trousers, and a canvas jacket--all stained of a tawny copper colour; but
all quite clean. A white night-cap and a round hat, composed of some
iron-hard substance, well calculated to protect the head from any loose
stones that might fall on it, completed the equipment; to which, three
tallow-candles were afterwards added, two to hang at the buttonhole, one
to carry in the hand.
My friend was dressed first. He had got a suit which fitted him
tolerably, and which, as far as appearances went, made a miner of him at
once. Far different was my case.
The same mysterious dispensation of fate, which always awards tall wives
to short men, decreed that a suit of the big miner's should be reserved
for me. He stood six feet two inches--I stand five feet six inches. I
put on his flannel shirt--it fell down to my toes, like a bedgown; his
drawers--and they flowed in Turkish luxuriance over my feet. At his
trousers I helplessly stopped short, lost in the voluminous recesses of
each leg. The big miner, like a good Samaritan as he was, came to my
assistance. He put the pocket button through the waist buttonhole, to
keep the trousers up in the first instance; then, he pulled steadily at
the braces until my waistband was under my armpits; and then he
pronounced that I and my trousers fitted each other in great perfection.
The cuffs of the jacket were next turned up to my elbows--the white
night-cap was dragged over my ears--the round hat was jammed down over
my eyes. When I add to all this, that I am so nearsighted as to be
obliged to wear spectacles, and that I finished my toilet by putting my
spectacles on (knowing that I should see little or nothing without
them), nobody, I think, will be astonished to hear that my companion
seized his sketch-book, and caricatured me on the spot; and that the
grave miner, polite as he was, shook with internal laughter, when I took
up my tallow-candles and reported myself ready for a descent into the
mine.
We left the counting-house, and ascended the face of the cliff--then,
walked a short distance along the edge, descended a little again, and
stopped at a wooden platform built across a deep gully. Here, the miner
pulled up a trap-door, and disclosed a perpendicular ladder leading down
to a black hole, like the opening of a chimney. "This is the shaft; I
will go down first, to catch you in case you tumble; follow me and hold
tight;" saying this, our friend squeezed himself through the trap-door,
and we went after him as we had been bidden.
The black hole, when we entered it, proved to be not quite so dark as it
had appeared from above. Rays of light occasionally penetrated it
through chinks in the outer rock. But by the time we had got some little
way farther down, these rays began to fade. Then, just as we seemed to
be lowering ourselves into total darkness, we were desired to stand on a
narrow landing-place opposite the ladder, and wait there while the miner
went below for a light. He soon reascended to us, bringing, not only the
light he had promised, but a large lump of damp clay with it. Having
lighted our candles he stuck them against the front of our hats with the
clay--in order, as he said, to leave both our hands free to us to use as
we liked. Thus strangely accoutred, like Solomon Eagles in the Great
Plague, with flame on our heads, we resumed the descent of the shaft;
and now at last began to penetrate beneath the surface of the earth in
good earnest.
The process of getting down the ladders was not very pleasant. They were
all quite perpendicular, the rounds were placed at irregular distances,
were many of them much worn away, and were slippery with water and
copper-ooze. Add to this, the narrowness of the shaft, the dripping wet
rock shutting you in, as it were, all round your back and sides against
the ladder--the fathomless darkness beneath--the light flaring
immediately above you, as if your head was on fire--the voice of the
miner below, rumbling away in dull echoes lower and lower into the
bowels of the earth--the consciousness that if the rounds of the ladder
broke, you might fall down a thousand feet or so of narrow tunnel in a
moment--imagine all this, and you may easily realize what are the first
impressions produced by a descent into a Cornish mine.
By the time we had got down seventy fathoms, or four hundred and twenty
feet of perpendicular ladders, we stopped at another landing-place, just
broad enough to afford standing room for us three. Here, the miner,
pointing to an opening yawning horizontally in the rock at one side of
us, said that this was the first gallery from the surface; that we had
done with the ladders for the present; and that a little climbing and
crawling were now to begin.
