A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS.
Accidents are of constant occurrence in mines in every part of the
world, and the mines on the Comstock lode enjoy no immunity from what
appears to be the common lot or prevalent fatality, in this respect.
Accidents of every imaginable kind have occurred since the opening of
the first mine on the Comstock, still occur, and will continue to occur
so long as a mine on the lode is worked.
In the early days, when the miners worked in a primitive way with a
hand-windlass, and sunk a small round shaft resembling an ordinary well,
they quite as frequently broke legs, arms, and ribs, or were instantly
killed, as at the present day. Though men were working in that which was
but a straight round hole, only fifty or a hundred feet in depth, they
were still able to injure themselves in many ways. They fell out of
buckets, or the crank of a windlass was broken, and they went back to
the bottom of the shaft “by the run;” a blast exploded while they were
yet standing over it; rocks fell out of the walls of their untimbered
shafts; or dropped from a bucket as it was being landed at the top of
the shaft—in short, they were maimed and killed in ways innumerable and
past finding out until the thing had happened.
At the present day, with all manner of safety apparatus, and every
avenue to accident seemingly thoroughly guarded, men are wounded and
killed the same as before. They are constantly being hurt and killed in
new and unheard-of ways—in fact, in every way imaginable. It is a saying
in the mines, that these accidents run in streaks; that they occur in
groups. When two or three accidents have happened within as many days,
you will hear the miners say: “Now, look out, we are going to have a
regular run of accidents!” and so it generally turns out. There will
often be a dozen accidents within a fortnight, half of them, perhaps, of
a fatal character.
More accidents happen to old miners than to men who are new to the
business. The old miner sometimes forgets where he is, while
‘where he is’ is just what the greenhorn is all the time thinking
about. He is always on the lookout for trouble, and he is always
holding on to something that has the appearance of being pretty
substantial—particularly when he is in the neighborhood of shafts
and winzes; but a man who has worked in the mines for years will
walk into a winze or chute in a musing mood, or run a car into the
main shaft and be pulled in after it, which is a thing a green
hand has never been known to do. Shafts, chutes, winzes, and
things of that nature are what he is always looking for, and you
couldn’t pull him into one of them with any yoke of oxen ever seen
in a mine.
Hundreds upon hundreds of accidents have happened in the Comstock mines,
some hundreds of them fatal. A large volume would not contain their
history. I may furnish a few examples at random—by no means the worst
that have happened—in order to give the reader some insight into the
nature of the accidents that occur in mines:
In January, 1874, four miners met with quite a thrilling and perilous
adventure in the bottom of the main shaft of the Ophir mine. No
situation in a sensational play could possibly have been more
blood-curdling than that in which the four men found themselves.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: ACCIDENTS IN THE MINES.]
They were at work sinking the shaft below the 1700-foot level, and had
drilled and charged four holes, all of which they intended to fire at
once. All being in readiness, they pulled the bell-rope, striking five
bells at the surface, which was the signal for the engineer to lower the
cage to the bottom. The signal was answered by the cage coming down to
where they stood. They now set fire to the fuses leading into the four
blasts in the bottom of the shaft, and then hastened to place themselves
upon the cage, when they gave the signal to hoist—this signal being one
bell. To their consternation the cage did not move. As each second
passed—seconds were long then—they expected to feel the cable taut and
the cage start up, but it remained stationary. The fuses were spitting
fire and smoke as they burned down toward the powder; still the cage
moved not. The signal was again given, but the cage remained as
steadfast as before.
The fire was now just boring its way down through the fuses toward the
four charges of powder tightly tamped deep in the rock, while the men
were standing helplessly over the fearful spot. One of the men, as a
forlorn hope, ran to the charges and wrenched away two of the fuses
before they had burned down into the rock below his reach, but when he
came to the others he found to his consternation that the fire had
passed down into the rock. Rushing back to the cage, he shouted to his
companions to save themselves by climbing the cable and timbers.
