350 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 
three thousand gallons a minute, in the hope of emptying, or at least 
controlling the feeders of water, but no impression was made. It was 
deemed necessary to further progress to procure one powerful pump, 
equal to the combined force of the six in use. Accordingly, one witha 
steam cylinder twenty-six and one-half inches diameter, and a water 
cylinder of sixteen inches diameter, with fourteen-inch suction pipe and 
five-foot stroke, made expressly for the purpose, was brought into requisi- 
tion. ‘The water was now mastered, but the difficulty was to get a sump 
made below the crevice so as to get a chance to close it up. The bottom 
of the shaft was a vast array of suction pipes, and the water flowed in from 
the crevice in floods. The pumps suspended above the workmen filled 
the shaft. Every one who has handled pumps in sinking will conceive 
of the difficulty of keeping so many pumps and pipes, suspended as 
these were by iron rods, in working order, all having to be lowered as 
the sinking progressed. A cutting, two or three feet below the crevice, 
was finally accomplished, when the sinkers addressed themselves to 
cleaning out the crevice, so as to fill it up with wooden blocks to dam 
back the water. The blocks were well wedged in and caulked, and the 
water was finally shut off and controlled. 
The work of getting below the crevice was a labor of unparalleled 
difficulty and danger. The workmen, suspended in buckets, and having 
scarcely room to turn around among the multitude of pumps, labored 
heroically, though drenched with water, which shot in ereat streams 
across the shaft. During the whole of the undertaking not a single 
accident occurred. The closing up of the crevice reduced the flow of 
water to five hundred gallons per minute, and no further difficulty was 
experienced until the coal was reached. 
In sinking this shaft, six thirty-feet boilers, with 36-inch head, were 
used. The cost of the work, including the necessary supplies for sink- 
ing, was $71,837, and the whole depth of the shaft was but 187 feet. 
As the vast volume of water encountered in sinking was dammed 
back over the heads of the miners, its liberation by a fall of roof was 
only a question of time. Fifteen thousand square yards had not been 
excavated till the waters broke into the workings. AlIl the miners 
escaped in safety, but the pumps were soon overpowered, and the shaft, 
with all its subterranean excavations, was again flooded. 
The mine remained idle for 5 years. In the spring of 1880, the 
Leadville Coal Company was organized, which bought out the Messrs. 
