Over the Bay--A Gigantic Dumb Waiter--Erebus--Reflections--White and Black
Squares of the Chess-board--Leave-taking--An Interruption--The Aibstract
Preencipels of Feenance.
Bright and early next morning we arose for an expedition across the bay to
North Sydney and the coal-mines. A fresh breakfast in a sunny room, a
brisk walk to the breezy, grass-grown parapet, that defends the harbor; a
thought of the first expedition to lay down the telegraph line between the
old and new hemispheres, for here lie the coils of the sub-marine cable,
as they were left after the stormy essay of the steamer "James Adger," a
year before--what a theme for a poet!
"Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some spark, now dormant, of electric fire:
News, that the board of brokers might have swayed,
Or broke the banks that trembled with the wire."
--and we take an airy seat on the poop-deck of the little English steamer,
and are wafted across the harbor, five miles, to a small sea-port, where
coal-schutes and railways run out over the wharfs, and coasters, both
fore-and-aft, and square-rigged, are gathered in profusion. A glass of
English ale at a right salt-sea tavern, a bay horse, and two-wheeled
"jumper" for the road, and away we roll towards the mines. Now up hill and
down; now passing another Micmac camp on the green margin of the beach;
now by trim gardens without flowers; now getting nearer to the mines,
which we know by the increasing blackness of the road; until at last we
bowl past rows of one story dingy tenements of brick, with miners' wives
and children clustered about them like funereal flowers; until we see the
forges and jets of steam, and davits uplifted in the air; and hear the
rattle of the iron trucks and the rush of the coal as it runs through the
schutes into the rail-cars on the road beneath. We tie our pony beside a
cinder-heap, and mount a ladder to the level of the huge platform above
the shaft. A constant supply of small hand-cars come up with demoniac
groans and shrieks from the bowels of the earth through the shaft. These
are instantly seized by the laborers and run over an iron floor to the
schute, where they are caught in titantic trammels, and overturned into
harsh thunder. Meanwhile the demon car-bringer has sunk again on its
errand; the suspending rope wheeling down with dizzy swiftness. As one
car-bearer descends, another rises to the surface with its twin
wheel-vessels of coal.
"Would you like to go down?"
"How far down?"
"Sixty fathoms."
Three hundred and sixty feet! Think of being suspended by a thread, from a
height twice that of Trinity's spire, and whirled into such a depth by
steam! We crawled into the little iron box, just large enough to allow us
to sit up with our heads against the top, both ends of our parachute being
open; the operator presses down a bar, and instantly the earth and sky
disappear, and we are wrapt in utter darkness. Oh? how sickening is this
sinking feeling! Down--down--down! What a gigantic dumb-waiter! Down,
down, a hot gust of vapor--a stifling sensation--a concussion upon the
iron floor at the foot of the shaft; a multitude of twinkling lamps, of
fiends, of grimy faces, and no bodies--and we are in a coal-mine.
There was a black, bituminous seat for visitors, sculptured out of the
coal, just beyond the shaft, and to this we were led by the carboniferous
fiends. My heart beat violently. I do not know how it went with Picton,
but we were both silent. Oh! for a glimpse of the blue sky and waving
trees above us, and a long breath of fresh air!
As soon as the stifling sensation passed away, we breathed more freely,
and the lungs became accustomed to the subterranean atmosphere. In the
gloom, we could see the smutted features only, of miners moving about, and
to heighten the Dantesque reality, new and strange sounds, from different
parts of the enormous cavern, came pouring towards the common centre--the
shaft of the coal-pit.
These were the laden cars on the tram-ways, drawn by invisible horses,
from the distant works in the mine, rolling and reverberating through the
infernal aisles of this devil's cathedral. One could scarcely help
recalling the old grandfather of Maud's Lord-lover:
----"lately died,
Gone to a _blacker pit_, for whom
Grimy nakedness, dragging his trucks
And laying his trams, _in a poisoned gloom_
Wrought, till he crept from a gutted mine
Master of half a servile shire,
And left his coal all turned into gold
To a grandson, first of his noble line."
Intermingled with these sounds were others, the jar and clash of gateways,
the dripping and splashing of water, the rolling thunder of the ascending
and descending iron parachutes in the shaft, the trampling of horses, the
distant report of powder-blasts, and the shrill jargon of human speakers,
near, yet only partially visible.
"Is it a clear day overhead?" said the black bust of one of the miners,
with a lamp in its _hat_!
Just think of it! We had only been divorced from the aerial blue of a June
sky a minute before. Our very horse was so high above us that we could
have distinguished him only by the aid of a telescope--that is, if the
solid ribs of the globe were not between us and him.
As soon as we became accustomed to the place, we moved off after the
foreman of the mine. We walked through the miry tram-ways under the low,
black arches, now stepping aside to let an invisible horse and car,
"grating harsh thunder," pass us in the murky darkness; now through a
door-way, momently closed to keep the foul and clear airs separate, until
we came to the great furnace of the mine that draws off all the noxious
vapors from this nest of Beelzebub. Then we went to the stables where
countless horses are stalled--horses that never see the light of day
again, or if they do, are struck blind by the apparition; now in wider
galleries, and new explorations, where we behold the busy miners,
twinkling like the distant lights of a city, and hear the thunder-burst,
as the blast explodes in the murky chasms. At last, tired, oppressed, and
sickened with the vast and horrible prison, for such it seems, we retrace
our steps, and once more enter the iron parachute. A touch of the magic
lever, and again we fly away; but now upwards, upwards to the glorious
blue sky and air of mother earth. A miner with his lamp accompanies us. By
its dim light we see how rapidly we spin through the shaft. Our car
clashes again at the top, and as we step forth into the clear sunshine, we
thank GOD for such a bright and beautiful world up stairs!
