direction of the creek. The breadth varies with the nature of the slopes on either side. If the slopes are gentle, the line drawn horizontally at a level three feet above the edge of the water, may run several hundreds of feet before the rim-rock of the slopes is reached. So a maximum breadth of 1000 feet has been fixed by the mining laws. A " river " claim can be staked out on one side only of the stream, and has the same maximum area as the creek claim ; and a " hill " claim is simi- larly restricted. All other placer claims are 250 feet square. The Canadian Government reserves every alternate ten claims, which can be disposed of in the way most advantageous to the authorities. Any trespasser upon a Crown claim loses such rights as he may have secured previously in private claims. To encourage discovery, any miner or party of miners who strike a new mine gets claims of double size up to two members. Though no miner can receive a grant of more 127 The Romance of Mining than one claim in one district, he is at liberty to purchase the claims of other people ; and many fortunes have been made by individuals who bought what the previous owners considered to be worthless properties. In order to prevent useless occupation of a claim it is stipulated that if an occupier fails to work his claim for seventy-two consecutive hours he forfeits his rights to it, unless a satisfactory reason can be assigned for his absence. It would be tedious to enumerate the dozens of other rules and regulations prevailing in the district ; and it must suffice to add that illegal " jumping " of claims — an unsavoury feature of the Californian and Australian goldfields — is unknown in the Klondike. On the Bonanza and Eldorado, which by now have been largely worked out, the primitive method of panning has been replaced by scientific sluicing and high pressure hydraulicing. The output of the Klondike region showed, at least till 1902, some fluctuation, but very large totals. In 1899 the miners won 16 million dollars; in 1900, 22J millions; in 1901, 18 millions; and 20 millions in 1902. Doubtless the time will come when more capital than at present will be spent on large dredgers to scoop up the deposits of the sand-bars and river beds, and pass them through sluicing-boxes. With an effective bucket-dredger, a very small yield of gold per cubic yard more than repays the cost of working. The method has been used, as we have seen, very successfully in California. 128 ■ " Panning " at the junction of the Eldorado and Bonanza Creeks, Klondike. The gold-seeker partially fills the fan with gold, dirt, and water, and by a peculiar circular motion flips the lighter stuff over the Up of the pan, while letting the gold remain at the bottom. [To face p. 128. The Eldorado of the North a Miners — gold-miners — have always done more than any other class of people toward developing the resources of the West. Were it not for the discovery of gold in California of 1849 there would not have been built a trans-continental railway until many years after 1868, and to-day much of the great country west of the Mississippi River would be practically a wilderness." These words/ written of California, apply equally to North-West Canada and Alaska. The development of the huge tract, as large as all Europe, Russia excluded, during the last decade has been nothing short of phenomenal. Alaska, like other sub-arctic countries, is subject to great extremes of temperature — 95 ° Fahrenheit in the summer, 70 to 8o° below zero in the winter. A person travelling up the Yukon in the warmer months would be astonished by what he saw after what he had read. Not a vestige of snow in sight, but flanking the river matted, luxuriant vegetation. Wheat of fine quality is now raised in Alaska, also stock. Besides gold, there are rich deposits of iron, nickel, copper, coal, only awaiting the advent of the railway to be mined in large quantities. Already the iron horse has arrived. In June 1898 a syndicate of English capitalists began work on what is now known as the White Pass and Yukon Railway, running from Skagway through the moun- tains to Lake Bennett. Though its length is but 112 miles, it ranks high as an engineering achieve- 1 Engineering Magazine, July 1903. 129 I The Romance of Mining ment ; possibly it was the most difficult bit of railway work ever performed. While clearing the trail for the track the navvies had to collect about 2000 dead horses into heaps and burn them with kerosene. Parts of the railway cost ^50,000 a mile, the total expenditure reaching -£1,000,000. So much needed was the road, however, that the first two years' run- ning showed profits of .£400,000 ; and shares which at one time had been going begging at 6J dollars sold at 750 dollars apiece ! The track-builder is hard at work in other parts of Alaska. From Nome to Anvil Creek a five-mile line has been laid, "The Wild Goose Road," which in spite of its title has also proved a very good dividend earner. Seward Peninsula, on which Nome, a city of 25,000 inhabitants, is built, will shortly be gridironed by railways leading to and from the prin- cipal gold-mines, and forming the western feeders of a main trans-Alaskan system. In 1902 a track 82 miles long stretched from West Dawson to Stewart River, from which point to the Lakes the iron horse will probably soon be running. A railway has also been planned from Valdez, the most northerly ice- free port of Alaska, to Tanana on the Yukon, 430 miles away ; and, more ambitious still, a great artery running southwards to join the Canadian trans-con- tinental metals. When these schemes are completed it will be possible to travel continuously from Ottawa or New York to Nome, and on to the westernmost point of Alaska, whence a submarine tunnel under 130 The Eldorado of the North the Behring Straits would provide a still longer run of several thousand miles to Paris. Alaska may be cold, mosquito infested, fly-bitten, but she is well worth the .£1,430,000 paid by the United States to Russia in 1867. A great future lies before her, one in which the gold industry may eventually recede into the background. Yet the day when George Carmack lit his camp fire, burnt away the moss, and discovered the rich gravel, is that from which the new era will be dated. As California and Australia were " boomed " by their gold rushes, and have since gained the larger part of their wealth from agricultural and grazing pur- suits, so may the Yukon district be known to our descendants as one of the great wheat and timber- producing countries of the world. J3 1 CHAPTER VIII DIAMOND MINING The high estimation in which the Diamond has always been held — Mythical properties — Actual properties — Its value as compared with that of the Ruby — Diamond - cutting at Amsterdam — The Carat — Varieties of Diamond — India the earliest source of diamonds — Brazil a rival — Minas Geraes — Bahia — An observant shepherd — South African finds — A child's toy leads to the discovery of the Kimberley fields — The diamond " pipe " — Early days in Kimberley — Water invades the mines — The Illicit Diamond Buyer — " De Beers, Limited " — How the Blue Earth is disintegrated — The Pulsator — Kaffir labourers — The Compound — Work below ground — Diamond market controlled by De Beers — Value of Kimberley production — Kimberley in the War — Historic Diamonds— The Great Mogul— The Koh-i-nur— The Pitt — The Orloff— The Cullinan. Round no substance in the world has romance woven itself more thickly than round the Diamond. The mere mention of this precious stone, "The Unconquerable/' conjures up thoughts of royal jewels ; of glittering assemblies where the rich vie with one another in the splendour of their ornaments ; of the marvellous " Arabian Nights " ; of Sinbad, Roc-borne into the valley where riches gleamed on every side ; of the battles and struggles from which an historic jewel has emerged, to be lost, maybe, in obscurity. The diamond has taken such a hold on the popular imagination that, were the stories col- lected which have the fortunes of this precious stone as their theme, a small library would be the result. No 132 Diamond Mining wonder, then, that ignorant folk have attributed to it many curious properties. In his " Natural History " Pliny writes : " The most valuable thing on earth is the diamond, known only to kings, and by them im- perfectly. It is engendered in the purest gold only. Six different kinds are known ; among these the Indian and Arabian, of such indomitable, unspeak- able hardness that when laid on the anvil it gives the blow back in such force as to shiver the hammer and anvil to pieces. It can also resist fire, for it is incapable of being burnt. This superiority over steel and fire is subdued by goat's blood, in which it must be soaked when the blood is fresh and warm ; then only when the hammer is wielded with such force as to break both it and the anvil will it yield. Only a god could have communicated such a valuable secret to mankind. When at last it yields by means of goat's blood, it falls into pieces so small that they can scarcely be seen." l Behind these curious ideas there is a modicum of truth. Exceeding hardness is the most peculiar quality of the diamond, which can be scratched by no other substance, while it will make its mark on any body over which it is drawn. As regards its unbreakableness, we can only say that many a fine gem has been spoilt by the anvil-and-hammer test ; and, so far as its heat-resisting properties are con- cerned, a diamond soon crumbles to ash if submitted to the temperature of the electric arc. Its com- 1 vol. xxxvii. 15. 133 The Romance of Mining bustibility was first established in 1694, by some Florentines who directed on some small specimens the concentrated heat of very powerful burning- glasses. Later scientific research has clearly estab- lished the chemical character of the stone as pure carbon, a cousin of coal, which is consequently termed " black diamonds." The extreme hardness of the diamond has made it an extremely useful ally to the geologist and engineer, who arm with it the tip of the circular hollow boring tool which eats its way through thousands of feet of the toughest rock before any replacement of the stones becomes necessary. In a more humble way the glazier uses a tiny splinter of diamond mounted in metal to cleave the surface of glass. This very property militated for centuries against the estimation in which the diamond is now held. Until its surface has been shaped into those wonder- ful facets which sparkle with refracted light the gem " is not much to look at." Only after Ludwig van Berquen discovered, in 1476, the method of polish- ing and grinding it by means of its own dust, did the diamond step into the foremost place which it now occupies among jewels — not that it is the most valuable weight for weight, since the Oriental ruby far transcends it in this respect. Amsterdam is the great centre of diamond cutting and polishing. That town contains over sixty factories. Every diamond passes through three processes before 134 Diamond Mining it is fit for sale as a jewel, viz. splitting, performed quickly by very skilful workmen with a diamond knife ; cutting off the sharp angles in a similar manner ; and polishing by machinery. A "brilliant" is given fifty-eight facets, a " rose " twenty-four, the workman pressing it against a wheel coated with oil and diamond dust. All three processes demand great care, for a false stroke might reduce the value of a stone to but a fraction of its original worth. The word carat, signifying a standard of weight for precious stones, will be used so frequently in the following pages that a few words about it are neces- sary. Carat is probably derived from the name of an African bean, which, when dried, is very con- sistent in its weight, and therefore was employed in remote times by African gold merchants as their standard. The English ounce Troy is equivalent to 1 5 1 J carats ; so that a single English carat equals about 3.174 grains. In foreign countries the weight varies from 105 milligrams in Spain, to 206.13 milli- grams in Vienna. For our purpose the English carat is always used. In its purest condition the diamond is quite colourless and transparent. If slightly tinted with yellow, green, blue, red, or brown, its value de- creases, but deeply coloured gems are very highly prized. From Borneo come black diamonds of great beauty and such hardness that ordinary diamond dust will not polish them, and the adage 135 The Romance of Mining " diamond cuts diamond " holds true only if their own dust be used for the purpose. For many years India was practically the sole source of diamonds. The eastern side of the Deccan, Madras, and the country round Nagpore, have yielded most of the finest Indian specimens, including the individual jewels which have each a romantic history of its own — The Great Mogul, The Koh-i-nur, The Pitt, The Nizam, The Great Table, The Orloff. Most of these have been won from alluvial deposits by poor miners of a very low caste working for the princes of the land. Golconda, a name associated with the diamond, is an ancient fortress to which the miners brought their finds, to receive some trifling reward in return. Presently a rival country appeared. In 1727 a Brazilian, Bernardino Lobo, who had seen rough diamonds in India, was struck by the resemblance between these and little hard stones which the gold-diggers of Minas-Geraes, Brazil, occasionally found and used as counters for card-playing. He took a number of them to Portugal for sale, and their valuable nature was established. The Euro- pean merchants, frightened lest the new discovery should prejudice their trade in Indian gems, in- dustriously spread the report that the Brazilian specimens were only the refuse of Indian stones imported into Brazil for subsequent export. In reply the Portugese sent their gems to India, where they were labelled as Indian stones, and obtained 136 Diamond Mining Indian prices. In two centuries Minas-Geraes pro- duced -£9,000,000 worth of diamonds. "The dis- covery of these precious stones," writes a great authority, 1 "in 1746 proved a great curse to the poor inhabitants on the banks of the diamond rivers. Scarcely had the news of the discovery reached the Government ere they tried to secure the riches of these rivers for the Crown. To effect this the inhabitants were driven away from their homes to wild, far-away places, and deprived of their little possessions ; nature herself seemed to take part against them, for a dreadful drought, succeeded by a violent earthquake, increased their distress. Many of them perished, but those who lived to return were benevolently reinstated in their rightful possessions. Strange to say, on their return the earth seemed strewn with diamonds. After a heavy shower the children would find gold in the streets and in the brooks which traversed them, and would often take home three or four carats of diamonds. One negro found a diamond at the root of a vegetable in his garden. Poultry, in picking up their food, swallowed diamonds, so that their viscera required searching before being disposed of." Attention was presently diverted from Minas- Geraes to the rich diamond-fields of Bahia, the old capital of Brazil. A Minas-Geraes negro, em- ployed as a shepherd, noticing the similarity of the soil to that of his native place, searched the sand 1 Mr. E. Streeter in " Precious Stones and Gems." 137 The Romance of Mining for precious stones and soon amassed 700 carats, which he took for sale to a distant city. Such wealth led to suspicion ; and the negro was arrested and returned to his master, who had him watched, and learnt his secret. Before a twelvemonth was out, 25,000 people had flocked to Bahia, causing a panic in Minas-Geraes. Business there ceased, and the price of diamonds dwindled to one-half. But Bahia's evil day arrived also, when the precious stone was first found, in 1868, in South Africa, henceforward the chief source of the world's supply. The story of the wonderful Kimberley deposits begins with the action of a little Boer child, which amused itself by collecting pebbles from the river. One of these was so bright that it caught the eye of the child's mother, who took it indoors and showed it some time afterwards to a neighbouring farmer, Schalk van Niekirk. He, not knowing its true character, but thinking that it might have some value, offered to buy it : the woman laughingly said he was welcome to have it for nothing. Niekirk in turn submitted the stone to an English trader, Mr. J. O'Reilly, who offered to take it down to the coast and let the experts have a look at it : he to share any profits with the owner. O'Reilly, while passing through Colesberg, cut his initials with the stone on one of the hotel windows, and pronounced that he had got a diamond ; but the people present were so incredulous that one of them took the thing and Diamond Mining threw it into the street, whence it was recovered only after a long search. At Grahamstown scientific tests revealed a genuine diamond. The stone, which weighed 21^ carats, was sent to the Universal Exhibition in Paris, and afterwards found a pur- chaser for the sum of ^500. We may only hope that the poor Dutch fi vrow " never got to know the full history of the pebble which she had so light- heartedly given away. This stone was discovered at Hopetown on the Orange River, in the district named Griqualand West. Many seekers soon began to turn over the veldt's surface, and to paddle in the Vaal River. An organised party under Mr. J. B. Robinson estab- lished themselves at Hebron, and systematically set to work to trace the stray stones to their origin, which was ultimately established near Kimberley in the dry diggings known as Du Toit's Pan, De Beers, Bultfontein, and Wesselton. But this happened by accident. A farmer, named Van Wyk, was surprised to find diamonds embedded in the clay of which his house walls were built. Arguing that the place from which the clay had come might reasonably be expected to yield more stones, he began to dig, and so opened the famous Du Toit's Pan, fourteen miles south of the Vaal River. The discovery of the diamondiferous nature of the Du Toit's Pan caused an immediate rush to the farm, now surrounded by a suburb of Kim- 139 The Romance of Mining berley, a town 650 miles north of Cape Town, supplied with all the comforts and luxuries of life. In Kimberley itself are the Kimberley and De Beers mines ; the Du Toit's Pan and Bultfontein mines lie two miles south ; and the Premier Mine (formerly Wesselton) is three miles to the south-east. Geologically, the diamond mines are unique. Vol- canic action has burst open the overlying quartz, shale, and igneous rock, and squirted up a " chim- ney " of diamondiferous rock, called blue-earth, though it is extremely hard. The chimneys, or pipes, are roughly elliptical or circular in section, their area varying at different depths. Some are thousands of feet across. How far down they reach is un- certain ; very probably they extend to the fiery core of the earth. Some pipes are absolutely barren of diamonds ; but those named above have proved themselves so rich that they now supply nine-tenths of the world's annual yield, and completely control the market value of diamonds. In 1872 miners began to peg out claims in the Kimberley pan, thirty feet square, and each man dug when he felt so disposed. Between the claims ran roadways for the purpose of transporting the dirt. After a very short time it became evident that the road-ways and also the less energetically mined claims would prove a danger to the workers on claims which had been sunk to a considerable depth. Every now and then there was a landslip, burying tools, machinery, and sometimes human beings. 140 Diamond Mining This resulted in endless lawsuits, the one party asking compensation for the entombment of his property, the other seeking damages for the under- cutting of his higher ground. As the general level of the excavation sank, the difficulty of removing the " earth " increased ; and, the roadways being useless, platforms were estab- lished on the rim of the crater to which buckets could be transported on wire ropes. This got over the trouble to a certain extent ; but when water appeared in large quantities the miners were con- fronted with an extremely awkward problem. It was at once nobody's and everybody's business to pump out the intruder— which distributed itself im- partially among the claims — and, as is usual in such a case, nobody took the matter in hand. The work- ings fell in, and to-day there is a crater 650 feet deep, which, as Mr. Stafford Ransome remarks, 1 is probably the largest open hole ever made by man. During the claim- working days the Kaffir labourers pilfered stones in great quantities and sold them to that obnoxious individual, the Illicit Diamond Buyer, known for short as " I.D.B." It is said that at least half of the diamonds found were thus disposed of ; so that mining, which otherwise would have been profitable, soon proved a dismal failure. The individual miner therefore sold his rights to syndicates or small companies ; these in turn amalgamated into large companies, to be finally 1 " The Engineer in South Africa," p. 248. 141 The Romance of Mining all swallowed up by one gigantic concern called the " De Beers Company/' which controls the industry to an extent unparalleled in other branches of mining. At the De Beers, Kimberley, and Bultfontein mines the blue-ground is worked by deep shafts driven down through the rock outside the pipe. The Premier mine has already reached the stage when open mining ceases to be advisable ; and it too will soon have its shafts. About the process of getting out the diamondiferous rock little need be said, as it resembles coal-mining in most particu- lars. We may notice, however, that, owing to the huge capital possessed by the Company, every im- provement in machinery is eagerly adopted. Out- of-date tackle soon finds its way to the scrap heap, which to the uninitiated eye might suggest a terrible waste of good stuff. The shafts are so deep — 2000 feet and more in some cases — that high-speed wind- ing becomes important. Skips fly up and down with 4-ton loads at nearly twenty-five miles an hour, and automatically discharge their contents into the head gear bins, from which they pass down shoots to the ground level. The method of separating the diamonds from their matrix is most interesting. Fortunately for the proprietors, blue-ground rapidly disintegrates when exposed to the action of heat, cold, and water. So before introduction to the crushing mills, the material is spread a foot deep over rectangular 142 Diamond Mining areas — known as " floors" — measuring 400 by 200 yards, previously stripped of all grass, bush, or loose stones. A harrow is occasionally drawn backwards and forwards over the rock by steam engines to aid the crumbling, water being squirted freely if the weather remains dry. At the end of a year " the ground," now fit for crushing, is washed, and churned in a mill which separates the heavier from the lighter portions. The " concentrates " are taken to the pulsator, an automatic diamond-finder, and from it " are allowed to drop by means of a carefully regulated feed on to the highest of a series of inclined trays, arranged in the form of a shallow ramp or stair- case. These trays have a pulsating, or vertically vibrating movement, which gives its name to the machine. The upper surfaces of these trays are covered with a thickish layer of Stauffer's lubricant, which has for its object the retention of any dia- monds that may come into contact with it." 1 The important discovery of sorting diamonds by adhesion arose from noticing that the stones stuck to any grease that fell into the old-fashioned washing pans. A test was made with very small stones aggregating 6601 carats, out of which only in carats escaped the grease. With coarser material only 40J out of 19,031 carats got away; which proved that the larger stones are less likely to be lost than the smaller. Apart from its effectiveness, 1 " The Engineer in South Africa," p. 255. 143 The Romance of Mining this system does away with native labour and the need for a great amount of supervision. The grease and its adherents are scraped off the trays and consigned to a melting-pot, which quickly sends the stones and the rubbish to the bottom. The grease runs off, leaving the deposit free for in- spection and sorting, done by highly trained experts. The stones are then washed in sulphuric acid and sent to the head office in Kimberley, to be more perfectly classified, and stored ready for sale. The sorters here " work in a carefully locked office, to which the visitor is only admitted on production of a pass, and after being scrutinised suspiciously through a little grille in the door. And when he gets in- side this Holy of Holies, he finds himself railed off from the counters on which the piles of gems are being sorted, in case the sight of such vast riches should cause his cupidity to get the better of his morality." 1 About 15,000 Kaffirs and 2500 whites are em- ployed in the mines. The nature of their work necessitates a strict guard being set on the Kaffirs, for they are the expertest of thieves. To let them go in and out of the mines would mean the loss of many valuable stones ; they are therefore obliged to sign a contract for a period of at least six months' work, during which no egress from the mine com- pound is permitted. Once in, always in, till their term has been completed. Not that they fare badly, 1 " The Engineer in South Africa," p. 257. 144 Diamond Mining since stores in the compound furnish anything they may wish to buy. They have clean, neat houses, a hospital, swimming baths, and a chapel where a native preacher holds forth on Sundays, helped by an interpreter who translates his dialect into one more readily understood by the audience. It is to the credit of the De Beers Company that intoxicants of all kinds are rigorously forbidden on the pre- mises — a great contrast to the drink-sodden com- pounds of the Rand before the war. With no less than .£4,000,000 worth of diamonds lying in the disintegrating blue-ground, some theft occurs in spite of the utmost vigilance. Guards are always patrolling the boundary, strongly fenced with barbed wire entanglements. At night strong arc lamps light up the floors, so that any would-be pilferer may be seen by the watch. " The Kimberley compounds are covered with a wire netting to pre- vent the throwing out of diamonds, it being found that old tins and similar articles were utilised for this purpose, on the chance of picking them up out- side the walls after dismissal." 1 The amount of material raised from the diamond mines is astonishing. " Up to May 1, 1883, 10,325,989 loads of sixteen cubic feet each had been removed from the Kimberley mine alone, equivalent to 3,824,440 cubic yards of solid rock, at a cost of ;£i,545>35 8 - In l88 3> 1,688,914 loads of reef were removed ; in 1884, 711,033 1 Cassie^s Magazine. 145 K The Romance of Mining loads from this one mine. 1 ... An idea of the work done in the De Beers mine in one fortnight may be obtained from the following figures : During the first two weeks of November 1897, there were used 8|- tons of dynamite, 65,100 feet of fuse (equal to 12I miles), and 32,500 blasting-caps, and during the previous month the record hoisting was made of 182,040 loads, or 145,632 tons, through one shaft, and from the 1200 foot level." 2 The u boys " work below ground in gangs of thirty or forty, under the direction of a white miner, or boss. The mines being well lit and ventilated, and the drives of large size, their work is not unpleasant ; but there is one thing which they fear, as a coal-miner fears fire-damp — a mud- rush. The huge open excavations made in the early days form natural reservoirs for spring or rain water, which, together with fine particles of matter, sinks down through cracks in the form of a thick paste. If this is " tapped " it rushes with terrific force and speed through the galleries, carry- ing trucks, rails, and timbers before it irresistibly. Sometimes there is loss of life ; and the authorities have now instituted a system of draining the over- lying stratum by means of pumps, so as to prevent the accumulation of water. From the De Beers mine 5000 gallons per hour are pumped ; from the Kimberley double that quantity ; and the gradual 1 Cassier's Magazine. 