COAL. 79 



Chinese Methods of Coal-mining. 



Chinese coal-mining methods as practised in Yunnan are of the 

 most primitive description. Starting from the outcrops of the 

 seams, levels or incline shafts are driven down on the coal, according 

 to its inclination. If the ground is hard no timbering is done, but 

 if it should be bad, which is usually the case, the working is timbered 

 with sets and the roof and side kept up by lagging, though the mini- 

 mum amount of timbering is put in. The coal is broken down with 

 small picks and carried out to the surface either in baskets or on 

 small sledges with iron-shod runners usually drawn by boys. As 

 a rule no side galleries are made, and the single drive is carried 

 on until ventilation becomes bad enough to make work impossible, 

 when the miner abandons the pit and commences another hole m 

 a favourable position on the outcrop. Naked oil lamps, some- 

 thing after the fashion of an Indian chiragh are used and 

 explosions of fire-damp are not unknown. Whenever a fatal 

 accident of any kind occurs the working is at once closed and a new 

 one started. Accidents are believed to be due to the malevolence 

 of the earth spirits when their abodes are disturbed. Water is 

 not a serious trouble in any of the Yunnanese coal workings which 

 I have seen. Owing to the softness of the outcrop coal, such 

 workings are quickly and cheaply driven and the outcrops of 

 seams in localities where this primitive form of mining is freely 

 carried on, are marked by lines of old holes and small dumps which 

 sometimes extend for miles. 



Coal is not often burnt in its natural state in Yunnan. On most 

 fields the material is coked or where the nature of the fuel does 

 not permit of this being done, it is powdered and mixed into a 

 paste with clay ; from this plastic material, thin circular cakes 

 are moulded by hand, dried in the sun and sold for domestic 

 consumption. When burnt in hearths they smoulder slowly away 

 leaving a mass of glowing ash which retains its heat for a long time. 

 This is the method employed with the non-coking Triassic coals. 

 The Yunnanese coke oven consists of a circular hole dug in the 

 ground and about 10 feet in diameter, with a flat bottom and sloping 

 sides. In the centre of the bottom there is a circular hole com- 

 municating with a narrow fine. The bottom of the oven is lined 

 with large stones and is usually constructed on a hill-side to allow 

 of the flue being entered and cleaned. Large lumps of coal are 

 arranged in the. bottom around the air-hole together with a little 



