AN UNDERGROUND EXCURSION 143 



rocky rind of the earth. Above us, the mouth of the shaft 

 seems narrowed by perspective into an insignificant hole ; 

 before us opens a dark street, over which, on a tramway, 

 mules are hauling car-loads of coal, which is starting on its 

 journey to the populous city (Fig. 61). Miners, with their 

 picks, are moving to and fro ; the sound of hammers is 

 heard; the paraphernalia of busy life are about us, and we 

 seem translated to a nether world. We feel like the hero 

 of the Latin song, who got permission to visit the realm 

 of Pluto, and make the acquaintance of unborn spirits des- 

 tined to dawn upon the world in the coining Golden Age. 

 Where is the Styx and its sleepy boatman? Where are 

 the shades that expectation thinks to see flitting before 

 us? Let us enter this dingy street, and conjure spirits 

 from their Lethean sleep upon the coaly couches that line 

 the passage-way. 



The seam of coal is a broad, horizontal sheet or bed from 

 three to five feet thick. In this are excavated passages 

 about eight feet wide and about five feet high. A main 

 " gangway" may be half a mile or a mile in length. From 

 this, at suitable intervals, lateral passages or " chambers" 

 are quarried out, running nearly at right angles with the 

 main gangway. The same bed of coal may be pierced by 

 several gangways — diverging from each other as the ave- 

 nues diverge from the Capitol at Washington — from each 

 of which extend numerous lateral chambers. These cham- 

 bers often intersect each other, and thus constitute a net- 

 work of passages like the streets of a city. Along the 

 principal passages tramrails are laid for the transportation 

 of the coal in trams, or little cars, from the remote portions 

 of the mine to the shaft. Each miner employs a separate 

 tram, and receives a stipulated amount per ton for the coal 

 sent up by him. The trams are moved over the track by 

 muks, which often spend their lives under ground. They 