2 Cassier's Magazine. I46 Diamond Minin g decrease in the amount proves that the method is efficacious. Reference has already been made to the control exercised by the De Beers Syndicate over the diamond markets of the world. It has been shown by statistics that about four and a-half million pounds sterling are spent yearly on this class of precious stone. If all the year's product were suddenly offered for sale, there would probably follow a "slump," or general fall in prices. Then, again, the fashion changes from time to time ; now, single big brilliants, cost- ing hundreds of pounds each, are in demand ; now much smaller stones set closely together in large numbers ; while in " bad times " people will not invest in very costly jewels, but there is a consider- able public who do not mind the expenditure of a few pounds on cheaper stuff. So the De Beers people carefully regulate the supply to meet the demand, keeping stored away under lock and key huge quantities — tons, in fact — of jewels, and waiting for the moment when any one kind may be needed. If the reserve becomes unwieldy, they simply decrease the number of their employes. Hence the Syndicate has a unique, and at present unchallenged position, — an ideal one from the seller's point of view. The nearest approach to a rival is the Jagersfontein mine, notable for having produced what is probably the second largest diamond ever mined by man, — a monster of 971 carats, or about six and a half ounces ! It is a flat, 147 The Romance of Mining almost rectangular stone, about two inches long, and from seven-eighth inch to one and a half inches thick ; of a blue-white tinge, of very fine colour, and of a value which cannot be computed. By the end of 1904 the total value of diamonds ex- ported from South Africa reached nearly .£90,000,000. How much this amount will be increased before the mines stop working we cannot say. The blue-ground may prove poor in stones as the mining proceeds ; or the depth to which it can be profitably worked may turn out to be more limited than at present appears probable ; or, and this is the most uncertain element of all to reckon with, mines of even greater richness may be discovered elsewhere, in the un- explored parts of Asia, Australia, or America. For all we know wild animals may be browsing on land far away in the Pamirs or Andes which in time will see the rise of diamond cities even greater than Kimberley. This chapter would not be complete without a short reference to the siege of " Diamondopolis " during the war. From October 1899 till February 15, 1900, it stubbornly resisted all efforts of the Boers to reduce it. Large numbers of the inhabi- tants took refuge from shells in the old workings of the mines. The De Beers Company, headed by Mr. Cecil Rhodes, did its utmost to relieve the distress caused by scarcity and bad quality of pro- visions ; and also took an active part in the fighting. Their workshop staff, under the supervision of Mr. 148 Diamond Minin g Labram, built the big gun named " Long Cecil," as a reply to the " Long Toms " of the besieging force ; and with it hurled shells into the Boer trenches. Before quitting the fascinating subject of diamond- mining some historic stones may be fitly passed in rapid review. The Great Mogul. — This magnificent stone was discovered about the middle of the seventeenth century. Its weight of nearly 800 carats places it next to the " Jagersfontein " and " Cullinan " jewels. Tavernier, a French traveller, was shown the jewel by its owner, Shah Jehan, at Agra, in 1665. "The first piece that Aked Khan — keeper of the king's jewels — placed in my hands was the great diamond, which is rose-cut, round, and very high on one side. On the lower edge there is a slight crack, and a little flaw in it. Its water is fine, and weighs 319J ratis, which make 280 of our carat. ... In the rough state it weighed 7 87 J carats. ... It was Hortensio Borgis who cut it, for which he was also badly paid. When it was cut he was reproached for having spoilt the stone, which might have remained heavier, and instead of rewarding him for the work the King fined him 10,000 rupees, and would have taken more if he had possessed more." After the sack of Delhi by the Persian, Nadir Shah, the stone disappears from history. Probably it was stolen during the sack, or at the death of Nadir, and split up into a number of smaller stones. 149 The Romance of Mining The Koh-i-nur. — The most romantic of all diamonds. Its early antecedents are unknown ; but tradition mentions it as the property of a prince who lived in 57 B.C. Like the Great Mogul, it had a place in Shah Jehan's treasury, and subsequently in that of Aurung-Zeb. Nadir Shah, on entering Delhi, could not find the gem ; until a woman betrayed the secret that the emperor wore it concealed in his turban. How could he get hold of it ? Mr. Edwin Streeter thus tells the story : " He skilfully availed himself of a time-honoured Oriental custom, seldom omitted by princes of equal rank on state occasions. At the grand ceremony held a few days afterwards in Delhi, for the purpose of reinstating Mohammed (Emperor of Delhi) on the throne of his Tartar ancestors, Nadir suddenly took the opportunity of asking him to exchange turbans, in token of recon- ciliation, and in order to cement the eternal friend- ship that they had just sworn for each other. Taken completely aback by this sudden move, and lacking the leisure even for reflection, Mohammed found himself checkmated by his wily rival, and was fain, with as much grace as possible, to accept the in- sidious request. Indeed, the Persian conqueror left him no option, for he quickly removed his own national sheepskin head-dress, glittering with costly gems, and replaced it with the emperor's turban. Maintaining the proverbial self-command of Oriental potentates, Mohammed betrayed his surprise and chagrin by no outward sign, and so indifferent did 150 Diamond Mining he seem to the exchange that for a moment Nadir began to fear he had been misled. Anxious to be relieved of his doubts, he hastily dismissed the Durbar with renewed assurances of friendship and devotion. Withdrawing to his tent he unfolded the turban, to discover, with selfish rapture, the long coveted stone. He hailed the sparkling gem with the exclamation < Koh-i-Nur ' ! signifying in English, ' Mountain of light/ " But possession brought misfortune to the pos- sessor. Nadir bequeathed it to his son Rokh, who was overthrown by Aga Mohammed and tortured to reveal the hiding-place of the stone. All sorts of ghastly devices failed to extract the secret. Rokh, blinded and maimed, gave up the great ruby which Aurung-Zeb had worn in his crown ; yet he clung to the diamond as to life itself. Before he died he gave it to Ahmed Shah, founder of the Durani Afghan Empire, as a reward for help against Mohammed. From Ahmed it passed to his son Taimin ; from him to his son Zaman, deposed and blinded by a brother, Shuja, who got hold of the stone by the merest accident. While in captivity Zaman con- cealed it in a crevice in his cell, and covered it with plaster. The plaster fell off ; a glittering corner protruded and scratched a courtier's hand ; and the jewel came into history once again. Shuja was in turn deposed by a younger brother, and withdrew to the court of Runjit-Singh, the " Lion of the 151 The Romance of Mini n g Punjab," who at first received him kindly, but later tried to extort his treasures from him, especially the Koh-i-nur, and at last succeeded. He wore it on all public occasions. When the English, in 1840, took possession of the Lahore Treasury, the Koh-i-nur became the property of the East India Company, and was sent to England as a present to Queen Victoria. Its transference from East to West appears to have changed its power for evil into one for good, as it arrived during the early years of England's most glorious reign. When it reached Europe it scaled 1 8 6 T V carats; subsequently reduced by re-cutting to 106^ carats. And now it is preserved among the Royal Jewels at Windsor, a model in the jewel room of the Tower acting proxy for exhibition purposes. The Pitt, or Regent. — Found in 1701 in the Parteal mines on the Kistna, by a slave, who concealed it in a hole made purposely in his leg. He escaped to the coast and gave it to a sea-captain on condition that he should transport him to a free country. The captain took the jewel, and threw the poor slave into the sea. Eventually it came into the hands of Thomas Pitt, who paid £20,000 for it, and afterwards sold it to the French Regent, the Duke of Orleans for £135,000. With the great profit Pitt restored the fortunes of his ancient house, which afterwards gave England two of her most distinguished states- men. In 1 79 1 it was valued at £480,000. 152 Diamond Minin g During 1792 it disappeared from the French Royal Treasury, but was recovered, and pawned to the Dutch Government by Napoleon to raise money. Afterwards redeemed, it found a last resting-place in the now disused crown of France. The Orloff. — Said originally to have formed the eye of an idol in a temple in Brama at Srivangam ; and to have been stolen by a French Grenadier, who sold it for ^2000 to an English sea-captain. He in turn sold it for .£12,000 to a Jew, who disposed of it to Prince Orloff, a courtier in the household of Catherine II. of Russia, for -£90,000. Orloff gave it to Catherine ; and it afterwards became the chief ornament of the Imperial sceptre. The il Cullman." — Discovered early in 1905 in the Premier Mine, Transvaal. The stone, which is by far the largest ever found, weighs 3032 carats, or nearly one and a-half lb. avoirdupois. It measures 4J in. by 2J in. Its value is incalculable. 153 CHAPTER IX THE STORY OF THE COMSTOCK LODE Discovery of the Lode — Henry Comstock — Silver ore cast aside as worth- less — An assay proves its true value — " Rush " to the mines — Difficulty of treating ore — Paul's reduction mill — The timbering of the mines — Litigation — Bonanza times — Mark Twain — The Sanitary Flour Sack — Extent of the mines — The overland telegraph — The new highroad — Its maintenance — Rivalry between stage drivers — Accidents — Depres- sion — Labour troubles — Water inroads — The Sutro Tunnel — A mar- vellous engineering feat — Hardships of tunnel-driving — John W. Mackay — The "Virginia Consolidated" — Perseverance brings for- tune — The Big Bonanza — Huge yields — Wild speculation — Scene in the mines — High temperatures — A sad contrast — The fate of the Comstock. To a few barren acres on the western slopes of the sterile Sierra Nevada belongs the honour of having yielded mankind a greater bulk of riches than any other area of equal size on the earth's surface. " The Great Comstock Lode " is synonymous, to those who know its history, with enormous fortunes, wild specu- lation, heroic struggles against adverse circumstances, Aladdin's cave realised, hopes disappointed, chagrin unfathomable, the lowest depths of commercial trickery, gigantic games of chance, marvellous feats of engineering, money spent like water, water in- rushing like a flood, labour conducted under terrible conditions. All these ideas flash through the mind at the mere mention of the silver seam which for 154 The Story of the Comstock Lode twenty years was the cynosure of the world's money markets. The Comstock Lode revealed itself very quietly. Just a decade after the discovery of gold in California, when men were penetrating the Sierra to seek new Eldorados, two miners, Patrick McLaughlin and Peter O' Riley by name, dug a water hole in a gulch of the Carson River Valley. The earth thrown out was a yellow sand, mingled with small lumps of quartz, and friable black rock, which they were unable to recognise as stuff of any value, and cast carelessly aside. However, with the instinct of the prospector, and from habit rather than with any definite hopes, they washed out a panful or two of the " dirt," and to their surprise and delight saw the welcome " colour." Again and again they washed ; gold accumulated in their wallets ; they were on the highroad to fortune. They had knocked at the doors of the Comstock's treasure-house, and found riches even on the scraper. Notice this : that, while the great Nevada deposit is renowned chiefly for the silver it has produced, it was the intermingled gold which brought it to light. But for those superficial specks of gold the millions of tons of silver ore might have lain undiscovered for many years to come. Nature had, as it were, scattered a trail of recognisable metal to lead men into a branch of mining hitherto unpractised in the United States. While McLaughlin and O'Riley were hard at work, 155 The Romance of Mining there stumbled on them one Henry Comstock, whose otherwise contemptible personality will go down to history because it gave its name to this wonderful mine. An ex-trapper and fur-trader, restless, yet lazy, he had wandered about for years, taking up a claim here and there, to soon quit it and resume his prospecting. One evening he chanced to find the two Irishmen cleaning-up their rocker for the last time before stopping work for the day. His practised eye took in the situation at a glance. With matchless effrontery he informed the lucky pair that they were trespassing on his land ; and by sheer talking pre- vailed upon them to concede his claims ! Thus it was that, though the true discoverers have been for- gotten, the name of Comstock has survived. Other prospectors soon arrived, and pegged out their lots, while McLaughlin and O'Riley opened up the pocket. They were much hindered by a seam of black rock which made its appearance at a depth of three or four feet, and increased in width as the trench deepened. The looser earth on each side yielded, however, sufficient gold to keep them at work. Presently curious visitors began to carry off bits of the black rock, and in due course some specimens got into the hands of a Placerville assayer, whose test showed a value per ton of £600 in silver and £ij$ in gold ; and the tidings spread that a lode of silver sulphurets had been struck on the eastern slope of Mount Davidson in Western Nevada. 156 The Story of the Comstock Lode Though silver mining was a new thing to the Californian miner, the Sierra passes became more and more thickly choked by a stream of fortune- hunters. " Rough-haired mustangs, gaunt mules, and sure-footed little ' burros ' climbed the sierras loaded with stacks of blankets, bacon, flour, kettles, pans, shovels, and other articles of a miner's outfit. The ravines and brown hillsides were dotted with a restless swarm. Thin wreaths of smoke rose from hundreds of little camp-fires on the hills, and the sharp strokes of falling picks startled the lizards from their hiding places in the rocks." 1 California was on its way to grasp the treasures of Nevada, hitherto missed by the thousands of immigrants who had trampled them unawares in their haste to reach the gold deposits of the Sacramento River. This happened in the " fall "of 1859. Not much prospecting could be done that year ; and the early arrivals spent a cheerless, hard winter waiting for the time when work might begin in earnest. Fierce whirlwinds howled through the gorges and down the sides of Mount Davidson, unroofing the miserable huts, and sweeping off flimsy tents. The occupants swore ; and erected other dwellings. What were the cold, hunger, and fatigue of to-day by comparison with the coming riches of to-morrow ? Meanwhile the exhibition of silver bars in San Francisco had rekindled the fever of 1849 and 1850. "The treasures of Potosi, the ransom of 1 " Monograph of the United States Geological Survey." 157 The Romance of Mining Montezuma, the deep-laden galleons of Spain, and a host of vague memories were awakened by the sight of these masses of bullion. The fever spread rapidly : merchants closed their counting - houses and clerks left their desks ; sailors deserted their ships and mechanics their workshops ; the ranch- men from the plains and the restless swarm of gold-placer miners swelled the migration not unlike the train of children drawn on by the entrancing notes of the piper of Hamelin. How to reach the silver ledges was the absorbing thought ; far beyond the sierras the riches of their dreams appeared before them ; and neither inexperience nor poverty could deter such passionate pilgrims from joining the odd croop which began its march over the mountains while the passes were still impassable." 1 So, early in i860, every boat which left San Francisco for Sacramento was packed with miners and their outfits. From the latter town the army pushed up the old emigrant trail to Placerville, and thence over the Johnson Pass to the valley of the Carson. Snow blockaded the broken track. Hundreds of tons of freight accumulated in the Californian town, waiting until teams could be found to carry it through the Sierra. At last, in March, the caravans began to pour into the mining camp on Mount Davidson, and soon crystallised into Virginia City, where for months vice and rowdyism flourished unchecked. The true work- 1 " Monograph of the United States Geological Survey." 158 The Story of the Comstock Lode ing miners were far outnumbered by the floating scum of California, who followed, jackal -wise, the movements of the metal seekers. Volunteers for the Indian War, demoralised by guerilla war- fare, flocked in, lolled at the gambling-tables, and swaggered about the streets, the terror of the more peaceful portion of the community. A mining difficulty soon arose. Ore could be raised with ease ; but the extraction of the precious metal it contained was a serious problem. Trans- portation to San Francisco for treatment ate up most of the profits ; while the lack of fuel made reduction on the spot almost an impossibility. However, Almorin B. Paul, an enterprising mill- owner of the city of Nevada, saw his opportunity, raised the necessary capital, and entered into con- tracts with various mines to smelt all their ore at a fixed rate per ton ; and, what was more, to com- mence smelting within sixty days of the signature of the contract. Every pound of material used in the machinery had to be brought from San Fran- cisco, partly by water, partly overland, along a track where the waggons sank to their axles in the mire, and the mules, urged on by blows and curses, had to exert all their power to keep their cumbersome freights in motion. The cost of trans- portation exceeded the actual cost of the machinery ; the lumber used in the reduction - mills touched fabulous prices. Yet Mr. Paul was undismayed ; and on the last day allowed by the contract the 159 The Romance of Mining " Washoe Gold & Silver Mining Company, No. i," began to crush ore. So successful did the first crushings prove that mine - owners who had pre- viously ridiculed the project gladly sent their ore to the mills, and Mr. Paul entered upon the reward he so justly deserved. Difficulty number two now appeared. As the lode descended it grew steadily broader, until at a depth of 175 feet it was 65 feet wide. Such dimensions being without precedent, the miners did not know how to proceed. To leave pillars of ore to support the roof was of no avail with a roof that crumbled in. Spliced timbers bent and broke. So that the owners at last found themselves sur- rounded by riches which they could not carry away except by risking their lives in doing so. Expert advice was sought. Mr. Philip Deide- sheimer, manager of a Georgetown quartz mine, came, examined, and designed a system of timber- ing which exactly suited the particular needs of the Comstock Lode. To refer again to the authority already quoted: "This was to frame timbers together in rectangular sets, each set being composed of a square base, placed horizontally, formed of four timbers, sills, and cross-pieces from 4 to 6 feet long, surmounted at the corners by four posts from 6 to 7 feet high, and capped by a frame- work similar to the base. The cap-pieces forming the top of any set were at the same time the sills or base of the next set above. These sets could 160 The Story of the Comstock Lode readily be extended to any required height and over any given area, forming a series of horizontal floors, built up from the bottom sets like the suc- cessive storeys of a house. The spaces between the timbers were filled with waste rock or with wooden braces, forming a solid cube whenever the maximum degree of firmness was desired/' So the delving was continued to two, three, four hundred feet. The Gould & Curry, Gold Hill, and Ophir mines poured out their riches. For a couple of miles north and south ran the lode, fifty to eighty feet wide between its walls of solid rock. Over so rich a prey there was, as may easily be understood, plenty of quarrelling; and from i860 to 1863 the litigation arising out of disputes as to limits, water rights, validity of claims, &c, choked the local courts, where many an advocate, hitherto unknown, made a fortune out of his fees. Into the intricacies of these actions-at-law there is no inducement to enter : for only to the persons immediately con- cerned could they possibly afford much interest. They serve, however, to show that where a number of people settle down on a rich spoil they can no more dwell together in unity than a number of vultures engaged on rending the same carcass. The years 1863 and 1864 were the "bonanza" — i.e. fair-weather — times. Mark Twain has drawn with his facile pen a remarkable picture of how at this period men made each other presents of " feet " in mines just as in other localities one might l6l L The Romance of Mining offer a friend an apple or a pinch of snuff : and how all sorts of tricks were resorted to by those who wished to turn a worthless shaft into a saleable property — " salting " with genuine ore or even melted silver coins being included among these devices. It may come as news to admirers of the novelist who have not read his " Roughing It," that Mr. Twain himself took a hand at mining ; and in conjunction with two friends struck a " blind lead " which crossed the Wide West vein at an angle, pegged out claims, and was a potential millionaire. By an unfortunate misunderstanding all three partners absented them- selves from the claims, each thinking that the other two would do the work necessary to keep the pro- perty in their possession. When, at the end of nine days, they became aware of their danger, two of them hurried back, to find that they were just a few minutes too late, and that eager onlookers had used their rights to re-locate and " jump " the claims. "We would have been millionaires," he says, u if we had only worked with pick and spade one little day in our property, and so secured our ownership ! . . . I can always have it to say that I was absolutely and unquestionably worth a million dollars, once, for ten days." It was during this first li boom " that the Sanitary Flour Sack went its round of the mining towns of the Comstock district. The great Civil War had broken out, with the terrible suffering inseparable from such conflicts ; and the hearts of the citizens 162 The Story of the Comstock Lode went forth to the wounded lying on distant battle- fields. A Sanitary Fund had therefore been set on foot for the relief of the sufferers ; and Nevada, anxious to do her share, raised money in many ingenious ways. At Austin a sack of flour was put up to auction — the proceeds to go to the fund — and knocked down at 5300 dollars. It then passed onto Silver City, which bid 1800 dollars; to Gold Hill, where the purchaser had to pay 65 87 J dollars ; to Virginia City, which advanced to 13,515 dollars. From Nevada willing hands carried it down to Carson ; thence over the Sierras to California. It finally found a haven in San Francisco, but not until it had enriched the fund by ^30,000 sterling ! This was the miners' play. They could also work hard. At the close of 1862 no fewer than forty companies had erected houses of some sort over their shafts, and in several instances steam machinery was already installed for hoisting and pumping. Seen from the top of Mount Davidson, the heaps of debris raised appeared like ant - hills gradually growing from day to day. Some hills were almost deserted, but all round the Mexican, California, Gould & Curry, Potosi and Chollar claims, men, horses, mules, and oxen swarmed. The streets were blocked by vehicles hurrying this way and that. Below the surface an army of sweating miners burrowed along the lode, which, like the Rand gold reefs, sank at a considerable angle to the perpen- dicular. Every day they advanced a few more feet, 163 The Romance of Mining propping up the dangerous roof with a huge skeleton of timber, each balk of which had but a short time before been braving the strong winds of the Sierra. The haphazard methods of i860 gave place to a well ordered plan of working by cross-cuts, gal- leries, and winzes. In 1862 the Gould & Curry had over five and a-half miles of li dismal drifts and tunnels " ; and the Comstock as a whole could boast thirty miles of subterranean streets, thronged by 6000 workers. By 1866 the borings had increased to fifty-seven miles, which represents but a fifth part of the ultimate total in after years. Nevada produced .£5,000,000 worth of bullion in 1863, the year of " nabobs," who flew up and down the ladder of fortune like so many shuttlecocks. The Gould & Curry mine, bought from its original owners for an old horse, a bottle of whisky, some blankets, and 2500 dollars in cash, was four years after the purchase valued at 7,600,000 dollars. A long list of fortunes thus lost and won might easily be made, for the history of the Comstock is but a record of Peter impoverished and Paul raised to millionairedom. Two great engineering feats mark the earlier years of the silver-mine. The first, the telegraph line carried from Omaha over the Rockies to Fort Churchill, where it met a second line extending from San Francisco through the Sierra Nevada. The Americans, with characteristic energy, put up 570 miles of this electric thread in four months — a 164 The Story of the Comstock Lode record all the more remarkable in view of the fact that its route lay through the dreary wastes of the great Desert. Thus in 1861 Virginia City, the nerve- centre of wild speculation, was in touch with the civilisation of two coasts. The news of a big " find " on the lode became common property in San Fran- cisco and New York almost before the discoverers had realised their good fortune. The second service rendered by the engineer was that of making a fine highroad across the Sierras via the Johnson Pass. "During 1861 and 1862 toll grants were obtained, and a small army of labourers was at work on both slopes of the range from foot to summit. The steepest grades were cut down and smoothed ; gullies and ruts were filled with compact layers of broken stones and loam ; bordering rocks were blasted away or rolled aside ; and the narrow, dangerous, wretched trail, scarcely fit for the passage of sure-footed pack-mules, became a broad, compact, well-graded highway, which might fairly be likened to an old Roman road. The stage- coach ride across the mountains, which had hitherto been a * torture/ became a pleasure. . . . The turning-points of the road were broad platforms built up from the hill-sides with outward curving base-walls of well-joined rocks. On the level surface of these bastions an eight-mule team could turn without slacking their traces, and loaded waggons could pass one another at all points on the road without difficulty. When snowdrifts blocked the 165 The Romance of Mining passage in winter, a well-equipped party of men and horses sallied from every station and cleared the way with extraordinary despatch, while watering carts, passing from station to station, laid the dust in summer, so that the road was like a well-kept avenue in a mountain park." 1 Great as the expense of making the road was, the builders soon reaped a harvest. Every vehicle paid a toll ; and at times the mule teams stretched in a continuous procession for miles. Rivalry ran high among the stage-drivers, for whom a fresh " record " ranked above the safe delivery of their charges. Special coaches, with many relays of horses, covered the 130 miles between Virginia City and Sacramento in 12J hours, a speed of travel which fairly eclipses the performances of the Bath Road " cracks." Every now and then this time-cutting led to a serious acci- dent, taken in good part by any survivors. " When a Johnson's Pass stage toppled over the brink of an embankment, and the falling wreck was stayed by chance in the spreading arms of a large pine tree, the bruised passengers looked down upon the bottom of the abyss, 1000 feet below, and congratulated themselves on their good fortune without censuring the coachman even in thought." The excitement of travel, arising from the possibility of such incidents being repeated, was increased by the frequent hold-up of a coach by masked desperadoes, who turned out the passengers and stood them in a row, with their hands 1 " Monograph of U.S. Geological Survey." 