Our path was a strange one, as we advanced through the rift. Rough
stones of all sizes, holes here, and eminences there, impeded us at
every yard. Sometimes, we could walk on in a stooping position--sometimes,
we were obliged to crawl on our hands and knees. Occasionally, greater
difficulties than these presented themselves. Certain parts of the
gallery dipped into black, ugly-looking pits, crossed by thin planks,
over which we walked dizzily, a little bewildered by the violent contrast
between the flaring light that we carried above us, and the pitch darkness
beneath and before us. One of these places terminated in a sudden rising
in the rock, hollowed away below, but surmounted by a narrow projecting
wooden platform, to which it was necessary to climb by cross-beams
arranged at wide distances. My companion ascended to this awkward
elevation, without hesitating; but I came to an "awful pause" before it.
Fettered as I was by my Brobdingnag jacket and trousers, I felt a
humiliating consciousness that any extraordinary gymnastic exertion was
altogether out of my power.
Our friend the miner saw my difficulty, and extricated me from it at
once, with a promptitude and skill which deserve record. Descending half
way by the beams, he clutched with one hand that hinder part of my too
voluminous nether garments, which presented the broadest superficies of
canvas to his grasp (I hope the delicate reader appreciates my ingenious
indirectness of expression, when I touch on the unmentionable subject of
trousers!). Grappling me thus, and supporting himself by his free hand,
he lifted me up as easily as if I had been a small parcel; then carried
me horizontally along the loose boards, like a refractory little boy
borne off by the usher to the master's birch; or--considering the candle
burning on my hat, and the necessity of elevating my position by as
lofty a comparison as I can make--like a flying Mercury with a star on
his head; and finally deposited me safely upon my legs again, on the
firm rock pathway beyond. "You are but a light and a little man, my
son," says this excellent fellow, snuffing my candle for me before we go
on; "only let me lift you about as I like, and you shan't come to any
harm while I am with you!"
Speaking thus, the miner leads us forward again. After we have walked a
little farther in a crouching position, he calls a halt, makes a seat
for us by sticking a piece of old board between the rocky walls of the
gallery, and then proceeds to explain the exact subterranean position
which we actually occupy.
We are now four hundred yards out, _under the bottom of the sea_; and
twenty fathoms or a hundred and twenty feet below the sea level.
Coast-trade vessels are sailing over our heads. Two hundred and forty
feet beneath us men are at work, and there are galleries deeper yet,
even below that! The extraordinary position down the face of the cliff,
of the engines and other works on the surface, at Botallack, is now
explained. The mine is not excavated like other mines under the land,
but under the sea!
Having communicated these particulars, the miner next tells us to keep
strict silence and listen. We obey him, sitting speechless and
motionless. If the reader could only have beheld us now, dressed in our
copper-coloured garments, huddled close together in a mere cleft of
subterranean rock, with flame burning on our heads and darkness
enveloping our limbs--he must certainly have imagined, without any
violent stretch of fancy, that he was looking down upon a conclave of
gnomes.
After listening for a few moments, a distant, unearthly noise becomes
faintly audible--a long, low, mysterious moaning, which never changes,
which is _felt_ on the ear as well as _heard_ by it--a sound that might
proceed from some incalculable distance, from some far invisible
height--a sound so unlike anything that is heard on the upper ground, in
the free air of heaven; so sublimely mournful and still; so ghostly and
impressive when listened to in the subterranean recesses of the earth,
that we continue instinctively to hold our peace, as if enchanted by
it, and think not of communicating to each other the awe and
astonishment which it has inspired in us from the very first.
At last, the miner speaks again, and tells us that what we hear is the
sound of the surf, lashing the rocks a hundred and twenty feet above us,
and of the waves that are breaking on the beach beyond. The tide is now
at the flow, and the sea is in no extraordinary state of agitation: so
the sound is low and distant just at this period. But, when storms are
at their height, when the ocean hurls mountain after mountain of water
on the cliffs, then the noise is terrific; the roaring heard down here
in the mine is so inexpressibly fierce and awful, that the boldest men
at work are afraid to continue their labour. All ascend to the surface,
to breathe the upper air and stand on the firm earth: dreading, though
no such catastrophe has ever happened yet, that the sea will break in on
them if they remain in the caverns below.
