PURSUITS. 153 



or actually strike upon a vein, or upon detached pieces of ore 

 ranging downwards, he continues his labor, often with very 

 great profit. 



" When, after preliminary examinations, he decides to sink 

 a shaft, with the view of striking a crevice, he is compelled, 

 until he reaches the rock, to wall up the shaft with logs. 



" These shafts, of irregular form, usually approaching a 

 cylinder, are generally from four to five feet across. Some- 

 times the rock is soft enough to be quarried with hammer, 

 gad, and pickaxe ; at others, it is found necessary to blast it 

 with gunpowder. 



" The mode of descending is by means of a rope of raw 

 hide, and a common windlass worked by one or two men. 

 By the same simple contrivance, the ore is raised to the sur- 

 face. Sometimes, but rarely, ladders are used to ascend and 

 descend. 



" When a miner is fortunate enough to discover a produc- 

 tive vein accessible from a hill-side, he forms a drift, and 

 very conveniently conveys the ore out in wheelbarrows — of 

 course, at a very trifling expense. 



" The shafts are sunk in this lead region to the depth of 

 fifty, one hundred, or one hundred and fifty feet. They are 

 usually abandoned as soon as the mine is inundated with 

 water, unless the miner, by drifting (that is, working horizon- 

 tally) until the external surface of the hill is reached, can 

 readily drain the mine. There is but a single instance in the 

 district where a mine has been prosecuted after being flooded 

 with water, which could not thus be got rid of — namely, at 

 Hamilton's diggings, near the Peccatonnica, where the mine 

 is readily drained by a small steam-engine. The water in 

 this mine was struck at the depth of thirty feet, and the mine 

 has been worked with profit thirty-five feet below that point. 



" In the deeper diggmgs, the damp (carbonic acid gas) 



8* 