166 The Story of the Comstock Lode over their heads, while their persons and the coach were searched thoroughly for booty. Have we not read of these incidents in the pages of Bret Harte ? With the latter half of 1864 came the inevitable fall in the inflated prices of mining shares. Some of the most valuable stock tumbled to one-fifth of the previous year's quotations ; dragging down the share- holders in " wild cat " schemes to absolute ruin. The need for severe retrenchment of working expenses became imperative, and the mine directors naturally lowered wages, which in the " boom " times had been fixed at four dollars a day. The miners, unable to see that labour as well as capital must take its share in a general depression, soon showed their teeth. John Trembath, the stalwart Cornish foreman of the Uncle Sam mine, being suspected of sympathy with the proprietors, was seized while in one of the lower levels, bound hand and foot, and lashed to the hoisting cable of the shaft. His captors then tied to him a label with the words, " Dump this waste dirt from Cornwall," and thus mummified, the wretched man was lowered and hoisted twice. From this rough horseplay the miners passed to organised processions, and the formation of a " Miner's League," which pledged every member never to give a day's work for less than four dollars in gold and silver. The League wilted under the economic effects of continued de- pression, and practically went to pieces within a year. It revived, however, with the return of prosperity to the Comstock, and is still a power in the district. 167 The Romance of Mining With these huge excavations being cut through a hillside, water, the bugbear of mining, had by 1864 become a serious hindrance to progress, notably in the case of the Ophir mine. At the higher levels horizontal shafts, or adits, were driven through the wall to the open air, and these served for a time to drain off the water. But when the shafts reached a depth of a thousand feet or more pumping became the only method of clearing the mines, unless a great combined effort were made and a main drainage tunnel driven right through the hill at a level which would tap the whole lode nearly 2000 feet below the surface. In 1865, Mr. Adolph Sutro formed a company to construct a tunnel extending from the foot-hills of the Carson Valley into the lode, a distance of nearly four miles. He urged that all mines sooner or later reach a depth where the constantly increasing cost of mining exceeds the yield, and that the Comstock lode would, before the lapse of many years, provided no other means for draining and working the mines were adopted, become practically valueless and deprive one hundred thousand people of their occupation and means of subsistence. Such works had already been carried out successfully and profitably in the Claustal mines of the Harz Mountains, where a ten-mile tunnel entered the 900-foot level ; at Frei- burg, with its eight-mile tunnel ; and at Schemnitz, where the Emperor Joseph adit burrows for nine miles. 168 The Story of the Comstock Lode In 1865 the companies interested signed a contract whereby they agreed to pay the Tunnel company a royalty of two dollars per ton on all ore extracted from their mines, in return for the drainage and the privilege of transporting men, ore, waste rock, and materials through this back door at fixed rates. Scarcely had the contract been signed when some repented themselves, and, in order to back out of their agreement, stirred up formidable opposition to the scheme. Mr. Sutro was, however, a man of indomitable will. He overcame all difficulties, in- cluding that of raising capital, and in September 1871 commenced his attack on the hills. Progress was at first sadly hampered by the inrush of water, and by the inefficiency of hand drilling, which advanced the borings only 5I feet a day even when things were going well. The engineers there- fore had recourse to the imperfect power-drills of the time, to find them very costly and tedious imple- ments to work with. Fortunately for the tunnel, the Burleigh drill appeared in 1874, and the rate of advance was quadrupled, though the dimensions of the working face had been increased to 9J- feet of height by 13 feet of width. Mr. Eliot Lord has given the world, in the mono- graph already laid under contribution, so graphic a description of this great work that no apology is needed for reproducing it in extenso. " Sutro's un- tiring zeal kindled a like spirit in his co-workers. Changing shifts urged the drills on without ceasing ; 169 The Romance of Mining skilled timberers followed up the attack on the breast and covered the heads of the assailants like shield- bearers. The hot rocks blown from the face of the heading hardly ceased rattling on the floor of the tunnel before they were thrown and shovelled into iron tramcars and borne away by mule trains. Lanterns bound to the shoulders of the mules threw straggling rays of light on the dark pathway ; the dripping walls and roof reflected the beams through a myriad of water prisms, and streaks of mottled grey, green, and black rocks shone out at intervals with vivid distinctness, as if illuminated by lightning flashes. A foreground and background of utter blackness enclosed the moving cylinder of changing lights and shadows, a fitting framework to the weird picture. As the train neared the mouth of the tunnel it was seen first as a line of dancing lights, then the tinkle of collar-bells was faintly heard and the tramping of hoofs on the rock floor. The light specks swelled to clearly shining stars and then shrunk to red points in the glare of the sun rays, which transformed the roughly-timbered entrance into a white-pillared corridor. In this transfiguring light the eyes of the mules glowed like carbuncles, which shone in their dark setting till the animals, with quickened steps, passed through the gleaming archway into the sunlight. The dump at the mouth of the tunnel grew rapidly to the proportions of an artificial plateau raised above the surrounding valley slope ; yet the speed of the electric currents which 170 The Story of the Comstock Lode exploded the blasts scarcely kept pace with the impatient anxiety of the tunnel owners to reach the lode when the extent of the great Consolidated Virginia Bonanza was reported ; for every ton raised from the lode before the tunnel cut it was a loss to them of two dollars, as they thought. Urged on by zeal, pride, and natural covetousness, the miners cut their way indomitably towards their goal, though at every step gained the work grew more painful and dangerous. The temperature at the face of the heading had risen from 72° Fahrenheit at the close of the year 1873 to 83 during the two following years ; though in the summer of 1875 two powerful Root blowers were constantly employed in forcing air into the tunnel. At the close of the year 1876 the indicated temperature was 90 , and on the first of January 1878 the men were working in a tempera- ture of 96 . In spite of the air currents from the blowers the atmosphere before the end of the year 1876 had become almost unbearably foul as well as hot. The candles flickered with a dim light, and men often staggered back from their posts faint and sickened. Behind the workers were sections of treacherous ground — crumbling rock and swelling clay — which occasioned constant dread lest some day the overstrained props might give way and a falling mass crush the air pipes and block the passage. In such event the men might die for lack of air in the narrow tomb before they could cut their way through the barrier or be rescued by outside help. 171 The Romance of Mining This was not a fanciful peril, as it was averted more than once by the watchfulness and promptness of the miners in propping up sinking ground and piercing the fallen debris. During the months immediately preceding the junction with the Savage Mine works the heading was cut with almost passionate eagerness. The miners were then two miles from the nearest ventilating shaft, and the heat of their working chamber was fast growing too intense for human endurance. The pipe which supplied compressed air to the drills was opened at several points, and the blowers were worked to their utmost capacity; still the mercury rose from 98 ° F. on the 1st of March 1878 to 109 on the 22nd of April, and the temperature of the rock face of the heading increased from 110 to 114 during the same period. From the first day of May 1878, it was necessary to change the working force four times a day instead of three, as previously, and the men could only work during a small portion of the nominal hours of labour. Even the tough, wiry mules of the car train could hardly be driven up to the end of the tunnel, and sought for fresh air not less ardently than the men. Curses, blows, and kicks could scarcely force them away from the blower tube openings, and more than once a rationally obstinate mule thrust his head into the end of the canvas air-pipe, and was literally torn away by main strength, as the miners, when other means failed, tied his tail to the bodies of two other mules in his train and forced them to haul back their 172 The Story of the Comstock Lode companion, snorting viciously, and slipping with stiff legs over the wet floor. " Neither men nor animals could long endure work so distressing. Fortunately, the drills knew no weariness nor pain, and churned their way with- out ceasing to the mines. At length the tunnel drew so near the lode that the men in the Savage Mine could hear the explosion of the blasts, and, soon after, the tapping of the drills on the rock partition. These sounds grew more and more distinct, until, on the 8th of July 1878, a few feet of rock alone separated the two working parties. A blast from the Savage Mine tore an opening through the wall in the evening of that day, and the goal for which Sutro had striven for so many years was in sight. He was waiting at the breach impatient of delay, and crawled, half-naked, through the jagged opening while the hot foul air of the heading was still gushing into the mine. If he seemed overcome by excitement, as reported, it was in no way surprising, for he had triumphed over a host of obstacles, and his indomitable spirit had fairly won success." The Comstock, wonderful as it was in itself, derived additional romance from a herculean work like this, executed merely as a preliminary to the deep work- ing of the lode. At the time the Sutro tunnel not only took first place among all feats connected with mining, but also rivalled the Mount Cenis and St. Gothard enterprises in the difficulties attending its 173 The Romance of Mining construction. We must, therefore, feel sympathy with its promoter, who found that his scheme had been so hampered at the outset by opposition, that, when completed, the need for it had almost passed. The quantity of ore found in the lode below the level (1875 feet) at which the tunnel entered was insignificant in comparison with the huge deposits found between it and the surface, mostly extracted while the tunnel- drivers were straining every muscle to reach the lode. Had Mr. Sutro only been allowed his way in 1866, both he and the owners of the Big Bonanza would have profited enormously. Now for the Big Bonanza itself, which furnishes the most thrilling episode in the history of one of the world's most interesting mines. Virginia City and its neighbourhood contained many pessimists in the early 'seventies. Prices were down, expenses were increasing, and many financiers had come to the conclusion that the Comstock as a whole showed distinct signs of being "played out." Mine proprietors had for- gotten all about plate-glass windows, champagne, and beautiful fountains, while they endeavoured to keep the balance of the accounts on the right side of the ledger. While things were in this state Mr. John W. Mackay began to play a prominent part in Com- stock history. A man of cool common-sense, extra- ordinary insight, and bold action, he had risen from day-labourer first to be superintendent of the Cale- 174 The Story of the Comstock Lode donia Tunnel and Mining Company ; then a large shareholder in the Hale and Norcross Mine, as a partner of Mr. James G. Fair. These two Irishmen made a fine working combination. They bought up one property after another, including those between the Ophir and Gould & Curry Mines, which had hitherto been unsystematically and unsuccessfully exploited. The original owners, after joining forces and sinking shafts in search of a rich deposit, con- cluded that the failure to strike ore indicated a break in the lode, and, losing heart, were ready to sell. Mackay and Fair, acting in partnership with James C. Flood and William O'Brien — Francisco men — purchased the Virginia Consolidated, as it was now called, for about .£10,000, determined to venture their fortunes on the chance of finding a " bonanza " at a greater depth than the previous occupiers had attained. The quartette forthwith sank a deep shaft, and cut a drift to meet it from the Best & Belcher Mine at the 1200-foot level. At first the miners found only barren rock; but just as the " Virginia Con." boundary had been passed a thin seam of ore made its appearance. Mr. Fair followed this pertinaciously as the possible clue to treasure beyond. Sometimes it almost vanished, but never quite ; so that the venturers were induced to continue what outsiders regarded as a mere wild-goose chase. Two hundred thousand dollars were spent without result, and the H Virginia Con." tottered on the verge of bankruptcy. 175 BOSTON COLLEGE LIKRA&r CHESTNUT HILL, MASS. The Romance of Mining Illness compelled Mr. Fair to be absent for a month, during which time his three partners thought to im- prove matters by deflecting the line of search from a northerly to an easterly direction. On his return, however, he persisted in following the old course, and in October 1873 the miners cut into a rich ore- body, which was the Big Bonanza. " Of its magni- tude and richness," writes Mr. Lord, " all then were ignorant. No discovery which matches it has been made on this earth from the time when the first miner struck a ledge with his rude pick until the present. The plain facts are as marvellous as a Persian tale, for the young Aladdin did not see in the glittering cave of the genii such fabulous riches as were lying in that dark womb of the rock. . . . The wonder grew as its depths were searched out foot by foot. The bonanza was cut at a point 1167 feet below the surface, and as the shaft went down it was pierced again at the 1200-foot level ; still the same body of ore was found, but deeper and wider than above. One hundred feet deeper, and the prying pick and drill told the same story ; yet another hundred feet, and the mass appeared to be still swelling. When, finally, the 1500-foot level was reached, and ore richer than any before met with was disclosed, the fancy of the coolest brains ran wild. How far this great bonanza would extend none could predict, but its expansion seemed to keep pace with the most sanguine imaginings. To explore it thoroughly was to cut it out bodily ; but 176 The Story of the Comstock Lode the systematic search through it was a continual revelation." The average yield of this marvellous silver- saturated rock was .£600,000 per month for three years ! With monthly dividends of about one-third of that amount the four partners quickly became millionaires, rich beyond their wildest dreams. In 1876 Mr. Mackay took out .£1,200,000 worth of bullion to make an exhibit at the Philadelphia Cen- tennial Exposition. You can still see in Virginia City a building where .£25,000 worth of bullion was melted down daily for over one thousand days, and from which a million sterling started one night on its journey to San Francisco. To sum up, the " Consolidated Virginia" had by 1899 yielded ore worth 26J million pounds ; over half of which passed as profit into the pockets of the proprietors ! Such a record can scarcely be matched in the whole history of mining. Of course, this stroke of fortune affected the whole Comstock Lode. " Why," argued specu- lators, "should there not be equally rich deposits still lurking undiscovered in other properties ? " and they indulged their fancy as deeply as the gamblers of the South Sea Bubble. Servant girls and office boys jostled merchants and professional men in San Francisco in the race for scrip. Shares worth but 50 cents rose to a value of 275 dollars. Then rumours got afloat that the Big Bonanza was not, after all, so extensive as had at first been pictured ; and down 177 M The Romance of Mining came the prices with a run to a third of their top figures, leaving much ruin and wreckage behind them. Fortunately for those who had stuck to their Virginia Consolidated shares, the mine pro- duct knew no such fluctuations, increasing steadily until the bonanza became ultimately exhausted. From the sordid dealings of the money market let us turn to the manly toil of the mines, and borrow yet another picture from Mr. Lord's gallery. "The scene within this treasure chamber was a stirring sight. Cribs of timber were piled in suc- cessive stages from basement to dome four hundred feet above, and everywhere men were at work in changing shifts, descending and ascending in the crowded cages, clambering up to their assigned stopes with swinging lanterns or flickering candles, picking and drilling the crumbling ore, or pushing lines of loaded cars to the stations at the shaft. Flashes of exploding gunpowder were blazing from the rent faces of the stopes ; blasts of gas and smoke filled the connecting drifts ; muffled roars echoed along the dark galleries, and at all hours a hail of rock fragments might be heard rattling on the floor of a level, and massive lumps of ore falling heavily on the slanting pile at the foot of the breast. Half- naked men could be seen rushing back through the hanging smoke to the stopes to examine the result of the blast and to shovel the fallen mass into cars and wheelbarrows. While some were shovelling ore and pushing cars, others, standing on the 178 The Story of the Comstock Lode slippery piles, were guiding the power drills which churned holes in the ore with incessant thumps, or cleaving the softer sulphurets with steel picks swung lightly by muscular arms .... Roman gladiators were scarcely better fitted for their contests in the arena than those Comstock miners for their labours in the heart of the bonanza. All were picked men, strong, young, and vigorous, fed on the choicest food which the Pacific Coast affords, and paid the highest wages earned by any miners in the world. . . . In the hot levels all clothes were laid aside except a simple waist-cloth, and shoes which protected the feet from the scorching rocks. Balanced alertly on wet crumbling heaps of ore, with muscles swelling like flesh waves at every swing of the well-balanced picks, they became models for a sculptor. Their hot blood glowed beneath a skin whitened by a life in dark rock-chambers often dripping with water and reeking with vapour. The variety of their motions had made them a troop of athletes. . . . As one looked upon this swarm of human ants, stoping out and sending up ore from a bonanza whose riches were incalculable, while the vault of the great mine echoed with busy sounds and sparkled with moving lights, it is scarcely surprising that the eyes were dazzled by the vision of the treasure- chamber and the brain heated by enkindled fancies." The high temperature of the lode walls seriously increased the miner's toil. At a depth of 1700 feet the thermometer showed 104 Fahr. ; and when 179 The Romance of Mining shafts sank hundreds of feet nearer the earth's centre the heat became so terrific that some men fell dead over their picks ; while others were actually boiled to death by water into which they accidentally slipped. So exhausting was the effort of hewing the ore in air thus heated, and fouled by the exhalations from the lungs and body, that after a few strokes of his pick the miner had to stand aside to recover himself, while a fellow worker took his place. Yet human perseverance conquered. The bones of the Big Bonanza were picked clean ; Messrs. Mackay, Fair, Flood, and O'Brien pocketed their millions ; and the mines, now sadly impoverished and water-logged, passed into other hands. The " chancy " nature of mining is particularly well illustrated by the contrast between the good fortune of the four partners and the fate of the first discoverers of the Comstock Lode — M'Laughlin, O'Riley, and Comstock. The first, after a life of continual misfortune and hard work, died in hospital, too poor to leave money enough to cover the costs of his pauper burial. O'Riley, his brain turned by unrealised expectations, wore out his health and strength in a tunnel which he drove single-handed into a barren hillside of the Sierra. Angelic voices urged him on to imaginary treasures still far in ad- vance of his pick ; his tunnel fell in and maimed him ; and at last he was carried off to an asylum, where he died. The third member of the luckless trio, Henry 180 The Story of the Comstock Lode Comstock, also became the victim of delusion. Beggared in fact, he still remained in fancy the owner of the entire lode and its cities. A self- inflicted revolver wound terminated his inglorious history ; and he now lies in a nameless grave in the wastes of Montana. The sad note struck by these melancholy in- cidents attaches also to the later fortunes of the Comstock itself. During 1899 scarcely a dozen men were at work in the vast chasms hewn out by their predecessors. Deep down beneath the water which finds an outlet through the Sutro tunnel are the bottoms of the tremendous shafts, and the deposits deemed too poor to be worth extraction. Virginia City, which Mark Twain has peopled for us with characters of varied pattern, is shorn of her glory. The old mills, once humming with life, are silent ; machinery rusts in the rotting shaft- houses ; and though the sun still strikes down as formerly on the hillside, it serves but to show how deeply the word " Ichabod " has been traced across the great treasure-vaults of the Comstock. 181 CHAPTER X THE MINES OF LEADVILLE Fifty years ago — Significant names — Early history — First era of mining — Valuable rubbish — Second era — Great profits — A railway episode — Third and fourth eras. Tucked away in Colorado between the Rocky Mountains on the west and the Park Range on the east is an elevated plain which slopes gently westwards. Fifty years ago solitude reigned here, among some of the grandest scenery which the United States can offer to the eyes of the tourist. To-day the district is a busy hive ; and the rounded hills crossing the plain from north to south have been honeycombed by shafts and tunnels driven in pursuit of gold, silver, lead, and other metals. Leadville, the commercial centre ol the mines, lies towards the western end of the plain. On the east are dotted about dozens of properties, named in a manner suggesting either their nature or some incident connected with their history. " Nil Des- perandum " conjures up a picture of the miner working against heartbreaking disappointment. In " Only Chance " we see the last card being played by the impoverished prospector. " Resurrection " betokens the mending of broken fortunes. " Ready Cash " speaks of early success. In " Evening Star," 182 The Mines of Leadville " Silver Cord/' " Forest Queen/' " Star of the West/' imagination has had play ; and " Little Vinnie," "Adelaide," "Dolly B.," "Fanny Rawlins," "Nettie Morgan," " Lillian," and " Minnie," perhaps indicate that the owner has in mind " the girl he left behind him " when he sallied forth in search of fortune among the hills. The mining history of the Leadville district dates from i860, when some gold-hunters crossed the Park Range and entered a — then — heavily-timbered ravine, through which flowed a feeder of the eastern fork of the Arkansas river. The locality looked promising. Pans and rockers were soon busy, " colour " appeared, and the stream, once limpid, became turbid and yellow after its passage through the rough apparatus of the miners. Some claims panned out a thousand dollars a day for weeks together, in spite of the shortage of water. Thousands of men flocked in to share the spoil. A large camp rose on either side the stream, with the usual array of stores and drinking saloons wherein gold dust was bartered for flour or whisky. The altitude of Leadville, — over 10,000 feet above sea- level — means a long and hard winter, during which the miners, swallow-wise, migrated to Denver and other milder localities, waiting for the next spring to return to their claims. The first era of Leadville history covers the years i860 to 1869. The camp saw its best days in 1861, and gradually declined till 1868 ; by which time the 183 The Romance of Mining " placers " had yielded some four million dollars' worth of gold. For the next decade little was done in the district beyond some quartz-mining ; though prospectors were busy seeking fresh openings for labour and capital. We have seen how, in Nevada, gold-mining had led to the discovery of silver. The same thing happened in Colorado ; and, as in the case of the Comstock deposits, the early miners at Leadville threw aside as worthless material which, to the expert eye, betrayed a fortune ready to be gathered. The workers in California Gulch grumbled at the weight of boulders obstructing their operations. But when W. H. Stevens, a wealthy miner, and A. B. Wood, came on the scene to organise a twelve- mile flume for the gulch, they took the trouble to investigate the nature of this heavy u rubbish," and found that it was carbonate of lead containing a high percentage of silver. They kept the discovery to themselves until they had secured several claims along what they considered to be the outcrop. From this year, 1878, dates the second era of Leadville mining, the " carbonate period," as it has been called. In a few months a strong stream of immigration had commenced, people flocking in from all parts of the States ; before a year had passed the population had increased twenty-fold. Leadville became a magnet, towards which long trains of waggons moved slowly along overcrowded roads. A Bank and a Post Office were established, and 184 The Mines of Leadville round these a town sprang up ; one of the liveliest towns of the day. At nightfall, pleasure-seekers crowded the streets, spen't their money recklessly, and enriched those who catered for their wants. Building sites, which a short time before could have been bought for a few dollars, fetched thousands. Fortunes were made by lucky speculators without the trouble of touching a pick. The carbonate zone runs north and south, with a dip eastwards at an angle of about twenty degrees below the vertical ; the carbonate lying between a covering of porphyry and a sub-stratum, or foot-wall, of limestone. The veins struck varied in thickness from a mere streak to thirty feet, and were so soft as to be extracted by the pick without blasting. Some of the ore yielded 400 dollars' worth of silver per ton, and 75 per cent, of lead. From the Little Pittsburgh, New Discovery, and Winnemuck mines on Fryer's Hill, to the north-east of the town, ore valued at over 3,000,000 dollars was extracted in six months. In the second of these mines a great " bonanza " appeared at a very moderate depth — between 100 and 200 feet below the surface. So large was the excavation that the owners had to resort to the system of timbering employed in the Big Bonanza of the Comstock. The Leadville mines of the second era were very shallow as compared with those on the Comstock Lode : and their working was therefore very profit- able until the price of silver fell in consequence of the 185 The Romance of Mining quantities of the metal extracted in Colorado and Nevada. Owned by " closed " companies of a few members each, who kept the shares out of the market, they never became the subject of such wild specula- tion as we have already had to notice in the case of the Gould & Curry and other big Nevada ventures ; nor has their working been distinguished by lavish and reckless expenditure. On the contrary, the Leadville mines afford a good example of efficient and economical management. The " carbonate period " is connected with a stirring episode in American railway history. The 'seventies were notable for the extension of the transcontinental lines. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa F6 had reached the edge of New Mexico in 1878, bound for the Pacific Coast. Its promoters had an eye very widely open for intermediate branches, and the discovery of silver in the Leadville region that year immediately suggested the reflection that a side track penetrating the Park Range into the plateau might bring some very pretty returns, con- sidering the charges then prevailing on the roads. There was only one practical approach to Leadville, through the Grand Canon eaten out by the Arkansas River ; and this the Rio Grande and Denver magnates already regarded as their own, since Color- ado was their particular sphere of action. Getting wind of the Santa Fe people's intention to seize the pass and gain the " right of way" by commencing work, they despatched a trainload of Denver employes 186 The Mines of Leadville to anticipate such a move. Mr. W. R. Morley, a Santa Fe engineer, proved too quick for them, driving furiously across country to Canon City while the train slowly wound its way over the metals. He collected a handful of backers, and by dawn had moved the first shovelful of earth ; much to the disgust of the rival faction, who arrived in time to look down the muzzles of an assortment of firearms. It looked as if there would be a fight for the Pass. But the West had advanced sufficiently in civilisation to have recourse to the more peaceful methods of the courts. As the result of a long and notable lawsuit, the Denver party compromised and leased the whole of their narrow-gauge system to the Santa Fe. The latter at once began to build a second line through the Pass on their own account ; and this being construed as an act of perfidy, the conflict broke out again. Different judges gave different decisions ; the employes took a spirited and practical part in the fight ; law and order were for the time set at naught. When it came to actual force of arms the Santa Fe got the worst of the bargain, and were finally expelled from their occu- pation. Such vigorous measures showed that the Leadville traffic was a prize worth fighting for. With the decline in the value of silver, Leadville declined also. But it did not fall, since there was still gold in the district, as Mr. John F. Campion discovered in 1891, when he sank a shaft on Breece Hill, to the east of the city. The Ibex Mining 187 The Romance of Mining Company was formed. In eight years it extracted gold worth 13,000,000 dollars. Other corporations did almost equally well. The third era, built, like the first, on gold, produced many large fortunes. At present the fourth era of Leadville is running its course. Gold, silver, lead, copper, zinc, and iron are all treated, as the baser metals have risen in value. 188 CHAPTER XI THE MINES OF SILVERLAND Mexico as a silver producer — What Humboldt found in 1802 — The total production of silver — Huge lumps of solid metal — Sensational for- tunes — A lucky priest — A millionaire fiddler — Two fortunate peasants — The " Good Success " Mine — The mines of Zacatecas — The mines of Guanajuato — The Valenciana Mine — The Marques de Rayas — Mexican mining law about depth of claims — Zacatecas wealth. Of all the silver mined yearly throughout the world Mexico yields one-third, which is assessed at a value of about .£15,000,000. Thanks to the enormous deposits of Nevada, Montana, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho, the United States come in a very good second with fourteen million sterling ; but other individual countries are " nowhere." It was gold that attracted Cortez to the land of the Aztecs in the sixteenth century. The natives, ignorant of silver mining, had amassed, as we have already noticed, large quantities of the more precious metal ; though their total accumulations were a mere trifle in comparison with the silver wealth which they left untouched. Silver ! Silver ! Silver ! is the cry which now draws engineers, capitalists, and adventurers of all classes to the Republic so ably ruled by Porfirio Diaz, a man whose career is as full of romance as that of the country which he has 189 The Romance of Mining rescued from chaos and given a leading place among the Transatlantic nations. Silver is found in most parts of Mexico, either as pure metal, or in chemical combination with various other minerals. But the provinces most distinguished by their silver mines are (refer to your map) Sonora, Chihuahua, Durango, Zacatecas, S. Luis Potosi, Guanajuato, and Hidalgo — to name them in their due order from north to south. When Humboldt visited Mexico in the beginning of the nineteenth century he calculated that the great silver lodes were honey- combed by 3000 to 5000 mines, each of which had several shafts and many galleries ; and he reckoned the silver extracted since the Spaniards first began work to be worth .£130,000,000. These figures are now quite eclipsed, for recent calculations assess the total value till the end of the last century to be .£800,000,000 sterling ! What these colossal figures mean may be con- cretely represented by assuming that the silver has had an averaged price of 3s. qd. per ounce. If you care to work out an arithmetic sum, taking as your basis the fact that one cubic foot of silver weighs 10,700 odd ounces, you will arrive at about 450,000 cubic feet, which would suffice for a pillar of metal ten feet square and higher than the loftiest mountain in the British Isles ! That such huge quantities should have been mined is due to the " kindly " nature of the ore, which permits it to be reduced by comparatively primitive 190 The Mines of Silverland methods. Many of the lodes or veins are " rotten/' or crumbling ; and in places masses of solid silver have been found which completely eclipse the records of other countries. The mine of Arazuma, in Sonora, takes first place as the producer of monster silver nuggets. So sensational are the figures that we should hardly dare to quote them, were they not backed by unimpeachable testimony. At Arazuma, then, in the middle of the eighteenth century, the owner paid duty on several pieces which together weighed 4033 lbs., the largest lump scaling 2700 lbs. — or about a ton and a - fifth ! Even the largest gold nuggets of Australia hardly equal this in value. You will easily understand that in a country so impregnated with precious metal many enormous fortunes must have been made during the three and a-half centuries during which the miner has been at work there. The stories of individual success and attainment of dazzling wealth would suffice to fill a large volume, and we must therefore but briefly notice the luck of a few persons and the productiveness of a limited number of mines. In the midst of bleak and precipitous mountains in the State of San Luis Potosi (not to be confused with the Potosi of Bolivia) is the Flores Mine. It was discovered by a priest, who, tired of his life as a starved cleric, bought for a mere trifle a claim which was being abandoned as worthless. After following the vein a little distance he struck a 191 The Romance of Mining cavern in the rock full of " rotten" ore, out of which he mined over .£600,000 worth of silver 1 Again, in this same region, in 1778, a negro fiddler, overtaken by night while returning home from a dance, built a fire, among the ashes of which he discovered, next morning, a button of virgin silver. The outcrop, thus fortunately brought to light, made him a millionaire. The Moreton Mine, Sonora, was struck in 1826 by two Indian peasants, so poor that, on the night before their great discovery, the keeper of the store had refused to credit one of them for a little corn for his tortillas (cakes). They extracted from their claim 270,000 dollars; yet, in December 1826, they were still living in a wretched hovel, close to the source of their wealth, bare-legged and bare- headed, with upwards of 200,000 dollars in silver locked up in their hut. Never was the utter worth- lessness of the metal, as such, so clearly demonstrated as in the case of these peasants, whose only pleasure was to gloat over their hoards, and occasionally throw a handful to be scrambled for by their less fortunate neighbours. 1 The u Good Success " Mine was found by an Indian who swam a river after a heavy flood. On arriving at the other side he found the outcrop of an immense vein which had been laid bare by the force of the current. All the inhabitants of a neigh- bouring town went out to see this wonder. Though 1 Vide Ward's " History of Mexico," vol. ii. p. 578. 192 The Mines of Silverland he was prevented by water inroads from going deeper than about three yards, he took out a large fortune. Of a neighbouring mine (the Pastiano) Ward writes : The ores were so rich that the lode was worked by bars, with a point at one end and a chisel at the other, for cutting out the silver. The owner of the Pastiano used to bring the ores from the mine with flags flying, and the mules adorned with cloths of all colours. The same man received a reproof from the Bishop of Durango when he visited Bato- pilos for placing bars of silver from the door of his house to the great hall for the Bishop to walk upon. The Santa Eulalia Mine yielded so enormously that two and a-half per cent, of the silver extracted in a few years sufficed to build the magnificent Cathedral of Chihuahua. So much for Sonora. Anything that can be said of this province can be said several times over for Zacatecas, Guanajuato, and Hidalgo. The first two of these have been rivals for first place among the states as silver producers. Both have had their ups and downs; the one being " in bonanza" when the fortunes of the other were low ; and then a turn of Fortune's wheel would reverse their positions. Since Cristobal de Onate located the Tanos de Panuco, in 1548, the mines of Zacatecas have yielded over .£200,000,000 sterling. The Guanajuato ore de- posits, first tapped in 1554, have given up an equal amount. The Valenciana Mine, when visited by Humboldt, had in four years produced 13,896,416 193 N The Romance of Mining ounces of silver. It was opened in 1760 on the 11 Mother Vein " at a point where some work had been done in the sixteenth century, and which had been neglected afterwards for two centuries as un- satisfactory. A rich il bonanza " was struck eight years later at a depth of 240 feet, and .£300,000 were extracted annually. A town of seven thousand inhabitants was built near the mine, which gave employment to 3100 people. A large octagonal shaft was sunk to a depth of 2000 feet, and the mine was explored by it in lower parts. But the rich ore extended only to the depth of 1200 feet, below which it was then too poor to be worth extracting. In 1 8 10 the mine filled with water. Fifteen years later the Anglo-Mexican Company (of which more presently) freed the mine at great expense, but did not succeed in making it pay. The United Mexican Company, which afterwards took it in hand, managed, however, to extract an immense quantity of paying ore. A peculiarity of this shaft is a spiral path cut over 500 feet down through the rock at such an angle that mules can walk up and down it. The other great mine of Guanajuato is the Marques de Ray as y or Los Ray as. In connection with it we may notice a feature of Mexican mining laws, which give to the discoverer of a lode a right to dig only 500 feet down under his claim. " The consequence of this limitation is, that when a very rich claim is made, there immediately springs up a contest to get below it, and to cut off the lucky discoverer from 194 The Mines of Silverland the lower part of his expected fortune, and he has no means of avoiding such a result but by driving his shaft downward until he reaches a point below his first 200 varas (500 feet), which entitles him to claim another section downward." l The Marquis de los Rayas, being a determined digger, got down so deep that he claimed a second stratum of 500 feet before rivals had penetrated obliquely, and so netted a fortune of over .£2,000,000 ; thanks to the ore being so rich in gold that it often sold for its weight in silver. With silver so plentiful, many extravagances were committed. " One Zacatecas miner paved the street with ingots from the Casade Gobierno to the Par- roquia (between fifty and sixty yards) for a christen- ing procession. In 1800 the Viceroy Ananga passed a law forbidding godfathers to fling handfuls of coin into the street on such occasions. It was easy come, easy go, as always where there are bonanzas ; with the difference that even a parvenu Spaniard spends his money, not like a parvenu, but like a prince." 2 The province of Hidalgo contains two very famous mines, the San Gertrudis and the Real del Monte. The story of the last is so interesting, and in many ways so typical of Mexican mining history, that we will devote a special chapter to its fortunes. 1 Wilson's " Mexico," p. 377. 2 "The Awakening of a Nation," C. F. Lummis, p. 30. 195 CHAPTER XII THE REAL DEL MONTE The Real del Monte — Early history — Mexican mining laws — Bustamente and Terreros — The great adit — Huge profits — Kingly favour and great promises — Water again causes trouble — Decline of the Real — English enterprise — Mexican mining mania — Great energy of new owners — Their mistake — Checked by water — The crash — Third chapter of the mine's history — Below ground — Thefts of miners — The refineries — The patio process — Silver and Silverland. Pachuca, in Hidalgo, is the oldest mining district of Mexico. The mines in its immediate neighbour- hood were the first in which the Spanish conquerors forced slaves to work for them. Ten miles from Pachuca, among glorious scenery, is the village of Real del Monte, on ground honeycombed by shafts and adits. As long ago as 1826, when English enterprise had begun extending the workings of the Real Mine, Mr. Ward wrote : " The possessions of the Real del Monte Company on the two great veins of Santa Brigida and La Biscaina cover a space of 11,800 yards, and are intersected at inter- vals by thirty-three shafts, varying in depth from 200 to 270 yards, but all sunk with a magnificence unparalleled in Euiope. The whole of these shafts, together with the great adit (or tunnel for draining the mine), which follows the direction of the two great veins, branching off from the Santa Brigida 196 The Real del Monte vein at the point where it intersects that of the Biscaina, and from which the wealth of the Regla family was principally derived, was delivered over to the Company in July 1824 in a state of absolute ruin. Many of the shafts had fallen in (though cut, at intervals, in the solid porphyritic rock) ; in others, the timbers had given way ; and in all, as the adit was completely choked up, the water had risen to an enormous height." But this is anticipating. Very little is known of this mine prior to 1749, beyond the fact that its surface workings had yielded considerable quantities of silver. In olden times water had been lifted from the mine in bulls' hides carried up on a rope, a method so primitive and inefficient that when a comparatively small depth had been reached, the water got the upper hand and caused the abandon- ment of the property at the beginning of the eighteenth century. As has been well said, no wreck is more complete than that which water causes when it once gets possession of a mine, and a mingles into one mass floating timbers, loosened earth, rubbish, and soft and fallen rock." The mining laws of Mexico, like those of some other countries, stipulate that a title of ownership shall be maintained by work and work alone. When once a mine is abandoned, anybody can " denounce," or claim, it, on condition that he works it. Now, an intelligent miner, named Bustamente, saw his chance. The water was there ; but metal 197 The Romance of Mining was there as well. If the former could be drained off, the latter could be easily extracted. He accord- ingly joined forces with one Peter Terreros, an enterprising merchant (though some accounts make him an ignorant muleteer), to drive an adit into the side of the hill which should enter the Biscaina vein at a depth of 200 yards below the surface. To effect this the tunnel would have to be 3000 yards long. The undertaking, though enormously expensive and very arduous, was persevered in by the two partners, who fortunately from time to time encountered veins which paid all costs. Bustamente died before the completion of the work; but in 1762 Terreros had the satisfaction of cutting into the Biscaina and seeing the water rush out into the valley. Adolph Sutro a century later, as we have already noticed, performed a similar but much greater feat at the Comstock Lode. When he reached the main shaft, he had a ruin to clear out and rebuild, which was a more costly undertaking than the building of a king's palace. But if the toil had been great, the reward was greater still. In twelve years Terreros took out over .£3,000,000. Of this he spent two and a-half million dollars on the mines and refineries ; laid out six million dollars on plantations ; and loaned the King of Spain a million (which were, of course, not repaid). For this handsome pecuniary help, and the present of two fully equipped ships of the line, the once humble Peter Terreros was ennobled as the Count of Regla. u Among the common people 198 The Real del Monte he is the subject of more fables than was Crcesus of old. When his children were baptized, so the story goes, the procession walked on bars of silver ! x By way of expressing his gratitude for the title con- ferred on him, he sent an invitation to the king to visit him at his mine, assuring His Majesty that if he would confer on him such an exalted favour, His Majesty's feet should not tread upon the ground while he was in the New World. Wherever he should alight from his carriage it should be upon a pavement of silver, and the places where he lodged should be lined with the same precious metal. 2 Anecdotes of this kind are innumerable, which, of course, amount to no more than showing that in his own time his wealth was proverbial, and demon- strate that in popular estimation he stood at the head of that large class of miners whom the wise king ennobled as a reward for successful mining adventures, and that he was accounted the richest miner in the kingdom. The state and magnificence which he sometimes displayed surpassed that of the vice-king. This in no way embarrassed an estate, the largest ever accumulated by one individual in a single enterprise." 3 1 The rich Mexicans seem to have had little originality in their methods of making a display. Street paving was, however, economical, as the silver could be collected again. — Author. 2 Mr. Charles F. Lummis, in his "Awakening of a Nation," says that Terreros promised to pave the road from Vera Cruz to Mexico (550 kilo- metres) with silver ingots. No doubt he had very decided ideas about the probability of a kingly visit before he made this promise. 3 Wilson's "Mexico," p. 365. 199 The Romance of Mining Terreros' son found the work of extracting ore more difficult than had his father, for in his time the shafts had sunk so far below the adit level that the original trouble with water was repeated. He installed horse-machinery, called malacates, which raised the water in skins to the adit and dis- charged it. As the mine grew deeper, more and more malacates became necessary, until twenty-eight were at work, turned by twelve hundred horses, superintended by four hundred men. A quarter of a million dollars were spent annually on the draining ; and eventually the deeper galleries had to be abandoned — though they yielded 400,000 dollars per annum — and operations were confined to the upper levels. On the death of the second Count the mine declined, and its activity ebbed very low during the War of Independence in 1821, which severed Mexico from the Spanish Crown. The Terreros family kept their title good by employing a few workmen about the shafts. As soon as the independence of Mexico had been recognised by Great Britain, English capital began to flow into the new Republic. During the years 182 4- 1827 a regular mania for speculation in Mexican mines seized the British public. To quote Mr. Wilson's vivid words once again, "That second South Sea delusion, the Anglo - Spanish American mining fever, broke out in England. It surpassed a thousand-fold the wildest of all 200 ■- G "§_« S5^2 ? s £ g ^ w °^2 -— -J o The Real del Monte the New York and Californian mining and quartz organisations of the last five years. 1 Prudent finan- ciers in London ran stark mad in calculating the dividends they must unavoidably realise upon in- vestments in a business to be carried on in a distant country, and managed and controlled by a debating society or board of directors in London. Money was advanced with almost incredible recklessness, and agents were posted off with all secrecy to be first to secure from the owner of some abandoned mine the right to work it before the agent of some other company should arrive on the ground. No mine was to be looked at that was not named in the volumes of Humboldt, and any mine therein named was valued above all price. In the end, some 50,000,000 dollars of English capital ran out and was used up in Mexico. It was one of those periodical manias that regularly seize a commercial people once in ten years, and for which there is no accounting, and no remedy but to let it have its way and work out its own cure in the ruin of thousands." 2 While finance was thus distracted a company, known as the Real del Monte Company, was formed to drain the Real mines and render them workable. Their condition at this period has already been described. Besides, all the machinery in the 1 The Comstock mania was still in the future, or these words might have been qualified. — Author. 2 Wilson's "Mexico," pp. 354-355. 201 The Romance of Mining large reduction works, formerly used to extract the silver from the ore, had been destroyed or carried off, and as the war had almost obliterated the villages round, workers were hard to find. Englishmen are not easily discouraged. The necessary capital having been subscribed, 1500 tons of machinery, including five large steam-engines, a stamp, saw-mill engines, and pumps, were sent out in May 1825 to Vera Cruz. Even when the three ships carrying the material had discharged their cargoes, after great difficulty on account of the exposed and dangerous anchorage, trouble had only just begun. Three hundred miles of rutty and hilly roads had to be traversed by the transports, drawn by seven hundred mules under the direction of one hundred men. This process occupied five months and cost a million dollars, a sum equal to the original value of the machinery ! Meanwhile a detachment at the mines had cleared the adit ; repaired many of the shafts ; erected buildings round the property ; and built a finely engineered road from the mines to the reduction works through the rocky ravine which intervenes. The pumps were erected, and hopes rose high. Unfortunately, the promoters made an initial mistake which ruined their venture. Instead of trying to drain the mines by a tunnel driven below that of Terreros, at the level of the bottom of the existing workings, they decided to pump the water into the old adit. At first all seemed to go well, 202 The Real del Monte since two small steam - engines, working pumps that lifted 600 gallons per minute, easily accom- plished what the twenty-eight malacates had failed to do. But the galleries drained did not prove very remunerative, and the engineers therefore decided to sink a large shaft farther along the vein. The manner of sinking of this was, at the time, a novel engineering feat, for instead of proceeding from the top only, the engineers drove five galleries at different levels from the old workings to spots under that which had been fixed for the mouth of the shaft, and worked simultaneously both upwards and down- wards from these five levels. The shaft was finished in 1834, and it must be placed to the credit of those responsible that when the sections met they made a hole as straight and perfect as if a shaft had been sunk from the surface direct. The new treasure-house reached through this shaft was worked profitably for a time, excavations reaching downwards to a point 720 feet below the adit. Then the difficulty of drainage made itself felt. Three large pumps, discharging between them 2700 gallons a minute, could scarcely keep the water in check. The cost of pumping ate up all the profits. Shares which had risen from £100 to ^4800 in value, fell, fell, fell, till in 1845 they could be bought for fifty shillings apiece I The company, worn out by a losing fight with the water, gave up the struggle ; and a property on which 20,000,000 dollars had been expended passed into the hands 203 The Romance of Mining of other people for .