Hearing this, we get up to look at the rock above us. We are able to
stand upright in the position we now occupy; and flaring our candles
hither and thither in the darkness, can see the bright pure copper
streaking the dark ceiling of the gallery in every direction. Lumps of
ooze, of the most lustrous green colour, traversed by a natural network
of thin red veins of iron, appear here and there in large irregular
patches, over which water is dripping slowly and incessantly in certain
places. This is the salt water percolating through invisible crannies in
the rock. On stormy days it spirts out furiously in thin, continuous
streams. Just over our heads we observe a wooden plug of the thickness
of a man's leg; there is a hole here, and the plug is all that we have
to keep out the sea.
Immense wealth of metal is contained in the roof of this gallery,
throughout its whole length; but it remains, and will always remain,
untouched. The miners dare not take it, for it is part, and a great
part, of the rock which forms their only protection against the sea; and
which has been so far worked away here, that its thickness is limited to
an average of three feet only between the water and the gallery in which
we now stand. No one knows what might be the consequence of another
day's labour with the pickaxe on any part of it.
This information is rather startling when communicated at a depth of
four hundred and twenty feet under ground. We should decidedly have
preferred to receive it in the counting-house! It makes us pause for an
instant, to the miner's infinite amusement, in the very act of knocking
away a tiny morsel of ore from the rock, as a memento of Botallack.
Having, however, ventured on reflection to assume the responsibility of
weakening our defence against the sea, by the length and breadth of an
inch, we secure our piece of copper, and next proceed to discuss the
propriety of descending two hundred and forty feet more of ladders, for
the sake of visiting that part of the mine where the men are at work.
Two or three causes concur to make us doubt the wisdom of going lower.
There is a hot, moist, sickly vapour floating about us, which becomes
more oppressive every moment; we are already perspiring at every pore,
as we were told we should; and our hands, faces, jackets, and trousers
are all more or less covered with a mixture of mud, tallow, and
iron-drippings, which we can feel and smell much more acutely than is
exactly desirable. We ask the miner what there is to see lower down. He
replies, nothing but men breaking ore with pickaxes; the galleries of
the mine are alike, however deep they may go; when you have seen one
you have seen all.
The answer decides us--we determine to get back to the surface.
We returned along the gallery, just as we had advanced, with the same
large allowance of scrambling, creeping, and stumbling on our way. I was
charitably carried along and down the platform over the pit, by my
trousers, as before; our order of procession only changing when we
gained the ladders again. Then, our friend the miner went last instead
of first, upon the same principle of being ready to catch us if we fell,
which led him to precede us on our descent. Except that one of the
rounds cracked under his weight as we went up, we ascended without
casualties of any kind. As we neared the mouth of the shaft, the
daylight atmosphere looked dazzlingly white, after the darkness in which
we had been groping so long; and when we once more stood out on the
cliff, we felt a cold, health-giving purity in the sea breeze, and, at
the same time, a sense of recovered freedom in the power that we now
enjoyed of running, jumping, and stretching our limbs in perfect
security, and with full space for action, which it was almost a new
sensation to experience. Habit teaches us to think little of the light
and air that we live and breathe in, or, at most, to view them only as
the ordinary conditions of our being. To find out that they are more
than this, that they are a luxury as well as a necessity of life, go
down into a mine, and compare what you _can_ exist in there, with what
you _do_ exist in, on upper earth!
On re-entering the counting-house, we were greeted by the welcome
appearance of two large tubs of water, with soap and flannel placed
invitingly by their sides. Copious ablutions and clean clothes are
potent restorers of muscular energy. These, and a half hour of repose,
enabled us to resume our knapsacks as briskly as ever, and walk on
fifteen miles to the town of St. Ives--our resting place for the night.
