I? 



room, when all being well and ready, the cables move 

 and down plunges the topmost cage. In about thirty 

 seconds a cage of men of the night shift emerges 

 from the depths. As they come off a fireman with 

 thirteen or fourteen men file in behind, filling the 

 cage, and, holding by a bar overhead, down they go 

 and another cageful of humanity arrive with black- 

 ened faces and bespattered clothes and lamps still 

 alight the descending shift have no lights, owing 

 to the powder carried^down. Boxes of tools are de- 

 spatched and in about ten minutes the shift has 

 changed. The conduct of the men is characterized 

 by perfect discipline and order there is a total ab- 

 sence of jostling or noisy talk. At the invitation of 

 the manager, Mr. William McGregor, and provided 

 with a lamp and necessary etceteras, I take my place 

 on a cage (there being but one deck I am able to 

 star-d upright), and holding the bar as we drop 

 through the darkness for 650 feet, reaching the bot- 

 tom before we have really realized our position, 

 landing, a very spacious place, blazes with incandes- 

 cent lamps a veritable magician's cave. But if 

 ever there was a place of business it is at the foot as 

 well as in the workings of a coal pit. The hours of 

 life below are short in all eight hours, out of which 

 the lunch time is taken, and in many cases it occupies 

 quite an hour to go to and return from the working 

 places, leaving only some six hours and a half of 

 work. Men who are paid merely for the actual coal 

 mined and filled bv them into cars, cannot waste a 

 minute of the precious time, so limited, at their dis- 

 posal, and their results press on the heels of the 

 pushers, hauliers, brattice men and those working by 

 the shift, so that all must be going at a lively pace or 

 a deadlock will soon ensue. There is, therefore, no 

 opportunity for gossip, and. as, once away from the 

 electric light, all is black as Walpurgis night, al- 

 though I follow my guide with implicit confidence, 

 yet there is nothing to see, and only when attention 

 is directed to some point of difficulty that had been 

 met with in the development of the mine, such as an 

 up-throw, or down-throw, or a pinch out, or horse 

 back, etc., and an explanation is given of how it was 



