470 Sir Henry Gunynghame [Feb. 19, 



on whose skill and attention depends the safety of all who descend 

 the mine. There are difficulties in the way of automatic cage-wind- 

 in.ii^ which I believe will be overcome in the future. 



[Photograph.] 



When the visitor arrives at the bottom of the mine, his eyes, 

 unaccustomed to the darkness, can see but little. He seems to be in 

 a huge coal-cellar with long galleries running out of it, in which 

 appear lights twinkling in the distance carried by men whose dress 

 is as black as their faces. 



Every mine has two shafts. The reason of this is to secure 

 ventilation. For the seams of coal give off gas, and this, added to 

 the contamination of the air by the breath of the workmen, needs a 

 constant renewal of fresh air, that goes down one shaft called the 

 down cast, and comes back up the other called the up cast. The 

 draught used once to be obtained by fires and tall chimneys. Now 

 it is done by means of ventilating fans. From tlie down cast shaft 

 leads the main haulage road. From this the stall roads branch away. 



[Diagram.] 



The diagram shows a simple district of a mine. A main haulage 

 road leads up close to the place where the coal is being got. 

 Branches into it serve to bring the coal back to the down cast shaft. 

 The ventilating air runs down the shaft, then along the main haulage 

 road, then along the coal face, and then turns back through the 

 return air-way. Of course it follows that the purest air is along 

 the main haulage road, the air in the return air-way being corrupted 

 with the foul gases of the mine. Therefore, people entering the 

 mine go along the main haulage road, and return the same way, 

 the return air-way not being commonly used for traffic. 



There are many ways of getting the coal. I will describe one 

 called the long- wall system. Along the coal face a number of men 

 are distributed, six feet or more apart. The coal is got out by each 

 man working away straight in front of him ; so that the men 

 advance against the coal face like a line of skirmishers, and the coal 

 face retires before them. 



The roof is supported by timber props, and a line of rails runs 

 along the front of the face, parallel to the line of men. 



The first operation is holing, that is the undercutting of the coal 

 close to the floor : this is done by men with picks. They have to get 

 right in under the coal, and to prevent its falling on them they put 

 sprags. They usually work nearly naked to the waist, on account of 

 the heat. The work is exhausting ; they are bathed in perspiration, 

 from which there are two results, one that they are clean physically 