* * * * *
While we were sitting in the counting-house, we had some talk with our
good-humoured and intelligent guide, on the subject of miners and mining
at Botallack. Some of the local information that he gave us, may
interest the reader--to whom I do not pretend to offer more here than a
simple record of a half hour's gossip. I could only write elaborately
about the Cornish mines, by swelling my pages with extracts on the
subject from Encyclopædias and Itineraries which are within easy reach
of every one, and on the province of which, it is neither my business
nor my desire to intrude.
Botallack mine is a copper mine; but tin, and occasionally iron, are
found in it as well. It is situated at the western extremity of the
great strata of copper, tin, and lead, running eastward through
Cornwall, as far as the Dartmoor Hills. According to the statement of my
informant in the counting-house, it has been worked for more than a
century. In former times, it produced enormous profits to the
speculators; but now the case is altered. The price of copper has fallen
of late years; the lodes have proved neither so rich nor so extensive,
as at past periods; and the mine, when we visited Cornwall, had failed
to pay the expenses of working it.
The organization of labour at Botallack, and in all other mines
throughout the county, is thus managed:--The men work eight hours
underground, out of the twenty-four; taking their turn of night duty
(for labour proceeds in the mines by night as well as by day), in
regular rotation. The different methods on which their work is
undertaken, and the rates of remuneration that they receive, have been
already touched on, in the chapter on the "Cornish People." It will be
found that ordinary wages for mine labour, are there stated as ranging
from forty to fifty shillings a month--mention being made at the same
time, of the larger remuneration which may be obtained by working "on
tribute," or, in other words, by agreeing to excavate the lodes of metal
for a per-centage which varies with the varying value of the mineral
raised. It is, however, necessary to add here, that, although men who
labour on this latter plan, occasionally make as much as six or ten
pounds each, in a month, they are on the other hand liable to heavy
losses from the speculative character of the work in which they engage.
The lode may, for instance, be poor when they begin to work it, and may
continue poor as they proceed farther and farther. Under these
circumstances, the low value of the mineral they have raised, realizes a
correspondingly low rate of per-centage; and when this happens, the best
workmen cannot make more than twenty shillings a month.
Another system on which the men are employed, is the system of
"contract." A certain quantity of ore in the rock is mapped out by the
captain of the mine; and put up to auction among the miners thus:--One
man mentions a sum for which he is willing to undertake excavating the
ore, upon the understanding that he is himself to pay for the
assistance, candles, &c., out of the price he asks. Another man, who is
also anxious to get the contract, then offers to accept it on lower
terms; a third man's demand is smaller still; and so they proceed until
the piece of work is knocked down to the lowest bidder. By this sort of
labour the contracting workman--after he has paid his expenses for
assistance--seldom clears more than twelve shillings a week.
Upon the whole, setting his successful and his disastrous speculations
fairly against each other, the Cornish miner's average gains, year by
year, may be fairly estimated at about ten shillings a week. "It's hard
work we have to do, sir," said my informant, summing up, when we parted,
the proportions of good and evil in the social positions of his brethren
and himself--"harder work than people think, down in the heat and
darkness under ground. We may get a good deal at one time, but we get
little enough at another; sometimes mines are shut up, and then we are
thrown out altogether--but, good work or bad work, or no work at all,
what with our bits of ground for potatoes and greens, and what with
cheap living, somehow we and our families make it do. We contrive to
keep our good cloth coat for Sundays, and go to chapel in the
morning--for we're most of us Wesleyans--and then to church in the
afternoon; so as to give 'em both their turn like! We never go near the
mine on Sundays, except to look after the steam-pump: our rest, and our
walk in the evening once a week, is a good deal to us. That's how we
live, sir; whatever happens, we manage to work through, and don't
complain!"
