The contrast which exists between the character of the French and English
navvy may be briefly exemplified by the following trifling anecdote:—
“In excavating a portion of the first tunnel east of Rouen towards Paris,
a French miner dressed in his blouse, and an English “navvy” in his white
smock jacket, were suddenly buried alive together by the falling in of
the earth behind them. Notwithstanding the violent commotion which the
intelligence of the accident excited above ground, Mr. Meek, the English
engineer who was constructing the work, after having quietly measured the
distance from the shaft to the sunken ground, satisfied himself that if
the men, at the moment of the accident, were at the head of “the drift”
at which they were working, they would be safe.
Accordingly, getting together as many French and English labourers as he
could collect, he instantly commenced sinking a shaft, which was
accomplished to the depth of 50 feet in the extraordinary short space of
eleven hours, and the men were thus brought up to the surface alive.
The Frenchman, on reaching the top, suddenly rushing forward, hugged and
saluted on both cheeks his friends and acquaintances, many of whom had
assembled, and then, almost instantly overpowered by conflicting
feelings—by the recollection of the endless time he had been imprisoned
and by the joy of his release—he sat down on a log of timber, and,
putting both his hands before his face, he began to cry aloud most
bitterly.
The English “navvy” sat himself down on the very same piece of
timber—took his pit-cap off his head—slowly wiped with it the
perspiration from his hair and face—and then, looking for some seconds
into the hole or shaft close beside him through which he had been lifted,
as if he were calculating the number of cubic yards that had been
excavated, he quite coolly, in broad Lancashire dialect, said to the
crowd of French and English who were staring at him, as children and
nursery-maids in our London Zoological Gardens stand gazing
half-terrified at the white bear, “YAW’VE BEAN A DARMNATION SHORT TOIME
ABAAOWT IT!”
Sir F. Head’s _Stokers and Pokers_.