£25,000 ! This was indeed a sad ending to the second chapter of the Real's history ! A Mexican syndicate bought the mines and all appertaining thereto for " a mere song " — as indeed the amount named above must appear in comparison with the intrinsic value of the silver deposits still left untouched. Mr. Buchan, the engineer of the new company, at once commenced to drive a drainage tunnel 400 feet below that of the first Count. It had to pierce nearly a mile of very hard rock before it reached the great Dolores shaft. Then the water got away, and the third chapter, which may be said to last to the present day, commenced. In 1856 five thousand men and countless animals were at work. For a pen picture of the mine at this time we must once again appeal to Mr. Robert A. Wilson's interesting book. Clad in a skull-cap, miner's pants and coat and calf-skin boots — an oddly assorted garb — he descended one of the main shafts. " While standing at the top of the shaft," he writes, " I was astonished at the size and perfect finish of the steam pump that had been imported from England by the late English mining company. With the assistance of balancing weights, the immense arms of the engine lifted, with mathematical precision, two square timbers, the one spliced out to the length of a thousand, the other twelve hundred feet, which fell back again by their own weight : these were the pumping-rods which lifted the water four hundred 204 The Real del Monte feet to the mouth of a tunnel or adit, which carried it a mile and a quarter through the mountain, and discharged it in the creek. ... A trap-door being lifted, we began to descend by small ladders that reached from floor to floor in the shaft, or, rather, in the half of the shaft. The whole shaft was per- haps fifteen or twenty feet square, with sides formed of solid masonry, where the rock happened to be soft, while in other parts it consisted of natural porphyry rock cut smooth. Half of this shaft was divided off by a partition, which extended the whole distance from the top to the bottom of the mine. Through this the materials used in the work were let down, and the ore drawn up in large sacks, con- fisting each of the skin of an ox. The other half of the shaft contained the two pumping timbers, and numerous floorings at short distances ; from one to the other of these ran ladders, by which men were continually ascending and descending, at the risk of falling only a few feet at the utmost. The descent from platform to platform was an easy one, while the little walk on the platform relieved the muscles exhausted by climbing down. With no great fatigue I got down a thousand feet, where our further progress was stopped by the water that filled the lower galleries. " Galleries are passages running horizontally from the shaft, either cut through the solid porphyry to intersect some vein, or else the space which a vein once occupied is fitted up for a gallery by receiving 205 The Romance of Mining a wooden floor and a brick arch overhead. They are the passages that lead to others, and to transverse galleries and veins, which, in so old a mine as this, are very numerous. When a vein sufficiently rich to warrant working is struck, it is followed through all its meanderings as long as it pays for digging. The opening made in following it is, of course, as irregular in form and shape as the vein itself. The loose earth and rubbish taken out in following it is thrown into some abandoned opening or gallery, so that nothing is lifted to the surface but the ore. Sometimes several gangs of hands will be working upon the same vein, a board and timber floor only separating one set from another. When I have added to this description that this business of dig- ging out veins has continued here for near three hundred years, it can well be conceived that this mountain ridge has become a sort of honeycomb. " When our party had reached the limit of descent, we turned aside into a gallery, and made our way among gangs of workmen, silently pursuing their daily labour in galleries and chambers reeking with moisture, while the water trickled down on every side on its way to the common receptacle at the bottom. Here we saw English carpenters dressing timbers for flooring by the light of tallow candles that burned in soft mud candlesticks adhering to the rocky walls of the chamber. Men were industriously digging upon the vein, others disposing of the rubbish, while convicts were 206 The Real del Monte trudging along under heavy burdens of ore, which they supported on their backs by a broad strap across their foreheads. As we passed among these well-behaved gangs of men, I was a little startled by the foreman remarking that one of those carriers had been convicted of killing ten men and was under sentence of labour for life. Far from there being anything forbidding in the appearance of these murderers, now that they were beyond the reach of intoxicating drink, they bore the ordinary sub- dued expression of the Meztizo. According to custom, they lashed me to a stanchion as an intruder ; but, upon the foreman informing them that I would pay the usual forfeit of cigaritos on arriving at the station-house, they good-naturedly relieved me. Then we journeyed on and on, until my powers of endurance could sustain no more. We sat down to rest, and to gather strength for a still longer journey. At length we set out again, sometimes climbing up, sometimes climbing down : now stopping to examine different specimens of ore that reflected back the glare of our lights with dazzling brilliancy, and to look at the endless varieties in the appearance of the rock that filled the spaces in the porphyry matrix. Then we walked a long way on the top of the aqueduct of the adit, until we at last reached a vacant shaft, through which we were drawn up and landed in the prison- house, from whence we walked to the station-house, where we were dressed in our own clothes again." 207 The Romance of Mining Like the Kaffirs of the Kimberley diamond mines, the Mexican workmen are adepts at stealing. They try every possible device which may enable them to carry off pieces of rich ore. The hollow handles of hammers, the ears, the spaces between the toes, the mouth, and cigarettes, all serve as hiding-places. Accordingly the men are carefully searched three times when leaving work. The Real del Monte mines have been worked with profit ever since the Mexican company took them over, new deposits being struck from time to time. Not the least interesting features of a great mine are the reduction works, or haciendas, where the silver is extracted from the ore. Twelve miles from the Real is the Regla hacienda, built by the first Count in the bottom of a very picturesque valley. It is a very extraordinary group of buildings, externally much resembling a castle, since the massive walls are loopholed for defence. Inside are magazines, courts, furnaces, mills, smelting and amalgamation works, built over dungeons, vaults, and tunnels. Let us enter a mill and see how the Mexicans treat the ore. In a large yard boys and women are breaking up the ore with hammers. When broken, it is sorted, the useless rubbish being cast aside, and the rich portions being placed in a molino, which is somewhat like the mortar-crusher used on large building operations. Large circular stone rollers are drawn round and round in the trough of the molino by mules, until the pieces of 208 •° Q 8 is rilled. Then off goes the train, weighing perhaps 2500 tons, to the port, where it arrives without much difficulty, as the grades generally run downhill from the coalfields to the coast. At the port the cars are pushed on to elevated piers, which have openings under the tracks and above the mouths of chutes leading to the hold of the vessel to be loaded. As each car comes over an opening, a trap-door in its bottom is released by pulling a lever, and in five minutes or so the fifty tons have passed into the chute. By discharging several cars simultaneously 2000 tons per hour can be transferred from train to vessel. Boats specially built for coal transport are now largely used. They are divided by steel bulkheads, running longitudinally and transversely, into large bins ; and the cargo is thus prevented from shifting. Where such subdivision of the hold is not made, the collier may, if it meets a gale, alter its trim with disastrous results. Ships of 11,000 tons' capacity have been floated for the coal trade, and in future years even larger units will probably become popular. A great deal of money is saved by the employment of these special ships, since the bin will trim itself, whereas, in a large open hold, the labour of a number of men would be required to make them snug. 3*9 CHAPTER XIX THE MINING OF IRON The Jermyn Street Museum — Natural distribution of iron — Classes of iron ores — The Edison separating process — Roman mining — The iron mines of Sussex — Consequent destruction of forests — The decline and fall of the Sussex ironmasters — Coal used as fuel for English smelting- furnaces — Sturtevant — Dud Dudley — Abraham Darby — The Bilbao deposits — Ain Morka — Dannemora — Gellivare — The Cerro de Mer- cado — The Lake Superior iron ore beds — Methods of mining— The steam-shovel — Remarkable prices — Transporting iron ore to Pitts- burg — Other iron countries. Any one who is interested in the story of mining should not fail to visit a geological museum, such as is to be found in Jermyn Street, London. This last building is full of objects which, to a casual observer who has just strolled in to " see if there's anything worth seeing," are not peculiarly impressive ; — just slabs and pillars of stones ; tables made of marble mosaic ; cases full of endless specimens ; large dia- grams of strata, seams, and faults, &c, &c. The first view is rather disappointing. But if we look more closely into things we shall soon find ourselves becoming interested. Here is a diamond drill which, to judge by the worn condition of the diamonds, has done yeoman service. Beside it lie cores of some seams penetrated by it. Above it is mounted a large old-fashioned steel auger, which it has supplanted. 320 ^ * 3a 8 "^ The Mining of Iron The eye is also attracted to some of the lovely copper ores — pyrites of golden colour ; blue azurite ; purple ore from Cornwall ; green ore. The agates and felspars are beautiful to look upon. Antimony ore and asbestos are curious. Many ores would never suggest what they contain ; their drab, uninteresting appearance helps us to understand why the Comstock and Leadville miners made such mistakes in the early days. Ah ! here is a gilt model of the " Welcome " nugget, the second largest ever discovered ; value over .£8000. It rouses feelings of envy, as we note the rough, corrugated surface, and try to imagine the sensations experienced by the lucky miner who struck his pick into it nearly fifty years ago. Close to this model are cases full of iron ore specimens, representing a metal that has been vastly more valuable to mankind than all the gold, silver, and diamonds ever mined put together. In colour, iron ore cannot compare with copper, though the pyrites (or sulphide of iron) is golden, and the Elban ore wears the hues of the peacock. The majority of specimens range from a dirty yellow, through browns and reds, to black. Their shape is somewhat more interesting. Haematite, one of the most important varieties of ore, occurs as curious knobs, with smooth, shining surfaces. Spathose iron ore, on the other hand, is made up of curious laminae, somewhat like butterflies' wings, standing up on edge. Here, again, there is little externally to suggest that the most useful of the metals forms from 35 to 60 per cent. 321 x The Romance of Mining of these dull-looking compounds. Certainly we cannot see a trace of metal sparkling from the lumps. Iron is even more widely distributed than coal. We may say at once that scarcely a country could be named in which iron ore deposits are not to be found. Some of the most notable fields will be mentioned presently, after we have briefly enumerated the chemical compounds in which iron occurs. The only naturally pure iron is that contained in meteorites, which have fallen from the skies, and once formed part of the heavenly bodies. A poetical mind might see in the fall of these errant masses a Divine hint that iron is the most valuable material gift that can be sent to man from above ; and indeed it is remarkable that space should be full of iron lumps whirling about, heated to whiteness whenever they encounter the friction of our atmosphere. Combined with sulphur, iron appears as ferric disulphide or iron pyrites, which is of little use to the smelter, but valuable as a source of sulphuric acid, or vitriol. The oxides of iron {i.e. substances in which iron is combined with oxygen) are known as : (i) Magnetite, also called magnetic iron ore, or loadstone, which contains 72 per cent, of iron, the largest proportion that can combine with oxygen ; (2) Hcematite, brown and red, including limonite, specular ore, lake ore, &c. Haematite contains up to 70 per cent, of iron. Thirdly, we have the carbonates of iron (i.e. iron 322 The Mining of Iron plus carbon plus oxygen), which fall under two main heads: (i) Spathic iron ore } otherwise called "sparry ore," siderite, or spathose. This has a crystalline form and is comparatively free from impurities. (2) Clay ironstone, found largely in the coal-measures, alternating with coal and limestone. This ore is the poorest in iron, of which it seldom contains more than 40 per cent., but on account of its interstratifica- tion with the fuel necessary to smelt it, and the flux (limestone) needed to separate the impurities, it has been till recent years the main foundation of the immense industries of England and Western Penn- sylvania ; though it has assumed less importance as cheap freights have enabled ironmasters to import richer ores from distant regions to the smelting furnaces of the coalfields, or to transport coal to the districts where the richer ores occur. Taken as a whole, iron ore falls into four classes : * 1. Rich, those containing more than 50 per cent, of iron. 2. Average, those containing 35 to 50 per cent, of iron. 3. Poor, those containing 25 to 35 per cent, of iron. 4. Useless, those containing up to 25 per cent, of iron. The last class is useless, however, only for smelting direct from the ore. Thomas Edison, the " Wizard of the West/' has discovered a method of separating the iron from its matrix by electricity. The ore is pulverised in a huge crusher, and the powder falls through a hopper past the poles of a very powerful 1 British ores average 35 per cent, iron ; French, 36 ; German, 37 Austrian, 40 ; Spanish, 50 ; Swedish, up to 66. 323 The Romance of Mining electro-magnet, which deflects the particles of metal so that they fall into a special receiver, while the rubbish drops directly into another. Iron mining, though as compared with some other branches of mining a modern industry, dates back into the unrecorded past. The metal occurs in large pockets near or at the surface, as well as in veins and deep beds, and was therefore easily accessible to workers armed with very simple tools. The Romans mined iron extensively in the Forest of Dean, in South Wales, and in Sussex. At the time of the Norman Conquest the Sussex industry had ceased, since we find no reference to it in Domesday Book, though smelting still continued on the borders of Wales, whence, during the reign of the Saxon Kings, England seems to have derived most of its iron. During the Middle Ages fresh districts were opened up near Warwick and Leeds ; and huge cinder-beds testify to the activity of the workers, who were to a great extent controlled by the abbots of the large monasteries. At this time iron-working was con- sidered an honourable trade ; and even so far back as the regency of St. Dunstan we have evidence that monkish hands wielded the hammer and pincers, since it was at a forge, situated in his bedroom, that the Saint had his famous encounter with the devil. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, England imported most of her iron and steel from Spain and Germany, the business being in the hands of the Merchants of the Steelyard, London. Then 324 The Mining of Iron the Sussex furnaces grew busy, fed by the charcoal made from the forests which then covered the Weald. Cannon were cast as early as 1543, and exported in such numbers to Spain that Sir Walter Raleigh said in the House of Commons : " I am sure heretofore one ship of Her Majesty's was able to beat ten Spaniards, but now, by reason of our own ordnance, we are hardly matched one to one," and the exporta- tion was prohibited by law. In Elizabeth's reign the industry reached its climax ; though the output was very small as compared with that of other mining districts of to-day. A furnace did not yield more than three to four tons a week. " But to produce the comparatively small quantity of iron turned out by the old works, the consumption of timber was enormous, for the making of every ton of pig-iron required four loads of timber converted into charcoal fuel, and the making of every ton of bar-iron required three additional loads. Thus, notwithstanding the indispensable need of iron, the extension of the manufacture, by threatening the destruction of the timber of the southern counties, came to be regarded in the light of a national calamity. Up to a certain point, the clearing of the Weald of its dense growth of underwood had been an advantage, by affording better opportunities for the operations of agriculture. " But the ' voragious iron-mills ' were proceeding to swallow up everything that would burn, and the old forest growths were rapidly disappearing. An entire wood was soon exhausted, and a long time 325 The Romance of Mining was needed before it grew again. At Lamberhurst alone, though the produce was only about five tons of iron a week, the annual consumption of wood was about 200,000 cords ! Wood continued to be the only material used for fuel generally, — a strong prejudice existing against the use of sea-coal for domestic purposes. 1 It therefore began to be feared that there would be no available fuel left within practicable reach of the metropolis ; and the con- tingency of having to face the rigorous cold of an English winter without fuel naturally occasioning much alarm, the action of the Government was deemed necessary to remedy the apprehended evil." 2 In 1 58 1 an Act was passed, which made it penal to convert wood into fuel within fourteen miles of London, to erect new ironworks within twenty-two miles, or to increase the number of Sussex, Surrey, and Kent furnaces beyond certain limits. As a result of this legislation, some Sussex ironmasters removed to South Wales, and the Sussex iron industry declined steadily till 1790, when it ceased altogether. Dr. Smiles says : M The din of the iron hammer was hushed, the glare of the furnace faded, the last blast of the bellows was blown, and the district returned to its original solitude. Some of the furnace-ponds 3 1 Because people believed that the fumes were poisonous and injured the human complexion, besides causing certain diseases. 2 Dr. Smiles, " Industrial Biographies." 3 These were impounded to supply water power to drive mechanical tilt-hammers. 326 The Mining of Iron were drained and planted with hops and willows ; others formed beautiful lakes in retired pleasure- grounds ; while the remainder were used to drive flour mills, as the streams in North Kent, instead of driving fulling-mills, were employed to work paper- mills. All that now remains of the old ironworks are the extensive beds of cinders from which material is occasionally taken to mend the Sussex roads, and the numerous furnace-ponds, hammer-posts, forges, and cinder places, which mark the seats of the ancient manufacture." * Fortunately for England, she contained inexhaus- tible supplies of a fuel much better suited than wood for smelting. A German, named Simon Sturtevant, took out a patent about the year 1610 for "nealing, melting, and working all kind of metal ores, irons and steeles, with sea-coale, pit-coale, earth-coale, and brush fewell ; . . . which will prove to be the best and most profitable business and invention that ever was known or invented in England these many yeares." The concluding words were true enough, for to what dimensions has the iron industry spread not only in England but in other civilised countries, since the employment of coal in the smelting fur- naces ! The United States alone produced, in 1902, iron-pig worth nearly .£60,000,000 ; and in England, Germany, France, and Sweden also, the industries con- nected with iron rank second to that of agriculture. 1 Since these words were written many of the traces referred to have disappeared. 327 The Romance of Mining Sturtevant did not do much more than put a large number of words, purposely vague and mystifying, on paper. The real introducer of coal as a smelting agent was undoubtedly Dud Dudley, son of Edward Lord Dudley, of Dudley Castle, in Worcestershire. His patent, " for melting iron ore with coal in furnace, with bellows," dates from 1620. But his invention was born before its time. Never did inventor encounter more discouragement and active persecution than poor Dud, whose private success aroused fears among rival ironmasters that the use of coal would, by increasing output, seriously lower prices. His life was one long struggle against heavy odds, and when he died, at the age of eighty- five years, he had only sown the seeds of the revolu- tion which afterwards overtook smelting methods in Britain. Abraham Darby was one of the first ironmasters to rely on coal fuel. He made a large fortune out of casting iron pots at Coalbrookdale, South Shropshire, and his successors fairly established his methods. At Merthyr-Tydvil, Mr. Richard Crawshay was in 18 1 2 turning out 10,000 tons of bar-iron yearly, thanks to the proximity of clay ironstone to good coal, and the invention by Henry Cort of the method of squeezing the impurities out of iron bars by passing them through rollers. The discovery of the Blackband Ironstone deposits of the western counties of Scotland, in 1801, led to the establishment of a thriving iron industry there ; and from that time 328 ^ ■& ."§*S*o o 5 /• |» >.<£ ; :J*r v- ; . •■' ' «•£. V* < X u #?tf 3 f<. j Marble Quarries sounded with the blows of hammers and picks, and later with the crash of explosions. Augustus boasted that, thanks to Carrara, he had left Rome a city of marble palaces, though he found it one of brick. .The old Roman workings still pit the hillsides. Long after they fell into disuse the great Florentine, Michel Angelo, and Antonio Canova, hewed their immortal statuary out of Carraran marble, which to-day still remains without a rival. Avenza is the port from which the marble is sent all over the world. Blocks of all weights, from forty tons downwards, cover the quay and glisten in the intense Italian sunlight. They have been brought down from the quarries by road and rail. Carrara itself, a town of about 30,000 inhabitants, is five miles from the coast. The railway leading to it runs over marble ballast, and through tunnels driven through solid marble. Every siding is full of marble-laden trucks. The town appears to be one vast workshop, where everybody, from small children to old grandfathers, lives by his chisel and mallet. In the lower rooms of the houses all kinds of carving are in progress. Here mantelshelves are being smoothed and polished ; there tombstones. The sculptor of artistic statuary also has his studio here. He comes to the marble. It is cheaper than to have the marble sent to him. The streets remind one of Juvenal's account of Rome : they are filled with wains, creaking beneath their white loads, and hauled by long strings of horned oxen, whose move- 339 The Romance of Mining ments are spurred by drivers perched on the yokes. Like Johannesburg, Carrara is a city of dust, but here the dust is snowy, and comes, not from piles of rock-rubbish, but from the workshops. The town is indeed interesting ; but the visitor would be disappointed if he had to leave the neigh- bourhood without first visiting the quarries where the brown quarrymen blast and hack and cut the marble from the living rock. As the hills are prac- tically solid marble, there is no need to tunnel for it. Beginning at the foot of a slope, the workmen cut into its sides, until a gigantic semicircle has eaten far back into the mountain. Large masses are de- tached by dynamite, which is placed in very carefully drilled holes, and in such quantities as to separate, without splitting, the marble. " The first visible sign of the operation is the sight of masses tumbling down the mountain-side, thirty and fifty-ton blocks looking like mere pebbles. The distances are enor- mous, but the animated black specks, which one knows to be men, are clearly silhouetted against the surrounding whiteness. Something like a black ant suddenly makes its appearance and blows a sonorous blast on a horn ; other horns, numbers of them, take up the warning note, the sound gradually dying away in the distance. Then more ants are visible, swarming to the shelter of a bomb-proof or case- mate. After the last horn has ceased sounding not a soul is to be seen ; then comes the boom, the rattle, and the falling pebbles, and presently the 340 Marble Quarries ants swarm out again, apparently from all sides, and proceed to drill more holes and put in fresh blasts. The men must love the sound of that horn, for it means a ten minutes' loaf for them." x The easiest part of the work has now been done. It doesn't take long to drill a few holes and insert charges. But the removal of the blocks to the sea- coast is a tedious, somewhat dangerous, and very laborious business : and in some quarries the job is done by contracts made with the hauliers, locally called lizzatura and caravana. The former only undertake the lowering of marble, after it has been roughly squared, from the spot where it comes to rest after blasting to the nearest waggon-track, or to the railway. Certain paths have been selected down the marble- covered slopes, over which the blocks will slide most easily by force of gravitation. The difficulty is not so much to pass the material down as to prevent its going too fast, and causing damage to itself and to anything it may encounter. Watch these lizzatura at work. They have produced screw-jacks and levers, with which they slowly raise a block on to a solid sleigh of hard beechwood. Ropes, or rather cables, for they measure from three to five inches in diameter, are then passed round the block. Now, if you use your eyes well, you will see, ranged at intervals down the slope, stout posts driven into the loose stones and rubbish. By means of the ropes — 1 E. St. John Hart in Pearson's Magazine. 341 The Romance of Minin g law enforces the use of three — and the posts the stone is gradually allowed to slide down the track. As soon as it begins to move a man places a second skid in its path, and when it has passed over the first this is picked up by a follower, who hands it to a man perched on the stone, to be soaped and handed forward again. The same three or four skids are thus used in rotation over and jver again. The men who lay the skids naturally run the greatest risks, and occasionally the ropes break and one is killed. At last the descent is accomplished. It now only remains to raise the block on to waggon or truck. This process includes a great deal of shouting and yelling, by which the workers apparently try to drown the sensations of severe muscular exertion. The screw-jacks once more come into action, and levers are requisitioned. The men tug and strain, working with the harmony born of much practice, and the moment soon comes when they can fling down their tools and make a rush for the nearest wine-shop. The caravana now get their innings, if road trans- port is used. The waggons have very powerful brakes, wherewith to control the descent on the down grades. Water has worn the road until it suggests the bed of a mountain torrent rather than a track for wheels, and the " going " is far from easy. Remember that some of these blocks weigh as much as four traction-engines ; and you know how one of these machines will impress the surface of a well- made road. 342 Marble Quarries "The people engaged in this employment/' writes Mr. Hart, " which is practically hereditary, are a fine, sturdy, hard-working race of mountaineers. They are true Highlanders, and not in the least like the Italians of the towns. Many of them have to climb three, four, and even six miles before reaching the scene of their labours. Their wages or earnings range from fifteen shillings to one pound per week, and they generally work in gangs, each gang being under the control of a headman, who is more or less one of themselves, with the difference that he has saved or made money ; and it is with him that the owners usually contract for the quarrying and trans- port of the marble." The 400 quarries of the Carrara neighbourhood employ nearly 7000 men, and produce 185,000 tons of marble annually. At Avenza the marble is worth about .£3 per ton. Though the British Isles afford no single centre of marble quarrying operations to compare with Carrara, they can claim some fine deposits. South Devon yields marbles of rich tints and handsome markings. Black marble comes from Galway, Kil- kenny, and Derbyshire. Near Swanage the famous Purbeck — of a mottled, greenish grey — is quarried. In Algeria are beds of the beautiful so-called onyx marble, very transparent, with delicate yellow and brown tints. The glorious Taj Mahal, at Agra, in India, is built of marble from the Makrana quarries of Rajputana. 