[CHAPTER I.]
LIFE AMONG THE COAL-PITS.
What useful little fellow is this, carrying his father's dinner to him at the coal-pit? He takes care, also, of his little brothers and sisters, keeping them clear of the coal-waggons, which run to and fro before the cottage door. Then he is seen tending a neighbour's cows. Now he is moulding mud engines, sticking in hemlock sticks for blowpipes; besides cutting many a good caper, and uttering all sorts of drolleries for the benefit of other little boys, who, like himself, swarm round, too poor to go to school, if school there were—but schools there were none.
The boys call him "Geordie Steve."
A lad is wanted to shut the coal-yard gates after work is over. Geordie offers his services and gets the post, earning by it twopence a day. A neighbour hires him to hoe turnips at fourpence. He is thankful to earn a bit, for his parents are poor, and every little helps. He sees work ahead, however, more to his taste. What? He longs to be big enough to go and work at the coal-pits with his father. For the home of this little fellow, as you already perceive, is in a coal region. It is in the coal district of Newcastle, in the north-eastern part of England. You had better find it on the map.
I suppose you never visited a colliery. Coal is found in beds and veins underground. Deep holes are made, down which the miners go and dig it out; it is hoisted out by means of steam-engines. These holes are called shafts. The pitmen have two enemies to encounter down in the coal-pits—water, and a kind of gas which explodes on touching the flame of a candle. The water has to be pumped out; and miners are now provided with a lamp, called a safety-lamp, which is covered with a fine wire gauze to keep the gas away from the flame.
The coal is brought up from the pit in baskets, loaded on waggons, running then on tramroads, and sent to the sheds. Tramroads were a sort of wooden railway. A colliery is a busy and odd-looking spot.
Geordie's family lived in one room—father, mother, four boys, and two girls—curious quarters, one would think; but working men at that time had smaller wages and poorer homes than now, for Geordie was born in 1781, in the little village of Wylam, seven miles from Newcastle, and his full name is George Stephenson.