A fierce struggle for life then ensued. The men scrambled, by means of
the cable and the timbers, to get as far up the shaft as possible, each
moment expecting the stunning explosion and shower of rocks which they
knew must soon come. One of the men, who, it would seem, was completely
paralyzed by the terrors of the situation, had hardly made an attempt to
move when the explosion came. The three others managed to flatten their
bodies against the walls, and screw themselves among the lower timbers
of the shaft, and escaped unhurt; but the man below was struck in the
forehead, above the right eye, by a small piece of rock which crushed in
his skull.
The charges in the bottom of the shaft were usually fired by means of an
electrical machine stationed above, but this being out of order at the
time, the men took the responsibility of firing the blasts in the manner
described, and with the result stated. The trouble in regard to the
giving of the last signal was that the bell-rope—one thousand seven
hundred feet in length—had got foul on a timber, and no stroke was given
on the bell above; thus the engineer knew nothing of the thrilling scene
that was being enacted below. Strange to relate, the man who was hurt
got well. A surgeon took out a number of pieces of bone, and though a
large hole was left in the skull, the man soon regained his senses and
complained but little about his injury.
In February, 1874, they had a new blasting experience at the Belcher
mine, Gold Hill. They had this experience at the 1200-foot level at a
point where a patent drill run by compressed air was being used. It was
the practice to drill a number of holes, charge them all with
giant-powder cartridges (without any tamping), and explode the whole
series at once by means of an electrical battery. On the occasion of the
accident, the men on the forenoon shift had fired a number of holes in
this way, but one of the holes, it seems, did not explode, the wire
thrust into it having slipped out. When the afternoon shift came to
work, they supposed this hole was one that had not been finished, and,
inserting the drill, began working in it. The concussion of the drill
fired the cartridge, and a terrific explosion followed.
At the moment of the explosion there were five men standing about the
drill, all of whom were more or less injured. The man who was guiding
the drill was struck by a shower of small pieces of rock, which cut his
face, and badly cut and bruised his arms and hips, and, in short,
peppered him over the whole body. Another man had the bridge of his nose
broken, was cut about the head, and had his eyes filled with gravel, and
all the others injured were somewhat similarly cut and bruised. Scores
of ordinary blasting accidents might be mentioned—accidents that
occurred from the premature explosion of blasts; by trying to drill out
blasts; by blasts being discharged as the wires from the electrical
battery were being inserted; by persons coming unawares upon blasts at
the moment of their explosion; and powder and blasting accidents of
every conceivable nature—but they can all be imagined.
The caps used in exploding giant-powder and nitro-glycerine are filled
with a powerful fulminating powder, and are very dangerous. They explode
with the slightest scratch upon their contents. They are about half an
inch in length, and their interior diameter is sufficient to admit the
end of a piece of ordinary blasting fuse. Persons unacquainted with
their uses always appear to be overcome by an ungovernable curiosity in
regard to the nature of their contents, the moment they by any means get
hold of any of these caps. The first thing they do is to begin probing
and scratching in the interior of the little copper cylinders, in order
to get out and examine a sample of their contents. It invariably happens
that at about the first or second scratch the cap explodes, and the
person engaged in prospecting it loses the ends of two fingers and the
thumb of the left hand.
In Virginia City and Gold Hill, about one boy per week, on an average,
tries this experiment, and always with the same result. In the two towns
there must now be scores of boys who lack the ends of the thumb and
first and middle fingers of their left hands. On one occasion a boy
created quite a sensation in one of the public schools by prospecting
the interior of one of these giant-powder caps. The report startled the
whole school, frightened the school-teacher nearly out of her wits, and
spattered blood and bits of flesh and bone over the faces and books of
half a dozen of the pupils. Miners very frequently carry these caps
loose in their pockets, often mixed with their tobacco, and thus
occasionally get them into their pipes. Several favorite meerschaums
have been lost in this way, and the ends of a few noses.
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