Mr. Sandham has visited the West India Islands, the Azores, Italy, France, Germany, and Holland. He is a Charter member of the Royal Canadian Academy, and President Roosevelt accorded him the signal honour of selecting him to illustrate his book of hunting adventures.
MR. HENRY SANDHAM, WHO, IN ATTEMPTING TO RESCUE A DROWNING MINER, NEARLY LOST HIS OWN LIFE.
From a Photo, by Elliott & Fry.
Among his varied experiences Mr. Sandham has had several narrow escapes from death, and on one occasion in particular the perilous position in which he was placed might well have been a creation of the brain of Edgar Allan Poe rather than an experience from real life.
It was in August, 1882, during a sketching tour in California, that Mr. Sandham met with this alarming adventure. Accompanied by a brother artist, he paid a visit to the Little Sailor Mine, which is situated on a spur of the Sierra Madre Mountains, by the side of the Sacramento River, some fifty miles from San Francisco. The manager of the mine, in which hydraulic power is used, invited Mr. Sandham to accompany him on the occasion of the monthly clean-up of the gold in the tunnels. Always anxious to add to his store of information, the artist gladly accepted the invitation, asking at the same time that his friend might join the party, to which request the manager readily assented.
On the following day Mr. Sandham was on the spot at the appointed time, eager for what was to him an entirely novel experience. His friend, however, was late, and he decided to wait for him. As subsequent events proved, Mr. Sandham owes his life entirely to this trivial incident! The manager and his staff of assistants, anxious to start the work of cleaning up without delay, thereupon entered the tunnel, which had been cut through a high bluff to allow the water a free passage to the Sacramento River, several thousand feet below the level of the mine.
While waiting for his friend, Mr. Sandham employed his time in making a sketch of the only "monitor" (delivery-nozzle) then working, and the man in charge of it sauntered over to watch the progress of his facile pencil. Before his sketch was finished Mr. Sandham noticed that the "monitor," which had hitherto been throwing a regular jet of water at a terrific pressure, by means of which the solid rock was literally washed away, had become spasmodic in its action. Curious to learn the reason, he called the miner's attention to the fact. To his utter astonishment the engineer received his remark with the utmost consternation, and, throwing up his hands with a gesture of despair, shrieked:—
"Good heavens! The pipe has burst, and all the boys will be drowned!"
With that he at once dashed off frantically in the direction of the signal-station to order the water to be turned off at the upper reservoir, which was situated many hundred feet above the level of the mine, and was fed from the Sierra Madre Mountains, twenty miles away. Meanwhile Mr. Sandham realized that with the bursting of the pipe the tunnel must have been instantly flooded with an immense volume of water, and that the unfortunate manager and his staff were caught like rats in a trap. At that very moment they were, without a doubt, fighting desperately for their lives. With characteristic energy Mr. Sandham's one desire was to help in the work of rescue, but the very thought of the men's seemingly hopeless plight left him with a sickening feeling of impotency. He quickly decided, however, that the one place where he might be of use was at the outer end of the tunnel, from which the escaping waters rushed headlong over a precipice, to fall in a series of frightful leaps some thousands of feet into the river far below. To reach this spot Mr. Sandham had to climb the high bluff through which the tunnel was cut, and descend the almost perpendicular cliff on the other side. The climb itself was no mean test of a man's agility and nerve, but Mr. Sandham has both, and he was soon at the summit. As to how he got down the other side Mr. Sandham says he is to this day not quite clear, but judging from his battered and bleeding condition and the state of his clothing afterwards he thinks he must have done so by alternately falling and sliding.