343 The Romance of Mining The United States marble industry ranks second to that of Italy. In South Vermont, round the town of Proctor, are huge beds of the precious limestone, through which diamond drills have been sunk to a depth of over 200 feet without entering any other substance. The Sheldon quarry, the deepest marble pit in the world, has its bottom 250 feet below the surface, yet there are at present no signs of ex- haustion. Much of the marble is got by " open- cast " working, but in places where the over-burden is heavy great caves have been hollowed out in the hillsides, so large that several thousand people could promenade in them comfortably. In Vermont ex- plosives are not much used, their place being taken by electrically- or steam-driven machinery, which cuts long and deep channels through the marble, dividing it into great blocks, which are separated from their beds by wedges. A stream, the Otter Creek, has been harnessed to turbines of 3000 horse-power for the generation of electric current, and to saw-mills in which the blocks are cut and ground. The electricity generated is applied to all kinds of machinery, from the giant gantry cranes, which pile thirty-ton lumps as easily as if they were bricks, and the monster lathes turning the surface of pillars twenty-five feet long, to small mechanical chippers, wherewith the monumental mason traces intricate designs on headstones. It also helps to convey sand for the sawing of the blocks into slabs, on a cable-way which crosses a mountain from 344 Marble Quarries the sand beds two and a-half miles distant. The Otter Creek is thus responsible, in one way, for making Proctor the centre of the States marble industry. One company alone quarries from 60,000 to 70,000 tons annually. 345 CHAPTER XXI STONE AND GRANITE QUARRIES Bath stone — Early users of it — A stone for country mansions — Ralph Allen and John Wood — The quarries — Their extent — How stone is got — The quarry horse — Its cleverness — Portland stone — Convict v. free labour — A curious custom — Granite — The Aberdeen quarries — The hardness of granite — A record blast — Sawing and turning granite. At Corsham and Box Stations, on the Great Western Railway, situated respectively at the eastern and western ends of the famous tunnel excavated by Brunei, you will see trucks laden with large blocks of white stone standing in the sidings, and also piles of the same material in the station yards. This stone is that named after the neighbouring city of Bath, which is almost entirely built of it. The characteristics which make it specially valuable for building purposes are its freedom from " grain," its ability to resist the effects of long exposure to the air, and the ease with which it can be cut and carved. The hills surrounding Bath are largely composed of this oolite, or freestone, which is quarried from them, and despatched in huge quan- tities to all parts of Great Britain, and even to Canada, Africa, and India. The mining of Bath stone is no new industry. The Romans during their occupation of Britain 346 Stone and Granite Quarries soon discovered the worth of the oolite, and used it for the fine and interesting buildings which still encircle the hot mineral springs which draw so many invalids to Bath. The excellence of their preservation, though they have existed now for more than two thousand years, testifies to the wisdom of the Romans in selecting their material. Bath Abbey was built of the sime stone by the Saxons, who also used it for the fine abbey at Malmesbury. This stone apparently came from the Box quarries, which, so tradition tells us, owed their discovery to St. Aldhelm, the first abbot of Malmes- bury, who, as he rode over the hill, threw down his glove and bade his men dig there, as they would find great treasure, meaning the quarry. The same saint also erected the Saxon church at Bradford-on-Avon, which, though very small, is one of the finest speci- mens of Saxon architecture in the country. Centuries later, famous country residences were built of stone brought from Box — Longleat, the residence of the Marquis of Bath ; Lacock Abbey, near Chippenham ; Bowood, the seat of the Marquis of Lansdowne ; Corsham Court, the home of Lord Methuen ; and more modern mansions, such as Westonburt and Witley Court. The two men who may be considered to be the founders of the great industry that now engages so many of the folk living near the Box Tunnel, were Ralph Allen and John Wood. Allen came to Bath in 17 15, and four years later established a system 347 The Romance of Mining of bye and cross-posts, which was the forerunner of our present postal service. Seeing the necessity for a good supply of building stone in a neighbour- hood which had become the fashionable resort of Londoners, Allen re-opened the quarries on Coombe Down, and also those on Hampton Down. He was ably seconded by Wood, an architect of high repute, whose genius is stamped on many of the streets, squares, crescents, &c, which still render Bath remarkable, and at the time when they were built attracted people from the Metropolis. It was chiefly due to Wood's efforts that Beau Nash succeeded in making the city a pleasure as well as a health resort. In 1737 Allen built the stately mansion at Prior Park. The foundations alone consumed 8000 tons of Bath stone, the superstructure 30,000 tons. Even to the sash-bars of the basement windows, every ex- ternal detail was made of the stone. The pile is more than a quarter of a mile long from wing to wing. Pope, the poet, wrote of it as extremely comfortable ; and a contemporary, as " A noble seat which sees all Bath, and which was built probably for all Bath to see." In short, Allen made a huge fortune out of his post and quarries, and Prior Park was the outward visible sign of it. Since Allen's time the industry has increased enormously, on account of the facilities of trans- port which the railway affords. It is an interesting fact that the driving of the Box Tunnel, which was at the time regarded as an act of folly, led to the 348 Stone and Granite Quarries discovery of vast stone deposits, which have been mined, until now the hills are honey-combed with over sixty miles of workings. Speaking generally, Bath stone is got from under- ground chambers, adits being driven into the de- posits. Oolite is found at depths ranging from ioo to 120 feet below the ground surface, sandwiched in between strata of comparatively useless stone. The seams range from 20 to 30 feet in thickness. The mines — for such they should be termed rather than quarries — are of enormous extent ; indeed, there are no similar works in Great Britain which penetrate so many miles underground, and none in which men enjoy such immunity from bad air and falls. The Box quarries run under the Down for miles, and the quarrymen residing in that neigh- bourhood prefer, when the weather is bad, to walk to their work through them rather than over the surface, though they have to light their steps with a small hand-lamp. Year after year fresh chambers are opened, their position being carefully shown on a large map kept in the manager's office. A glance at this map will make you wonder how anybody can ever find his way through the maze. Stories are told of people who have been driven by curiosity to explore abandoned workings, with the result that they have lost their way, and either starved to death or been reduced to extremities before being found by search parties ; and, indeed, such tales can be easily believed. So far-reaching are the quarries 349 The Romance of Mining that a visitor can enter them at Box, and travel straight ahead till he emerges at Corsham, miles away, having actually passed over Brunei's tunnel. For a description of the working methods prac- tised in the quarries, we are indebted to Mr. T. Sturge Cotterell, the manager of the Bath Stone Firms, Ltd. The system generally used is an in- version of that used in coal-mines. The coal-miner undercuts the face, so that a mass may fall away and break. But building stone so worked would make a valueless rubbish heap. The freestone miner, therefore, commences operations above the stone. With the aid of adze-shaped picks, to which longer handles are fitted as the work proceeds, he cuts a deep horizontal groove 8 or 9 inches high, and ex- tending 6 to 7 feet back into the rock. It is evident that the removal of this thin layer of material im- mediately under the ceiling will disclose any weakness in the roof as effectively as if the stone had been excavated from ceiling to floor, and any tendency to settle is at once detected and guarded against. Assuming that the " holing" has not revealed any signs of danger, the miners now get out their one- handled saws, insert them at each end of the groove, and cut through the stone vertically and at right angles to the face, until the first natural horizontal parting is reached. The block has now been de- tached on top, at each end, and below. At the back it still is solid with the rock. Levers are driven into the bed, or parting, at the bottom of the block, 35° Stone and Granite Quarries and weighted and shaken till it breaks off at the back. It is then drawn down by crane power, and the broken end and the bed are dressed with an axe, so as to make the block shapely before loading it on a' trolley for removal from the chamber. As soon as one block has been got out, the workmen can attack others at the back as well with their saws, so that all farther breaking off is rendered unnecessary. At each face, or heading, of work a io-ton crane is erected in such a position as to command the whole. These cranes are now constructed telescopically, so as to accommodate themselves to slight variations in the headings, arising from differences in the depths of the valuable beds, and the expense other- wise attendant on frequent alteration of the crane is thus avoided. After a block of freestone has been loosened in situ, a Lewis bolt is let into its face, and it is drawn out horizontally by the crane. The removal of the first stratum leaves sufficient space for the workmen to " hole out " another groove in the new face, and also to make more vertical cuts down the first face, so that the face soon has a terraced appearance. Hand-holing has, to a certain extent, been replaced here, as in coal-mines, by a mechanical apparatus hailing from America, and worked with compressed air. The star-like head of the picker, striking the face many times a minute, soon pulverizes the stone, which is scraped out with a special scoop. Of course, large pillars of stone are left to support 35i The Romance of Mining the roof. The toughest varieties of stone will with- stand a crushing pressure of about 200 tons to the square foot, or ij tons to the square inch. In the Monks Park and Corsham workings the stalls, or chambers, can be driven to a width of 25 to 30 feet without danger of caving ; but in the Box Ground quarry, the largest safe span is limited to 20 feet. The stone blocks, after being detached, are mea- sured and marked. As a rule they do not exceed 7 tons, though for special purposes 9 to 10 tons is attained. Horses are used to transport the blocks through the tunnels, or to the bottom of shafts, where a powerful engine hauls them to the surface. These horses are fine animals, as regards both their strength and intelligence. The miners are proud of their dumb helpers, and will give you examples of their " knowingness." A typical yarn is spun of an old " leader," whose ear told it that a truck approaching from behind had evidently broken loose, and that to stay on the track would mean certain death. The sagacious animal, therefore, jumped into a truck near by, though it must have judged its position by instinct, as the place was pitch dark, and thus saved its life. The stones are stacked in large heaps on the Downs from March till September, have the natural moisture dried out of them, and become 4i seasoned " to weather changes. From Corsham and Box stations the blocks are sent by rail to all parts of the kingdom, or to sea- ports, where they are put aboard ship for the Colonies. 352 Stone and Granite Quarries Another famous oolitic stone closely resembling the Bath, is that of the Portland peninsula in South Dorsetshire. About half of the peninsula is in the hands of the Bath Stone firms, who work over ioo quarries. The Government finds employment for convict labour in other parts of the " island " ; but most of the actual stone-getting is done by the free worker. Nature has behaved kindly in Portland, for the stone lies open to the sky, and is split by fissures which greatly aid its removal — conducted on the system already described, except that no "holing" is required. In 1904 no fewer than 90,000 tons of Portland stone were sold by the Bath Stone firms, a considerable portion of which went to build the new War Office in Whitehall. A member of Parliament asked in the " House " why the stone necessary for these Government contracts was not obtained by convict labour from Government property. The reply was that, if the nation relied on convict labour, the new War Office would not be ready for occupation for a thousand years. " One glance at the convict quarryman," says the Stone Trades Journal, " is sufficient to prove their ineffi- ciency as workmen, though their labour is anything but light, and industry is everywhere ; but the lack of scientific arrangement, so absolutely essential in the management of a quarry, and the scarcity of necessary plant — only one crane is visible from the outer world — render a result totally inadequate to the amount of energy expended, only small blocks 353 z The Romance of Mining being won, which are used in the ubiquitous Admiralty works. The Portlander is born a quarryman, and grows a clear-eyed, clear-skinned Hercules. The heavy manual exertion required makes them de- liberate in their movements, and from the few accidents that occur in their dangerous occupation, marks them as careful and intelligent workmen. " A curious custom renders these Portlanders vastly interested in their work. From time immemorial, in the event of a man dying intestate, his real pro- perty was divided equally between his sons. In the event of land being concerned, it was either literally walled off into the requisite number of strips, or an undivided ownership was acquired. As the stone industry grew, the value of their land increased with leaps and bounds, with the result that to-day there are many men working in the quarries and earning, say, £2 a week, who are in receipt of royalties amounting from .£50 to ^100 per annum, derived from the stone won from their own land." In the stone yards near the quarries, circular saws, having diamond tips to their teeth, cut up blocks as if they were wood, and lathes and planing-machines are always busy. Every week 2000 cubic feet of finished work, and 1000 cubic feet of sawn stone, leave the yards. So great has been the demand for Portland stone recently, that the company has over 1,000,000 feet of stone in store for any emergency, and constantly adds to it. There is said to be enough stone on the " island " to withstand the drain 354 Stone and Granite Quarries for centuries. In fact, the promontory is just one big mass of useful material. Another stone to which reference should be made in this chapter is granite ; and the mention of granite takes us at once to Aberdeen, where over 9000 people find employment in quarrying and shaping this stubborn rock. The Pharaohs used granite freely for their statues and temples, but on account of its extreme hardness it has not been what may be called a popular stone until quite recently, when the introduction of mechanical tools and improved processes has rendered its working much more easy than it was formerly. What Allen and Wood were to Bath stone, John Fyfe and Alexander Macdonald have been to granite. Of these the former greatly advanced quarrying methods, the latter the process of dividing and dressing the stone. The quarries in the Aberdeen district are numerous, and also those of Peterhead, whence comes the beautiful red granite often seen in company with Aberdeen grey. The workings are 11 open-cast/' and somewhat resemble the Carrara quarries. Here no hand-sawing can be done. Gun- powder must be used to detach lumps ; the holes for the charges being made by hand-drilling or — and this is now becoming the fashion- — by rock-drills, which can bore a hole eight feet deep in an hour or so. The number of holes required depends on the size and the position of the block. Perhaps two or three suffice, or a dozen may be wanted. But what- 355 The Romance of Mining ever the number, the blasting must be done carefully so as not to split the granite into several pieces. Sometimes two blasts are employed, the first only partially detaching the granite, the second finishing the separation. Of course, the block leaves the il face " in a rough condition, and must be trimmed up. This is done not with an axe or a chisel, but by splitting along the grain with wedges. Over the quarry runs a stout steel cable, securely anchored at each end ; and along it travels a carrier, driven by a steam- engine hauling on an endless rope. A " fall " rope, passing over a wheel in the carrier, is lowered into the quarry and made fast to the block, which has already been moved to a position below the cable by a powerful crane. At the signal the engineman starts his machinery, and the granite cube, weighing perhaps five or six tons, is swung aloft, one, two, three hundred feet, until it reaches the carrier, and is then drawn horizontally to the " bank," where the material is sorted out and committed to railway truck or waggon. All sizes of stuff, from, the largest block to mere chips, have their use. " Waste not, want not," is the motto which the quarry-master lives up to. About ten miles WNW. of Aberdeen, on the river Don, is Kemnay, where a record blast was made some years ago. No paltry half-dozen tons were the object of attack, but a regular mountain. To insert the charges effectively it was necessary to drive a tunnel right through the mass, with branches 356 Stone and Granite Quarries to points on the intended line of cleavage. Two and a-half tons of powder were placed in the berths, and joined up with an electric circuit. Everybody was ordered to a distance, and then the man in charge pressed a button. Bang ! The earth shook. Before the rumbling had died away 70,000 tons of granite had parted company with the mother rock, and were ready for the sawyers and blasters. This huge mass, when reduced to manageable blocks, furnished loads for 9000 trucks ! As compared with the handling of Bath and other soft stones, the treatment of granite is slow through- out. It is slow work blasting it ; slow work sawing or splitting it ; slow work carving it ; slow work polishing it. As for the sawing, a toothed saw would lose its edge in a moment when brought into contact with granite. But if you use a band of steel having a smooth edge, and keep between it and the granite a mixture of water and iron-sand, the blade will gradually sink down into the block — a few inches in the hour — though it seldom, if ever, comes into actual contact with the stone in the bottom of the cut. The chipping of designs is now done largely with pneumatic chisels ; and the rounding of long pillars is performed by lathes. The cutting tool does not shave off the surface as the pillar revolves, but chips it. We might describe the polishing of granite, but as this scarcely falls under the category of mining, we must pass to our next subject — stones of a much more valuable nature. 357 CHAPTER XXII THE BURMA RUBY MINES The value of the Oriental ruby — Its composition — And qualities — The Burma ruby fields — A curious law — Annexation by Great Britain — Leased by the Burma Ruby Mines Company — Their engineer's difficulties — Attacks on the byon — Spiders Hill — Tagoungnandaing — A fine stone found — Operations in Mogok Valley — Methods of working— Testing the stones — Native miners — The ruby shops of Mogok — Electric power — Troubles from inundations. We have already mentioned the fact that the Oriental ruby is more valuable than the diamond, weight for weight. Mr. Edwin Streeter, an expert in such matters, affirms that a ruby weighing five carats is worth ten times more than a five-carat diamond ; and that the proportion grows rapidly in favour of the ruby with an increase of weight. Casting about for actual figures, we find that an eleven-carat ruby, sold in London a few years ago, fetched £7000 ; whereas a diamond of eleven carats would not, according to ordinary reckonings, be worth more than ;£iooo at the utmost. 1 The Oriental ruby is a variety of the substance called corundum, which is chemically known as an oxide of aluminium. It is interesting to notice that, 1 The value of a cut diamond is roughly reckoned by assuming one carat to be worth £%, and multiplying this by the square of the number of carats that the gem weighs. Thus, an eleven carat diamond = £8 x ii x ii = £968. 358 ^ ^ ^ ? $ ►Si -^JS '-r. ,tS- ~ £ .2 S O (J 1 ^ 5 -S,T= The Burma Ruby Mines while the oxide is so rare and valuable, silicate of aluminium forms the basis of all clays, and that the sulphate is familiar as alum. When tinged with blue, corundum is named sapphire ; with yellow, Oriental topaz ; with green, Oriental emerald ; with purple, Oriental amethyst. The adjective makes all the difference. The ordinary emerald, for instance, has as its basis silica, an oxide of silicon; and the ordinary amethyst is also silica, coloured by oxide of manganese. Apart from its value, the true Oriental ruby is interesting on account of its extreme hardness, which yields only to that of the diamond, and, some- times, to that of the sapphire, and also because it is found in very few places. In fact, nearly all the rubies ever mined come from a comparatively small district in Upper Burma, round Mogok, seventy miles north of Mandalay. Though rubies are occa- sionally found in Australia, Borneo, and Afghanistan, they are too few to affect the trade. Little is known of the early history of the Burma ruby industry. It is said that Mogok and the neigh- bouring village of Kyatpyin were obtained in 1595 from a Shan ruler, in exchange for the town of Tagoung, on the Irrawaddy. Until 1885, that is, for nearly three centuries, the ruby ground was owned by the Burmese kings, who had such a liking for the " pigeon's blood " coloured stones, that the possession by a private individual of a ruby worth more than .£70 was a crime, since any gem of that 359 The Romance of Mining value was considered to belong to the Crown. The obvious thing happened : that any one who found a big stone probably broke it up and sold it as several separate jewels. To prevent rubies going out of the country the ruby fields were forbidden ground to Europeans. In 1885 Great Britain annexed Upper Burma, and the right of working the ruby grounds in the Mogok region not already occupied was granted to Messrs. Streeter & Co. at a rent of .£26,666 a year, plus 16.66 per cent, of the net profits. They sub- sequently handed over their concession to the present Burma Ruby Mines Company, who hold a lease from the Government till 1932. The area of the Stone Tract is 400 square miles, which sounds a very fine slice of territory. But when the Company's chief engineer arrived in Mogok he found that the pick of the country, i.e., the valleys, was already occupied, and that he would have to confine his operations to the jungle-covered hillsides, without any indications of good ground to guide him. The labour supply was altogether in- adequate, and the only means of communication with the outer world was a cart road sixty miles long leading to the Irrawaddy. In bad weather the road was a swamp. Of houses fit for Europeans there were none. The Company proceeded to buy out the valley owners. Even then the water difficulties were such as to make them abandon the Mogok valley alto- 360 The Burma Ruby Mines gether, and try their luck again in the Kyatpyin valley, eight miles distant. In the middle of this rises a conical peak with a Burmese name signifying the Hill of Spiders. (i Long-legged spinners " have been associated with gold, and perhaps their pres- ence is considered a good omen for the gem-seeker also. At any rate local tradition held that in the earth filling the hillside caves there existed the pigeon-blood ruby more abundantly than anywhere else. Vigorous efforts were made to get at the byon, or ruby ground, in the caves and under the slopes at the base of the hill. It was even hoped that excava- tion might reveal a ruby-bearing volcanic " pipe " similar to those which contain the famous diamond blue-ground at Kimberley. By a curious stroke of luck the very first day's washing yielded a splendid stone, the only good one found here. The Spider Hill workings were in many cases tunnels driven into the hillside. This method of extracting byon didn't pay, as the actual number of miners was limited by the size of the heading. It was therefore deter- mined to try washing over large masses of ground in a valley, that of Tagoungnandaing (what a terrible name !) being selected. Power to work the pumps and the washer was supplied by a water-wheel put half a mile off, and transmitted to the mine by an endless wire rope, according to the system then largely used in Switzerland. The results were quite satisfactory, for, in addition to a steady output of 361 The Romance of Mining small stones, the most valuable gem that has yet rewarded the Company, a fine stone weighing eighteen and a half carats in the rough, and eleven carats when cut, was exhumed. Unfortunately, the deposit soon gave out, and the machinery had to be moved again, this time back to the Mogok Valley. Here, in a strip about two miles long and three furlongs broad, the ruby miners are now hard at work. The chief mines are the Shwebantha and Redhill at the north end, and the Choungzone at the south. Operations began in April 1894, since which date several millions of truck loads of ground have been washed over. The method of working — the engineers hardly claim for it the name of system — is this. First of all, a pit is sunk, 10 feet square and 25 feet deep, and a centrifugal pump is placed in it. The ground all round is then gradually loaded into trucks and hauled away to the washer, any water encountered being led into the pit, from which the pump removes it. This process continues until the level of the mine reaches the bottom of the pumping pit, or the quantity of water exceeds the capacity of the pump 3 in which case it becomes necessary to sink the pit further and increase the pumping power. The workmen are Chinese Shans, called Tayoks or Maingthas, who dress themselves in blue jackets and trousers, and live on rice, dried fish, salt pork, tea, and opium. The drug is said to be a necessity, for without it they "go to pieces," though when 362 -..■.:_ . . ■S'S Si -2 .