"Do you know," said I, "Picton, what we would do if we had such a devil's
pit as that in the States?"
"Well?" answered the traveller, interrogatively.
"We would make niggers work it."
"I dare say," replied Picton, drily and satirically; "but, sir, I am proud
to say that our government does not tolerate barbarity; to consign an
inoffensive fellow-creature to such horrible labor, merely because he is
black, is at variance with the well-known humanity of the whole British
nation, sir."
"But those miners, Picton, were black as the devil himself."
"The miners," replied Picton, with impressive gravity, "are black, but not
negroes."
"Nothing but mere white people, Picton?"
"Eh?" said the traveller.
"Only white people, and therefore we need not waste one grain of sympathy
over a whole pit full of them."
"Why not?"
"Because they are not niggers, what is the use of wasting sympathy upon a
rat-hole full of white British subjects?"
"I tell you what it is," said Picton, "you are getting personal."
We were now rolling past the dingy tenements again. Squalid-looking,
care-worn women, grimy children:
"To me there's something touching, I confess,
In the grave look of early thoughtfulness,
Seen often in some little childish face,
Among the poor;"--
But these children's faces are not such. A child's face--God bless it!
should always have a little sunshine in its glance; but these are mere
staring faces, without expression, that make you shudder and feel sad.
Miners by birth; human moles fitted to burrow in darkness for a life-time.
Is it worth living for? No wonder those swart laborers underground are so
grim and taciturn: no wonder there was not a face lighted up by those
smoky lamps in the pit, that had one line of human sympathy left in its
rigidly engraved features!
But we must have coal, and we must have cotton. The whole plantations of
the South barely supply the press with paper; and the messenger of
intelligence, the steam-ship, but for coal could not perform its glorious
mission. What is to be done, Picton? If every man is willing to give up
his morning paper, wear a linen shirt, cross the ocean in a clipper-ship,
and burn wood in an open fire-place, something might be done.
As Picton's steamer (probably fog-bound) had not yet arrived in Sydney,
nor yet indeed the "Balaklava," the traveller determined to take a
Newfoundland brigantine for St. John's, from which port there are vessels
to all parts of the world. After leaving horse and jumper with the
inn-keeper, we took a small boat to one of the many queer looking,
high-pooped crafts in the harbor, and very soon found ourselves in a tiny
cabin, panelled with maple, in which the captain and some of the men were
busy over a pan of savory _lobscouse_, a salt-sea dish of great
reputation and flavor. Picton soon made his agreement with the captain for
a four days' sail (or more) across to the neighboring province, and his
luggage was to be on board the next morning. Once more we sailed over the
bay of Sydney, and regained the pleasant shelter of our inn.
"Picton," said I, after a comfortable supper and a pensive segar, "we
shall soon separate for our respective homes; but before we part, I wish
to say to you how much I have enjoyed this brief acquaintance; perhaps we
may never meet again, but I trust our short voyage together, will now and
then be recalled by you, in whatever part of the world you may chance to
be, as it certainly will by me."
The traveller replied by a hearty, earnest grasp of the hand; and then,
after this formal leave-taking, we became suddenly estranged, as it were,
sad, and silent, and shy; the familiar tone of conversation lost its
key-note; Picton looked out of the inn window at the luminous moon-fog on
the bay, and I buried my reflections in an antiquated pamphlet of
"Household Words." We were soon interrupted by a stranger coming into the
parlor, a chance visitor, another dry, preceese specimen of the land of
oat-cakes.
After the usual salutations, the conversation floated easily on, upon
indifferent topics, until Picton happened to allude, casually, to the
general banking system of England. This was enough for a text. Our visitor
immediately launched forth upon the subject, and gaed us a twa-hours
discourse on the system of banking in Scotland; wherein the superiority of
the method adopted by his countrymen, to wring the last drop of interest
out a shilling, was pertinaciously and dogmatically argued, upon the great
groundwork of "the general and aibstract preencepels of feenance!"
It was in vain that the traveller endeavored to silence him by a few
flashes of sarcasm. He might as well have tried to silence a park of
artillery with a handful of torpedoes! On and on, with the doggedness of a
slow-hound, the Scot pursued the theme, until all other considerations
were lost in the one sole idea.
But thus it is always, when you come in contact with people of "aibstract
preencepels." All sweet and tender impulses, all generous and noble
suggestions, all light and shade, all warmth and color, must give place to
these dry husks of reason.
"Confound the Scotch interloper," said Picton, after our visitor had
retired, "what business had he to impose upon our good nature, with his
threadbare 'aibstract preencepels?' Confound him and his beggarly high
cheek-bones, and his Caledonian pock-pits. I am sorry that I ever came to
this part of the world; it has ruined a taste which I had acquired, with
much labor, for Scottish poetry; and I shall never see 'Burns's Works'
again without a sickening shudder."