Many back down squarely. They suddenly remember that they are subject to vertigo, are threatened with apoplexy; or—which is a very common disease at such times—palpitation of the heart. So many persons visiting the mines, and seeing the mouth of the shafts for the first time, have made serious mention of being greatly troubled with “palpitation of the heart,” that the old miner standing near finds it a difficult matter to keep a sober countenance upon hearing that ailment mentioned. Nothing can induce some persons to venture into the steaming shaft after they have taken one good look at it, while proper explanations speedily cure others of their vertigo, apoplectic symptoms, palpitation of the heart, or whatever disease it may be their fancy to affect.
When we inspect the mouth of the shaft more closely, we find before us an opening in the floor about five feet in width and twenty feet in length. This opening is divided into four lesser openings or “compartments,” by partitions which run from the top to the bottom of the shaft. Three of these are called hoisting-compartments, as in them the hoisting-cages pass up and down, just us does the elevator in a hotel. The fourth is known as the pump-compartment, as down it passes the pump column, an iron pipe from twelve to sixteen inches in diameter, through which the water is forced up from the bottom of the mine. The pumping machinery is the most pondrous about a mine, and the largest engine in the hoisting works of a mine is always that which drives the pump. The pumping apparatus, balance-bobs, tanks down the line of the shaft, the course of the water from the bottom of the mine to the surface, and the working of the several parts from the surface down, all are too complicated to be explained without the aid of many drawings.
The hoisting-engines, and all the hoisting machinery, are at the end of the building opposite that occupied by the shaft and fifty or sixty feet away. Here we find the alert and keen-eyed engineers constantly at their post by their engines. Before them is a large dial, like the face of a clock. On this dial are figures, and there is a hand like that of a clock, which moves slowly round and tells the engineer exactly where his cage is at all times after it has entered the shaft and passed out of his sight. By watching the hand moving round the dial he can see exactly when his cage is at the 900, the 1,000, 1,200, 1,500-foot or any other station. Besides keeping his eyes upon the dial, he must also keep his ears open for the signals struck upon his bell.
The bell stands near him and is his only means of communication with those far down in the lower levels of the mine. A man 1,500 feet below the surface strikes a signal upon the bell, and the engineer unhesitatingly obeys it. By means of this bell the engineer receives nearly all his orders. He is told when to start the cage up and when to stop, if he is to stop short of the surface; is told to hoist slowly; that there are men on board; and a great many other things which he understands as readily as the telegraph operator understands the click of his instrument. Each engineer has his bell and knows its sound better than he knows the sound of his own voice.
CONSOLIDATED VIRGINIA HOISTING-WORKS
The hoisting-engines and the engineers who run them, occupy a large platform raised three or four feet above the general level of the floor, and about this platform are placards inscribed:
“NO PERSON IS ALLOWED ON THE PLATFORM, OR TO SPEAK TO
THE ENGINEERS WHILE ON DUTY.”
The lives of the miners are in the engineer’s hands every minute of the day and night. To turn his head to nod to an acquaintance might cost a dozen lives. The man who is trusted at one of these engines is always a man who is thoroughly known and who has a well-established reputation for sobriety, “eternal vigilance,” and good qualities of all kinds. In short, he is a man that can be trusted anywhere, and to say that Mr. Jones is engineer at this or that mine is to say that Jones is a man much above the average.