«"*= The Burma Ruby Mines supplied they are good and willing workers. These men load the byon into trucks, which are hitched on to an endless rope, drawn up a slope, and tipped into the screens, through which, after being well shaken and disintegrated, it passes into the washing pans, 14 feet in diameter. Rows of steel teeth set in revolving arms churn up the clayey mass ; the clay and lighter gravel run off into a safety pan ; and the heavier gravel, containing the precious stones, is left behind — about one per cent, of the original contents of the washer. At the end of each shift a door in the pan bottom is opened, and the deposit falls into trucks with covers, which are locked until the sorters are ready to treat the loads. The sorters tip the deposit into a large bin, also locked, from which it slowly dribbles into a revolving screen covered with dif- ferent sizes of meshing. The sand is eliminated at once, and the clean deposit falls through in five sizes, the largest direct on to a sorting table, the other four into a pulsator, which further separates the heavier from the lighter stuff. No natives are allowed to handle the larger sizes, — the temptation might be too strong for their morals — and the English sorters conduct the next operation of working the stuff round and round in a sieve im- mersed in a tub of water till the rubies have gravi- tated to the bottom. The sieve is then smartly turned upside down on a table, so that the rubies are at the top and can be picked out by hand. 363 The Romance of Mining Every afternoon the day's find is taken to the office, where the inferior and worthless stones are handed over to the agent. Early next morning he sorts the largest stones himself, and watches while Burman helpers sort the rest into fourteen qualities. The best stones go to the London market. The worst are sold by auction once a fortnight to local dealers. These are natural gamblers, and will run up prices if, say, they think that a lump of red corundum may have a valuable centre. Most probably it has not ; but the chance makes them bid heavily against one another. In the ruby ground are found spinels, which both in colour and general appearance closely resemble the true ruby. The best method of testing is to put the jewels under a dichroiscope, when the ruby shows two distinct colours if viewed from different directions ; whereas the spinel and garnet show the same colour. Besides the Company there are the native miners, who have to pay the Company a royalty of 20 rupees a month for every man they employ. The Company keep up a staff of English inspectors to see that they do not work with more men than licences have been paid for. The natives cannot, of course, go to the expense of pumps and patent washers, yet they manage to extract the stones very thoroughly. They either sink a pit into the byon, or follow it up through crevices in the rock, and bring the dirt to the surface to be washed in small baskets 364 The Burma Ruby Mines and picked over by hand. A third method is to turn small hill streams on a deposit of byon and wash it down the hillside into a sort of " Long Tom/' which holds the heavier constituents, but allows the rubbish to pass through. Half the houses in Mogok are shops, where these traders may be seen squatting round a metal plate on which the stones for sale are displayed, haggling over prices. There is also a regular stone market outside the town. The rainfall in this region is terrific. Twenty-five inches have been registered in four days in the valley : on the hills the precipitation was probably heavier ! With great open pits to be kept free from the results of such deluges the engineers often find themselves in a difficulty ; and it has been decided to drive a drainage tunnel through the hill on one side of the Mogok Valley which will not only curb the river flowing through, but also empty the water from the mines by gravity. The tunnel will be over a mile long and have a section of 7 x 7 feet. The water has, however, its uses. A dam has been built across the valley some distance below the town, to impound a lake, which is led through stone channels and pipes to the power-house, where three electric generators develop some hundred horse-power. On one occasion a landslip carried away the channel and piping, and by stopping the generators threw the mine pumps out of action, so that the mines gradually filled with water. To prevent the recur- 365 The Romance of Mining rence of such a disaster, the open channel has been replaced by a tunnel driven through the solid rock. In addition to this electrically transmitted water- power, the Company have a good deal of high pressure water laid on direct to the machines. In the hills surrounding Mogok Valley ditches have been cut, starting from a mountain torrent and running along the hillside for miles till they reach the pipe lines which lead the water down to its work. Some ditches are the Company's own con- struction ; others have been bought from native owners, who show great ingenuity in u contouring '" the grade round the hills — and who expect a good price for their water rights. Several rich valley deposits have not been touched as yet. And even when they have been worked over, there will still remain the hillsides, which are a fit subject for hydraulicing in the manner already described in our chapter on California. 366 CHAPTER XXIII SALT MINES Salt — Its value as a dietetic — And distribution — Rock salt — Brine springs — The salt industry in Cheshire, Staffordshire, and Worcestershire — The salt mines of Wieliczka — A subterranean city — Art and industry combined — The day's work — Searching the miners for salt — The wonders of the mine — The Letow ballroom — Salt chapels — A vast chamber — A railway station in the depths — A saline Styx — The salt plains of Colorado — Ploughing the salt — A fine sight. The only mineral which figures in man's ordinary diet is salt. Almost from the earliest times of which we have any record the value of salt as a seasoning and digestive has been very distinctly recognised. Though man can live without salt, an instinct tells him to use it with certain kinds of food ; and many species of animals also evince a passionate appetite for chloride of sodium. This substance is, fortunately, very widely dis- tributed. To begin with, the ocean is strongly impregnated with it, and on any sea - shore a supply may be easily obtained by evaporation. Many extensive deserts testify by their salt deposits to a time when the sea once covered them. But the most important source of salt is un- doubtedly the rock-like strata which are found in many countries, sometimes outcropping as large hills of salt, sometimes sandwiched in between 367 The Romance of Mining strata of all geological ages except the earliest. It is curious that bitumen, coal, and petroleum often occur in proximity to salt ; and some scientists go so far as to suppose that salt plays a part in the formation of the last. England is the chief salt-producing country : and Cheshire, Staffordshire, and Worcestershire are the counties where the largest deposits occur, Cheshire taking first place. Droitwich in Cheshire has been cele- brated for its " wyches," or salt springs, ever since the Roman occupation, and the word salary (Latin, salarium) is due to the fact that salt was made a part of the Roman soldier's pay. Salt has been made in England from natural brine springs for centuries, but the mining of the rock-salt deposits through which water must flow to become thus impregnated is a comparatively modern industry in these islands. The Cheshire beds were discovered in 1670 by men boring for coal, and have been mined ever since. The salt is sometimes so hard that it has to be blasted with gunpowder. By far the largest proportion of English salt is the result of evaporating brine that has been pumped up from the surface of the rock-salt strata through large bore-holes specially made. About this system there is nothing at all romantic. The brine is merely poured into large open pans or tanks, heated beneath by furnaces, and the water is driven off until salt forms by precipitation and can be 368 Salt Mines drawn to the sides. If natural percolation is not sufficient to keep the brine wells filled with water, large quantities are poured down through bore- holes. About two million tons of salt are produced yearly in England, Cheshire being responsible for more than three-quarters of the total. 1 The effects of the industry are very visible at Northwich and Winsford, where houses and chimney-stacks are so far out of the per- pendicular, and the country so indented by depres- sions — often filled with water — that a visitor might easily imagine than an earthquake had passed that way. The " settling " of the surface, and of what- ever it carries, is due to the constant removal of the salt down below, just as in coal districts the land overlying a bed sometimes sinks when the props or pillars in the workings give way. Vast as are the English deposits, they must yield the palm for extent, if not for productiveness, to those of Wieliczka in Galicia, about nine miles from Cracow, which are deservedly the most famous in the world. In this region there is a mass of salt which is estimated to measure 500 miles in length, 20 miles in breadth, and 1200 feet in thickness! Wieliczka is the chief point of attack on this pro- digious bulk. For nearly eight hundred years men have been hacking at the salt, and their labours have left a veritable underground city, which is one of 1 The Encyclopedia Britannica says that the abstraction of salt from English beds amounts to one cubic mile every five years. 369 2 A V The Romance of Mining the a show-places " of Europe ; often visited by Royalty itself. As preface to a short account of these wonderful mines we should mention that they are the property of, and are controlled by, the Austrian Government, which derives no mean revenue from the sale of the salt. In a coal, iron, silver, lead, copper, or mercury mine you may see many strange and curious sights, but none to compare with those of Wieliczka. The material which surrounds the visitor is eminently suited to fine effects, when illumined by electricity or candles — white salt sparkling with the prismatic hues of light from countless tiny facets. Recognis- ing that a commercial undertaking could here be combined with magnificent artistic effects, the workers in these depths have, while removing some of the mineral, so decorated the face of what remains that now one may travel through and past chapels, altars, ballrooms, pillars, and thrones, all hewn from the solid rock salt. Salt staircases lead you from one floor to another. Chandeliers of salt hang from the roof. Statues of salt adorn the walls. Everywhere is salt, so skilfully shaped as to prove that the artistic feeling must be strong among the miners. The mines have a length of about 2f miles along the bed, and there are eight levels. In the topmost three are the sights which tourists crowd to see ; down below, the premises are for " business only." 37° Salt Mines Though it has been asserted that people have been born, and have lived all their lives in this subter- ranean city, there is no foundation for such a statement ; unless, indeed, the writer has become confused between humans and horses, which last certainly do spend the whole of their lives from birth to death far removed from the daylight. We may turn our attention first to the work of the mines, which is conducted by about one thou- sand miners. Working eight hours a day, they raise between them some sixty to seventy thousand tons of salt per annum, quarrying it out from immense chambers, which are carefully supported with timber- work in the roof. The chambers are duly named in honour of some well-known person, and act as store-houses in which to keep the salt until it can be drawn by rail to the central raising shaft of the mine. Such care is exercised in the excavations that accidents are very rare, though in the annals of Wieliczka there are recorded some terrible disasters, resulting from fire or the flooding of the mine by a subterranean lake. On account of the whiteness of everything around, the galleries are much more effec- tively illuminated by the miners' lamps than the workings of a coal mine ; and the air is kept very pure by its contact with the mineral, so that both men and animals enjoy good health. At the end of the day the miners ascend to the surface in lifts, and when all are up, the shafts are locked. One would hardly think that salt is a com- 37 1 The Romance of Mining modity worth stealing, or that, if stolen, the autho- rities would object to the theft of a mere pinch from an inexhaustible deposit. But salt is a taxable com- modity, and it appears that at one time so much of it was smuggled out in boots and pockets that every man was searched when leaving work as if he were an employe in a diamond or gold mine. The prac- tice is still continued, though in a perfunctory way, as the miners are too well paid to care about aug- menting their income dishonestly. Now for the wonders of the mine. Near the entrance stands a block of buildings, the offices of the manager, where visitors are kindly provided with overalls suited to the exploration of the caves below. The outfits worn by Royalty are carefully labelled with the name of the wearer and the date of the visit. You can descend either in an hydraulic lift or by a staircase hewn out in the salt. " When the stranger reaches the mine there bursts upon his view a little world, the beauty of which is scarcely to be imagined. He beholds a spacious plain containing a kind of subterranean city, with houses and roads, all scooped out of one vast rock of salt, as bright and glittering as crystal, while the blaze of the lights continually burning for the general use is reflected from the dazzling columns which support the lofty arched vaults of the mine, which are beautifully tinged with all the colours of the rainbow, and sparkle with the lustre of precious stones, affording a more splendid 37 2 Salt Mines and fairy-like aspect than anything above ground can possibly exhibit." * The illumination for spectacular purposes, by-the-bye, is carried out by the autho- rities on a specified scale, ranging from £5, 10s. downwards. For the highest figure all the electric lamps and candles in the mine are lit, and fireworks are let off to show the remoter corners. The first level is 216 feet below the surface. It contains the famous Letow ballroom, excavated one hundred and fifty years ago, where many festive gatherings, presided over by the Emperor, have been held. " One end of the room is adorned with a colossal Austrian eagle, and with transparencies painted on slabs of salt. In an alcove at the other end of the room stands a throne of green, the crystals of which flash a green and ruby red. It is on this that the Emperor sits when he comes to the mines." 2 Even older than the ballroom is St. Anthony's Chapel, close by, which dates from 1698, and may be considered the religious centre of the mines. It is reputed to be the work of a single miner, who has beautified it with many fine carvings, all executed in salt. Services are held regularly in the chapel, and on the 3rd of July there is a special mass, attended by many people, who flock in from near and far. There are other shrines and chapels, the finest being the Queen's, which, in addition to the splendid altar J " The History of Salt," E. Martlett Boddy. 2 The Strand Magazine, December 1898. 373 The Romance of Mining of salt, exhibits on one wall a view of Bethlehem, also worked in salt, while overhead hangs an elaborate salt chandelier. In the second level is the Michelowitz chamber, 59 feet long, 92 feet wide, and 118 feet high, which has remarkable acoustic properties. The third floor contains a railway station, where the twenty -five miles of the mine tracks converge ; and also a restaurant for the refreshment of visitors and workers. To quote the words of Mr. James W. Smith, who was responsible for the interesting description of the mines in the Strand Magazine, which has already been laid under contribution : " Five or six tables on one side of the line are often crowded with diners and drinkers of beer, who seem thoroughly to enjoy themselves under the hundred lights scattered over the front of the station. Several massive chandeliers of salt try to outvie in brilliancy the glow of the illumination from these incandescent lights. In some respects this scene, with its busy waiting crowd, its converging rails, its twinkling lights, and the rumble of the train in the tunnel near by, recalls the impression which one gets while standing at an English railway station on a moonless, starlight night." As a contrast to the ballrooms, chapels, and station, there is a subterranean lake, navigated by a boat hauled along on a rope. In fact, there are sixteen lakes, but only one is included among the " lions." 374 Salt Mines Almost as remarkable as the Wieliczka Mines, though in quite a different fashion, is the wonder- ful salt farm on the Colorado River, where iooo acres of solid salt are ploughed, hoed, and piled up as if it were mere earth. It occupies a depression in the midst of the Colorado Desert just north of the boundary line separating California from Mexico. This dip is 264 feet below sea-level, and in it salt has been deposited by the evaporation of saline water in past ages. About thirteen years ago the Colorado River overflowed its banks, dissolved the salt scat- tered in the depression, and when the water had evaporated there lay in the bottom of the basin a blindingly white sheet of the mineral. So intense was the glare from it that no person could ven- ture on to it unless equipped with deeply-coloured glasses. Its value being obvious, a company was formed to work the deposit. Never was salt more easily got. All that one had to do was to draw ploughs over the surface to loosen the salt, which could then be collected into heaps, and carted away as soon as all moisture had been dried out by the sun. A special plough was devised for the industry, a machine mounted on four wheels, with a heavy beak which cuts into the salt and piles it on either side of the track in two long ridges. It is pulled backwards and forwards by a rope operated by a steam-engine. So intense is the heat that Europeans cannot endure it, and Indians or Japanese have to be employed. 375 The Romance of Mining Even they suffer from optic inflammation, despite their coloured glasses ; and also from a perpetual thirst, induced no doubt by the saline particles of which the air is full. The deposit has a thickness varying from i to 8 inches. In places springs underlie the crust, but they are so impregnated with salt that they cannot dissolve any more, and therefore give little trouble. No sooner has a crust been removed by the plough than another begins to form, so that at present it appears as if the supply of salt were inexhaustible. When thoroughly dry, the heaps are put on trucks and transferred to the mills at Salton, which grind the mineral into a fine powder, and otherwise prepare it for market, either as a table salt or for commercial purposes. Though painfully brilliant during the daytime, the salt-field is a thing to be visited for its spectacular effects. A moonlight night should be chosen. Then "the spectacle is weirdly magnificent. The rows of glistening pyramids, the glitter of the moonlight from the facets of millions of crystals, the distant background of low, black hills, the expanse and stillness of the shadowless plain, strike one with awe and wonder that can never be forgotten." 37 6 CHAPTER XXIV SULPHUR MINING The uses of sulphur — Its occurrence — The sulphur deposits of Sicily — Popacatapetl — A romantic incident — A perilous adventure — Senor Corchado explores the crater — The miners at work — Mountains of sulphur in Japanese territory — Its exploitation — And removal — Grim surroundings. Sulphur can hardly be termed an article of diet, though in combination with treacle it is considered wholesome fare for children, if taken in small quan- tities. You may remember the dramatic episode recorded by Dickens in connection with Dotheboys Hail, when Wackford Squeers (junior) was stood on his head in a large bowl of the mixture by the in- furiated victims of a bill of fare in which brimstone and treacle played too prominent a part. Sulphur has a medicinal value undoubtedly ; but its chief uses are for the manufacture of gunpowder and sul- phuric acid, and for the vulcanisation of india-rubber. It occurs chiefly: (i) as natural sulphur, aimost pure, in the craters of volcanoes ; (2) intermingled with earth and rock ; (3) in combination with metals. We have already referred to the sulphides of mercury, silver, lead, and iron ; from the last of which (iron pyrites) sulphur can be extracted in commercial quantities. 377 The Romance of Mining At present the great sulphur beds of Sicily yield the largest part of the world's supply. These are of volcanic origin. The sulphur mines of Catania, Girgenti, Palermo, and Caltanissetta give employ- ment to some 30,000 people, and yield about 400,000 tons of sulphur a year. A network of galleries is driven through the deposits, and great chambers are hollowed out, often 100 feet high, central pillars being left for support. The ore is placed in stone-lined pits, having a sloping floor, covered up with rubbish, and lit at the top. The combustion of part of the sulphur produces sufficient heat to melt out the rest, which accumulates on the floor, and is drawn off into moulds holding about a hundredweight each. By this primitive method the ore is made to yield from 10 to 20 per cent, by weight of sulphur, according to quality. The neigh- bourhood of the kilns is to be avoided, as it is even less pleasant than the calcining district of the Rio Tinto. There is probably no more extraordinary mine in the world than that worked for sulphur in the crater of Popacatapetl, 18,000 feet above sea-level. Nearly four hundred years ago a party of Cortes' followers, headed by Francisco Montano, made the terrible ascent to the crater in search of sulphur for the manufacture of gunpowder, as the supplies brought from Europe were exhausted. " The Spaniards, five in number, climbed to the very edge of the crater, which presented an irregular ellipse at its 378 Sulphur Mining mouth more than a league in circumference. Its depth might be from 800 to 1000 feet. A lurid flame burned gloomily at the bottom, sending up a sulphureous steam, which, cooling as it rose, was precipitated on the sides of the cavity. The party cast lots, and it fell on Montano himself to descend in a basket into this hideous abyss, into which he was lowered by his companions to the depth of 400 feet. This was repeated several times, till the adventurous cavalier had collected a sufficient quan- tity of sulphur for the wants of the army. This doughty enterprise excited general admiration at the time. Cortes concludes his report of it to the emperor (of Spain) with the judicious reflection that it would be less inconvenient, on the whole, to import their powder from Spain." 1 But sulphur is scarce in Mexico, and the idea of robbing Popacatapetl's deposits was fascinating. Indians used to descend with baskets and gather small quantities, for which they found a ready sale. In 1850 a Sefior Corchado thought that a regular mine might be established in the crater, and, accom- panied by some Indians, and armed with an iron bar, ropes, and some sailcloth, undertook an ex- pedition to the summit. The ascent was so toilsome that only Corchado and one Indian reached the top; where the former fainted through loss of blood and fatigue. The Indian, being unskilled in "first-aid," covered him up with the sailcloth, and started down 1 " The Conquest of Mexico," Prescott. Book iii., chap. 8. 379 The Romance of Minin g the mountain to get assistance. Meanwhile Corchado revived, and crawled a little way down the wall of the crater to escape the intense cold of the snowy slopes. The heat so revived him that he brought down the bar, sailcloth, and rope, with the intention of exploring the horizontal, or bottom, of the crater ; and while he was engaged in fixing up his apparatus the relief party arrived. Some sconce were collected and taken down to Puebla, where an analysis showed so large a per- centage of sulphur that the crater was u denounced " as a mine. Capital having been raised, a rough tackle was rigged up for the use of workmen, and the hoisting of the mineral. Mr. R. A. Wilson, in his u Mexico," gives the following short account of a descent, which is sufficiently interesting to quote : " We followed a narrow footpath until we reached a shelf, where we were seated in a skid, and let down by a windlass 500 feet or so, to a landing-place, from which we clambered downward to a second windlass and a second skid, which was the most fearful of all, because we were dangling about without anything to steady ourselves, as we descended before the mouth of one of those yawning caverns which are called the ' breathing holes ' of the crater. They are so called from the fresh air and horrid sounds that continually issue from them. But we shut our eyes and clung fast to the rope, as we whirled round and round in mid-air, until we reached another landing- place about 500 feet lower. From this point we 380 Sulphur Mining clambered down, as best we could, until we came among the men digging up cinders, from which sulphur, in the form of brimstone, is made." The cinder deposits have been pretty well worked out by General Ochoa, who took over the mine, but sulphur is continually forming round the solfataras, or vents, of which there is a large number. Labour is somewhat difficult to obtain, as the working con- ditions are far from pleasant, though there is no special mortality among the men, who work in gangs, week and week about, and camp in rough sheds in the crater. When a storm or earthquake occurs their position is uncomfortable, but rendered tolerable by a judicious supply of spirits, and leaves of the coca plant, which enable the chewer to undergo great fatigue. In spite of the physical difficulties attending it, the Popacatapetl sulphur industry flour- ishes, or at least did so until quite recently. And if the proprietor still makes a good profit he certainly deserves it. Another interesting sulphur region is situated in the realms of the Mikado, on a little island half-way between the most northern point of the Japanese mainland and the southernmost point of Kamchatka. The island, named Etrofu, contains three volcanic mountains, about 3000 feet high, of almost pure sul- phur. Volcanic vapours, pouring through countless fissures in the ground as well as from the craters, are perpetually increasing the deposits, which have been calculated to total over two million tons of pure mineral. 381 The Romance of Mining Early in May 1898, some enterprising Japanese prospectors suggested to a firm of American engineers who had their headquarters at Yokohama, that they should join forces to mine this vast accumulation of valuable material. Concessions were got from the Japanese Governmentof several square miles including this, the most extensive sulphur deposit in the world, and a preliminary survey of the locality was made. The island lies off the regular ocean routes, and is so far north that its coasts are ice-bound for half the year. A surveying party, accompanied by Japanese engineers and a guide, sailed from Yokohama to Moyoro Bay, near the volcanoes, and after suffering great privations, discovered that the immense sulphur cones lay about two miles from the coast, though fortunately there was a natural decline leading gently down from the mountains to the excellent anchorage of Moyoro. This being so, the transport of sulphur from the deposits to ships could easily be effected by means of a cable-way carried on large trestles. As soon as the winter snows had melted in 1899, Mr. E. W. Frazer, a New York engineer, arrived at Etrofu, with a large gang of Japanese labourers, tools, timber, wire rope, and other supplies, to exploit the property in the interests of the Company formed with Japanese and American capital. Five months of hard work saw the completion of a rope transmission plant from the base of the sulphur cones to the sea level, and of buildings to house men and material. 