Although the occupation of smelting the copper above ground is, as may
well be imagined, unhealthy enough, the labour of getting it from the
mine (by blasting the subterranean rock in the first place, and then
hewing and breaking the ore out of the fragments), seems to be attended
with no bad effect on the constitution. The miners are a fine-looking
race of men--strong and well-proportioned. The fact appears to be, that
they gain more, physically, by the pure air of the cliffs and moors on
which their cottages are built, and the temperance of their lives (many
of them are "teetotallers"), than they lose by their hardest exertions
in the underground atmosphere in which they work.
Serious accidents are rare in the mines of Cornwall. From the horrors of
such explosions as take place in coal mines, they are by their nature
entirely free. The casualties that oftenest occur are serious falls,
generally produced by the carelessness of inexperienced or foolhardy
people. Of these, and of extraordinary escapes from death with which
they are associated, many anecdotes are told in mining districts, which
would appear to the reader exaggerated, or positively untrue, if I
related them on mere hearsay evidence. There was, however, one instance
of a fall down the shaft of a mine, unattended with fatal consequences,
which occurred while I was in Cornwall; and which I may safely adduce,
for I can state some of the facts connected with the affair as an
eyewitness. I attended an examination of the sufferer by a medical man,
and heard the story of the accident from the parents of the patient.
On the 7th of August 1850, a boy fourteen years of age, the son of a
miner, slipped into the shaft of Boscaswell Down Mine, in the
neighbourhood of Penzance. He fell to the depth of thirteen fathoms, or
seventy-eight feet. Fifty-eight feet down, he struck his left side
against a board placed across the shaft, snapped it in two, and then
falling twenty feet more, pitched on his head. He was of course taken
up insensible; the doctor was sent for; and on examining him, found, to
his amazement, that there was actually a chance of the boy's recovery
after this tremendous fall!
Not a bone in his body was broken. He was bruised and scratched all
over, and there were three cuts--none of them serious--on his head. The
board stretched across the shaft, twenty feet from the bottom, had saved
him from being dashed to pieces; but had inflicted at the same time,
where his left side had struck it, the only injury that appeared
dangerous to the medical man--a large, hard lump that could be felt
under the bruised skin. The boy showed no symptoms of fever; his pulse,
day after day, was found never varying from eighty-two to the minute;
his appetite was voracious; and the internal functions of his body only
required a little ordinary medicine to keep them properly at work. In
short, nothing was to be dreaded but the chance of the formation of an
abscess in his left side, between the hip and ribs. He had been under
medical care exactly one week, when I accompanied the doctor on a visit
to him.
The cottage where he lived with his parents, though small, was neat and
comfortable. We found him lying in bed, awake. He looked languid and
lethargic; but his skin was moist and cool; his face displayed no
paleness, and no injury of any kind. He had just eaten a good dinner of
rabbit-pie, and was anxious to be allowed to sit up in a chair, and
amuse himself by looking out of the window. His left side was first
examined. A great circular bruise discoloured the skin, over the whole
space between the hip and ribs; but on touching it, the doctor
discovered that the lump beneath had considerably decreased in size, and
was much less hard than it had felt during previous visits. Next we
looked at his back and arms--they were scratched and bruised all over;
but nowhere seriously. Lastly, the dressings were taken off his head,
and three cuts were disclosed, which even a non-medical eye could easily
perceive to be of no great importance. Such were all the results of a
fall of seventy-eight feet.
The boy's father reiterated to me the account of the accident, just as I
had already heard it from the doctor. How it happened, he said, could
only be guessed, for his son had completely forgotten all the
circumstances immediately preceding the fall; neither could he
communicate any of the sensations which must have attended it. Most
probably, he had been sitting dangling his legs idly over the mouth of
the shaft, and had so slipped in. But however the accident really
happened, there the sufferer was before us--less seriously hurt than
many a lad who has trodden on a piece of orange peel as he was walking
along the street.
We left him (humanly speaking) certain of recovery, now that the
dangerous lump in his side had begun to decrease. I heard afterwards
from his medical attendant, that in two months from the date of the
accident, he was at work again as usual in the mine; at that very part
of it, too, where his fall had taken place!