382 Sulphur Mining The next year the plant was put in full working order. The yellow crystals were dug out of the hill and shovelled into iron buckets suspended at intervals of 300 feet from the cableway, which ran down to the sea on one side of the trestles and back again on the other, so as to form an endless rope. The weight of the full buckets keeps the rope in motion, the empty buckets being returned on the up-track by the descent of the full ones. The speed of travel can be regulated by friction brakes acting on a drum round which the cable passes at the upper terminus. In the course of five months 10,000 tons of sulphur were mined and transported to sea-level ; and 6000 tons were shipped to the refinery at Hakodate, Japan. The quantities mined annually have since increased, but it will take many years to approach even appreciably the exhaustion of the supply which Nature has so generously included within the domain of the Chrysanthemum. Sterility and desolation are distinguishing features of a neighbourhood where sulphur abounds. The fumes utterly destroy vegetable life. We have al- ready had a picture of a sulphur Inferno, but the following short description from the pen of Mr. William H. Crawford 1 is interesting, and therefore may be fittingly reproduced. li The writer's first view of the deposits, after a long and tedious trip, showed clouds of steam pouring from several places near the summits of the hills, and far down along the sides 1 In Casszer's Magazine. 383 The Romance of Mining glistened immense patches of dull yellow, which were occasionally lost to sight as a fickle breeze wafted the vapours in such a way that the brighter yellow sulphur of the summit could be seen. . . . On climbing to the top, the hills were found to con- sist of almost pure sulphur, inasmuch as diggings at every conceivable place brought up the yellow crystals. The sulphurous vapours which poured from subterranean depths were suffocating, and, in- stead of issuing from only a few places, as it seemed when viewed from a distance, the whole cap of each hill was really honeycombed, and each outlet was continually adding to the stock of the whole, day by day, as the vapours were condensed." 384 CHAPTER XXV THE PERILS OF MINING Dangers incurred by the miner — Fire, falls, poisonous gases, and disease — Falls — Safety catches for cages — Fire-damp— Choke-damp— White- damp — Ventilation the surest safeguard — The safety lamp — Electric lamps — The Wattstown disaster — One hundred and twenty lives lost — Other notable disasters — Extraordinary endurance of entombed persons — John Brown — Giraud — The Snaefell lead mine disaster — A dramatic account of the effects of white-damp. " How wearisome and painful the life of a miner is at best, only those who have earned their bread in underground prisons can know. From the most ancient times, writes Gamboa, the toils of the mine have served as a punishment for slaves, a torment for martyrs, and a means of revenge for tyrants. According to the grave description of Plautus, mining is attended with every pain that hell can inflict, and, indeed, that poet considers the torments of hell less insufferable. The crown laws of Spain appointed the raising of ore as an appropriate punishment for vagabonds, being an occupation of incessant labour, and continually exposed to imminent risks, in view of which it is said that the Belgians named a mine shaft la fosse (the grave) intentionally, and in Corn- wall the old open workings on a lode were called coffins, if Simonin's record is to be trusted/' 1 1 "The History of the Comstock Lode," ii. 211. 3 8 5 2 b The Romance of Mining The conditions under which mining, taken as a whole, are now conducted are such as to render some of the above words inapplicable to the modern in- dustry. Only in a very few parts of the globe are criminals condemned to drag out their lives in sub- terranean prisons, urged by the lash of brutal task- masters. The abuses which once made the coal mines notorious have been swept away ; and in all kinds of mines rules and regulations safeguard the health and life of the miner. There still remain, nevertheless, a sufficiency of dangers to render the miner's calling a distinctly hazardous one. The coal miner, in particular, runs daily risks, for in addition to the falling roof, the inrush of water, the overwound cage, the broken rope, and the premature explosion of blasting charge, he incurs the fearful perils of asphyxiation and fire. We must further remark that, besides the more sudden and dramatic calamities which may overtake the miner, he is subject to the subtle but no less deadly attacks of disease — pneumonia, arising from sudden changes of temperature ; consumption, caused by inhaling dust ; and " miner's worm," a disorder of the intestines. The falling-in of the roof of a mine can be pre- vented only by the greatest care in leaving proper pillars, or by a system of strong timbering. The science of roof-staying is now so well understood, that few extensive disasters occur from premature caving-in. Generally a fall is heralded by unmis- 386 The Perils of Mining takeable signs — cracking in the roof, the flaking off of small pieces, the bulging of pillars and timbers — which give the men fair warning. When a fall does take place, its effects are not limited to the area immediately underneath ; for the sudden expulsion of air through the galleries has been known to lift cars from the track and smash them against the walls, and even to sweep away the timbering of the galleries. A case is recorded in which a man was sitting at the entrance to a level eating his dinner, when a fall occurred in a distant chamber. The air-rush caught him and dashed him so violently against a wall of coal close by that he was killed on the spot. We seldom hear nowadays of a cage falling down a shaft ; for not only are the steel hoisting ropes very durable and trustworthy, but every cage is also provided with a safety catch which, in case of the rope breaking, comes into action and jams its teeth into the cage guides. The most deadly foes of the coal miner in par- ticular are the gases given off by coal. Bituminous coal gives off carburetted hydrogen, or marsh gas (CH 4 ), the result of vegetable decomposition under water. Some of this gas was imprisoned during the formation of the coal, and being under high pressure, is ready to escape when a miner opens a crevice in which it has collected. Sometimes a large body of the gas is suddenly tapped, and rushes out into the workings. Being only half as heavy as air, it natur- 387 The Romance of Mining ally rises to the roof, and when mixed with from four to twelve times its volume of atmospheric air becomes highly explosive. Should it then come into contact with a naked light, the effects are fearful ; almost comparable with those of gunpowder. A terrible flood of fire rushes through the galleries, scorching and igniting anything it meets. A loud report at the pit-head, accompanied by smoke and flying fragments, tells those above that a pitiable disaster has overtaken those below. The "fire- damp," as the carburetted hydrogen is called by the miners, leaves a deadly residue behind it— "choke- damp," or carbonic acid gas, the product of com- bustion, which, being heavier than air, sinks to the bottom of the levels and galleries, and speedily suffocates any living thing it encounters. The miners may escape the actual explosion, by flinging themselves on their faces, while the conflagration rushes overhead ; but unless they are soon on their feet and manage to reach a part of the mine not swept by the flames, the choke-damp will claim them as victims. A third gas, carbon monoxide, or "white-damp," is even more fatal than "choke," or "black-damp." It is the result of imperfect combustion. Even if it does not kill on the spot, it has more or less per- manent effects on a person who has inhaled it, as it is most difficult to expel from the system. The best safeguard against explosions and suffoca- tions is continuous ventilation of all workings. In 388 The Perils of Mining old times a miner, called the " penitent," on account of the resemblance of his dress to that of a cowled monk, was sent through the workings of some mines, after the other miners had finished their day's labour, armed with a lighted taper to ignite any small bodies of fire-damp that might have accumulated during the day. Sometimes he met a dangerously large volume, with results fatal to himself ; so that the office of u penitent," or u fireman," required a brave man to fill it. Before ventilating machinery and methods were sufficiently perfect to thoroughly scour the mines, the safety lamp, invented by Sir Humphrey Davy and George Stephenson, was of prime importance, and even now is the only form of lamp used in many mines. The flame is encased with a wire gauze cylinder having 784 apertures or meshes to the square inch. Under ordinary conditions flame will not pass through a gauze of this kind, as the heat of gas burning on one side is rapidly dissipated by the wire. The presence of a small percentage of fire- damp is shown by the behaviour of the flame, which becomes smoky. If the percentage is high, the cylinder becomes full of a pale blue flame, and the lamp grows so hot that it must be removed beyond the gas zone as quickly as possible. In spite of this useful invention many disastrous explosions have occurred, generally through care- lessness on the part of a miner who opens his lamp to light a pipe or another lamp that has gone out. 389 The Romance of Mining Constant association with danger makes men reckless and ready to " take the chance," 1 Even if the lamps are padlocked some one may have a key that fits them. In some mines, therefore, a magnetic lock is fitted, consisting of an iron plunger forced into a recess by a strong spring, locking the two parts of the lamp together. The lamp can be unlocked only by placing the lamp over a powerful electro-magnet, kept at the lamp station, which overcomes the force of the spring and draws down the plunger. Electric devices are also used for lighting the lamp without re-opening it. In the future the oil lamp will doubtless be re- placed by the electric portable lamp, supplied with current from a small accumulator or a primary cell forming part of the apparatus. Accumulator, or secondary battery, lamps, are popular on the Con- tinent, and have been introduced into some Durham collieries. The objection alleged against them is that they do not give warning of fire- or choke-damp, being quite independent of the outer atmosphere. Whether this is a reasonable objection may be doubted. Yet it was in a mine of which the galleries are lit by electricity — the Wattstown Colliery in the Rhondda Valley, Glamorganshire — that one of the most terrible mining disasters of recent years occurred. At 12.30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 12, 1 Faraday once watched the preparations for a blast being made in a mine by the light of a candle stuck in a lump of clay on the floor close to a sack. "Where's your gunpowder?" he asked. "That be it you're settin' agin," replied the man, pointing to the sack in question ! 39^ The Perils of Mining 1905, a tremendous explosion in the " up-cast" shaft threw the village of Wattstown into a panic. The sound was compared to that of the discharge of a park of artillery ; and its force was such as to break -windows in houses hundreds of yards away. At the time 121 men, including the manager of the mine, Mr. W. Meredith, were at work in No. 1 pit (the " up-cast "), and nearly 1000 in No. 2 pit (the " down-cast "). News of the disaster spread like wildfire. The mountain roads were soon alive with people hurrying to the pit-head to get news of friends and relations who might have been entombed. Colliery managers and medical men for miles round left their work and hastened to give what help they could. The force of the explosion and its after effects had fortunately been confined to the " up-cast." Amid most pathetic scenes all the workers in pit No. 2 were brought safely to the surface. But from the other shaft there came no reply in answer to the many signals sent down, and the worst was feared. The pithead gear had been wrecked by the explosion, and the ventilation shaft badly damaged, so that it was some time before rescuers, plenty of whom are always ready to risk their lives in the service of humanity, could descend. At the shaft bottom four men were discovered, two still alive. One of these died shortly after being brought to the surface. The other, Matthew Davies, a lampman, was the only survivor of the 121 men who went down the 39i The Romance of Mining shaft for the morning shift. He owed his life to his presence of mind in wetting the collar of his coat and holding it over his mouth to exclude the choke- damp. Proceeding along the air-ways, the relief party found ten bodies, including that of Mr. Meredith, and then were brought to a halt by a fall of roof. When the debris had been pierced, seventy more bodies were discovered, some terribly mutilated, others in a sitting posture and uninjured. One of the relief party said that bread and cheese lay about, and that the men were evidently having their dinner when the accident occurred. In most cases death must have been practically instantaneous. One old miner lay as if asleep, his features perfectly calm and undisturbed, though a leg had been broken in two places. Thus, in a few moments, 120 lives had been blotted out. Such a calamity might be expected to scare many men from earning their livelihood under conditions which render a like fate possible for them. But no I Explosions, falls, and flood- ings all come " in the day's work," and are soon forgotten. The miner is somewhat of a fatalist ; and, after all, the percentage of deaths from accidents among his class is low, considering the risks. Terrible as the Wattstown disaster was, it by no means represents the most tragic episode of its kind. In 1857 180 men were killed by an explosion at Lundhill Colliery ; and at Oaks Colliery in October 1866 no fewer than 364 poor fellows perished. 392 The Perils of Mining Even more tragic than an explosion, which is usually mercifully swift in its effects, is the walling-up of a party of miners by a "fall." We have already mentioned the Hartley Colliery disaster which shocked the world in 1862. The beam of the pumping-engine broke and fell down the shaft, killing on the spot five men who were ascending in the cage. Had the deaths been limited to that number, little notice would have been taken of the affair. But, unfortunately, the forty-ton iron beam on its way down detached large lumps of the shaft wall, and an impenetrable mass of wood and rubbish accumulated at a point 138 yards from the surface, sealing the only means of egress for the 199 men and boys below. These all perished from suffoca- tion, though desperate efforts were made to reach them. Two instances are on record in which entombed persons have lived for extraordinary periods without food. In October 1835 a big fall took place in the Kilgrammie pit, of the little Girvan coalfield, Ayr- shire. All the men escaped except one, John Brown, who returned to fetch his jacket and had his egress blocked by a second smaller fall. A fortnight later search was made for his body, and the searchers thought they heard groanings. That poor Brown could still be alive they could hardly believe, and accordingly attributed the noises to his spirit. How- ever, the attack on the fall was continued, and on the twenty-third day after the accident the open 393 The Romance of Mining workings beyond were reached. Here they found Brown, still alive } but so wasted that his backbone could be felt by any one laying a hand on the pit of his stomach. When the poor collier reached the light of day his body and beard were seen to be covered over by a fungus that grows upon decaying timber props, a sight never seen before ! But the rescue had come too late, and in three days poor Brown died. His remarkable record of endurance, cut on the stone which marks his grave in Bailly churchyard, is eclipsed by that of the well-sinker Giraud, who, with a companion, was entombed for thirty days in the bottom of a well near Lyons. To reach them it was necessary to sink a second shaft and drive a cross-heading, a very slow operation, which would not have been persevered with had not the workers been encouraged by tappings below. All Europe watched the extraordinary fight with death that plucky Giraud made. His comrade died, and his body lay rotting at his side. On the thirtieth day Giraud was extracted, his body a mass of gangrenic sores from contact with the corpse. Like Brown, he had lived only to die a few days after his rescue. An extraordinary instance of " white - damp " poisoning occurred in 1898 at the Snaefell lead mine, the Isle of Man. It is remarkable from the fact that several people, including Professor C. le Neve Foster, one of the Royal Inspectors of 394 The Perils of Mining Mines, were almost asphyxiated, but, being rescued in time, recovered and have recorded their personal experiences. It appears that a fire took place among the timber of the 130-fathom level, owing probably to a lighted candle being carelessly allowed to touch a prop. The combustion produced the deadly carbon mon- oxide, which killed twenty miners. Two days after the accident Professor le Neve Foster, with three other men, descended the mine to test the air. What happened will best be given in the words of the Professor's personal report to Her Majesty's Secretary of State, which is at once extremely interesting and pathetic: — "On the 13th May I did not notice any unpleasant symptoms while in the mine, but after having been on the surface for a little time I had a decided headache across the forehead. On the following day we did not go down below the 100 level, and felt no inconvenience whatever in any shape or form. On the 15th there was certainly a feeling that the air as we descended was less good than on the previous day ; but this in no way interfered with my work, such as testing the air from platform to platform below the 115; nor was my power of deciding that it was unsafe to descend to the corpse itself in any way impaired. I cannot recall any symptoms undoubtedly due to carbon monoxide, until I reached the 115 level after having climbed 395 The Romance of Mining rapidly up the ladders, when Captain Kewley gave the alarm that he was feeling ill. The poison took effect most suddenly ; probably its action was accelerated by the exertion of climbing rapidly. I felt decidedly queer when I reached the level, and thought a drop of brandy might revive me ; I took out my little brandy flask, but already my fingers seemed incapable of doing the work properly, and some one unscrewed the stopper for me ; I took a small sip and sat down. Everything then seemed in a whirl, and the atmosphere seemed to be a dense white fog. This must have been, as far as I can judge, a little before i p.m., for we went down pre- cisely at noon, and allowing full time for the descent and testing the air from platform to platform below the 115, I do not think an hour had elapsed after leaving the surface before we were taken ill. w Sitting next to me was Mr. Williams, and within a few feet were Captain Reddicliffe and Henry Clague ; the men who had remained all the time at the 115 level, or at all events had not descended as low as we did, had started to climb to the surface, but of their starting I have no recollection. A curious fact is that we all sat without moving or trying to escape ; the foot of the ladder was close by, yet none of us made any effort to go to it and ascend even a single rung. We none of us tried to walk a dozen steps which would have led us to the other side of the shaft partition, where we all knew that there was a current of better air. We simply sat on 396 The Perils of Mining and on ; Mr. Williams remained motionless like a statue ; Captain Reddicliffe, on the other hand, was shouting and groaning nearly all the time, while Clague was moving his arms. Of all this I was perfectly conscious, though rooted to my seat. By my side was one of the pipes conveying compressed air, in which a hole had been punched some days before. I was perfectly conscious that fresh air was a good thing for me, and I frequently leant over and put my mouth to the hole and inhaled a good breath. How soon I realised that we were in what is com- monly called ' a tight place ■ I cannot say ; but eventually, from long force of habit I presume, I took out my note-book. At what o'clock I first began to write I do not know, for the few words written on the first page have no hour put to them. They were simply a few words of good-bye to my family badly scribbled. The next page is headed ' 2 p.m.,' and I perfectly well recollect taking out my watch from time to time. As a rule I do not take a watch underground, but I carried it on this occasion in order to be sure that I left the rat long enough when testing with it. In fact, my note on the day of our misadventure was, ' 5th ladder. Rat two minutes at man,' meaning by the side of the corpse. My notes at 2 p.m. were as follows : — 1 2 p.m., good-bye, we are all dying, your Clement, I fear we are dying good-bye, all my darlings all, no help coming, good-bye, we are dying, good-bye, good-bye we are dying, no help comes, good-bye, 397 The Romance of Mining good-bye.' Then later, partly scribbled over some ' good-byes/ I find, 'We saw body at 130 and then all became affected by the bad air, we have got to the 115 and can go no further, the box does not come in spite of our ringing for help. It does not come, does not come. I wish the box would come. Captain R. is shouting, my legs are bad, and I feel very l , my knees are 1 .' The so-called ' ringing* was signalling to the surface by striking the air-pipe with a hammer or bar of iron. We had agreed upon signals before we went down. There is writing over other writing, as if I did not see exactly where I placed my pencil, and then : ' I feel as if I were dreaming, no real pain, good-bye, good-bye, I feel as if I were sleeping.' '2.15, we are all done. No * , or scarcely any, we are done, we are done, godo bye my darlings.' Here it is rather interesting to note the ' godo ' instead of 'good.' Before very long the fresh men who had climbed down to rescue us seem to have arrived, and explained that the ' box ' was caught in the shaft. Judging by my notes I did not realise thoroughly that we should be rescued. Among them occur the words ' no pain, it is merely like a dream, no pain ; no pain, for the benefit of others I say no pain at all, no pain, no pain.' I frequently wrote the same sentence over and over again. My last note on reaching the surface tells of that resistance to authority 1 Word illegible. 398 The Perils of Mining which likewise appears to be a symptom of the poisoning. " These notes afford ample confirmation of the effect produced by carbonic oxide poisoning of causing reiteration. I wrote the same words over and over again unnecessarily. The condition I was in was rather curious. I had absorbed enough of the poison to paralyse me to a certain extent and dull my feelings, but at the same time my reason had not left me. "The general sensation was like a bad dream, and yet I was able to reason properly and write intelligibly, though in a disjointed fashion. " I have been asked whether some of my notes may not have been written automatically or uncon- sciously. If there had merely been a good-bye to my wife and children I might have been doubtful on the subject, as I find that in my note-book I used some wording identical with that of a letter addressed to my wife which I had written as a matter of prudence before leaving Laxey on the morning of my first descent. After my visit to the mine on the previous afternoon, I knew there was some risk to be encountered, and I simply penned the letter for use in case things should go wrong. Fortunately, the letter was not wanted. Wholly apart from my farewells, it seems to me from my notes that I was recording things correctly, and that my brain was reasoning properly ; I do not think I ever lost con- sciousness in the mine. 399 The Romance of Mining " Mr. Williams, on the other hand, and Captain Reddicliffe, though not absolutely unconscious, did not recognise the lapse of time, for they thought that only about ten minutes passed between my calling out 'All up at once/ and their arrival at the surface. In reality, nearly two hours had gone by. "That the numbness of the fingers recorded in my notes was no fancy is proved by the fact that I burnt my wrist and hand with my candle while sitting underground, and had no notion that I had done so until a friend in the evening called my attention to a big blister. I daresay this was five hours or more after the burn. " I think there certainly was a feeling of exhilara- tion on reaching the top of the shaft ; I was quite able to walk and was in full possession of my senses, for I at once asked Dr. Miller to take a little of my blood, so that it might be tested spectroscopically. He tied a bandage round my arm, and when one of my veins was well swollen he inserted a hypodermic syringe, but no blood could be drawn. He then tried Mr. Williams in the same way, but again without success. That the puncture was deep is proved by the scar, which is still apparent. About an hour after I came up I sent off a telegram to my wife, which I reproduce in order to show that the effects of the carbon monoxide in producing unnecessary repetitions had not worn off : l Am perfectly right, do not believe any report to the contrary ; I repeat 400 The Perils of Mining I am perfectly right. — Clement. Address, Peveril, Douglas.' "Though feeling quite able to walk to Laxey, a distance of about four miles, I took the advice of Dr.. Miller and went down with some others in a trap. One of the miners who was with us was vomiting from time to time, and by and by I felt a desire to be sick also, and put my finger down my throat with the idea of assisting nature, but without effect. Soon after this I became unconscious for a few minutes ; it was not a true fainting, but something of the nature of an epileptiform seizure, as I am told that I was a little convulsed, though I never had anything in the nature of a fit before. Dr. Haldane has pointed out that seizures of this description are not uncommon after carbonic oxide poisoning. On getting to the hotel at Laxey I laid down on the sofa with a headache, and Mr. Williams suffered from headache and vomiting. " On arriving at Llandudno three days after the accident, I happened to pass our family doctor, and he told me afterwards that he at once noticed that the colour of my face was strange. " A few days after I got back from the island the first time, about the 21st or 22nd of May, I noticed my heart ; it could scarcely be called palpitation, as I understand palpitations to be, for there did not seem to be any increased rapidity of its action, but I was conscious of its beating ; as a rule, I am not. This passed off, and then on 1st and 2nd of June 401 2 c The Romance of Mining I noticed it very decidedly again, so much so that I went to my doctor. He sounded me, and said the heart was all right, though there was one sound which was not very distinct. This consciousness of having a heart still returns from time to time, though only to a slight extent. On the 19th May I suffered much from headache, not regularly, but intermittently. The headache lasted for several days, and the feeling in the legs was very apparent ; it was an aching in the legs from the knee to the ankles. A coldness from the knees to the soles of the feet was also noticeable ; it came on occasionally for a considerable time. The headaches continued at intervals for some time, and lasted certainly for some months after the accident ; indeed, I cannot say that they have disappeared altogether. Whether these headaches are still a consequence of the poison- ing or not, I am unable to say. I have, at the risk of being wearisome, given the above account of the mental phenomena accompanying partial poisoning by carbonic oxide, because it is possible that they may be of assistance to those who are investigating the subject from a scientific point of view." Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson &> Co. Edinburgh & London BOSTON COLLEGE 3 9031 01449634 3 VJ\LU?\» BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS CHESTNUT HILL. MASS. 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