Scenes And Incidents From The Life Of A Practical Miner
With A Treatise On The Ventilation Of Coal Mines

36 face, and owing to this precaution he did not sustain the slightest inj ury ; but another man’s heart failed him, and he gave himself up as lost. I had a serious struggle with him to get him out, we were so often down among the water, and frequently over head, that the task was quite as bad as if I had had him to carry out the whole distance, which is a serious undertaking in such an atmosphere. I believe, however, in accordance with an opinion I have before expressed, that the agitation of the water preserved our lives. As a proof of this, I may mention that those who were at the bottom of the pit waiting their turn to get up, as only one man could be drawn up at once, being motionless, were much more seriously affected Avitli the gas than we were, who, they concluded, wei-e lost However, we all got safe to bank to tell our own tales, but were obliged to abandon the dam, at least for a time, until the weather became favourable to admit us back. Our efforts were then directed to the building of the dam, the construction of which is seen on the plan at G ; each course of planking is shot with a plane, so as to make them nearly air-tight in themselves, and they are bolted together with bars of iron, three inches in breadth, and three-quarters of an inch thick, and screwed up to their proper seats at the placing on each course, before beginning to beat the clay in between them. The process went on with satisfac- tion up to the height of ten feet five inches, leaving a vacancy of seven inches above the top of the dam to the roof, this being a necessity, as the only visible and direct passage of communication between the Engine and Granary Pits, for the ventilation of each other. The work was finished on that ever-memorable day, the 10th of February, 1840, when our good and glorious Queen was married to her late dearly-belovcd husband, Prince Albert. And there it is to this day, an entirely waterproof dam; some will see it at no distant date, and its remains will discover the mechanism of its construction, and show to youth the industry of other years. On the day that we finished this dam the under-viewer, and the young gentle- man who was serving his time to be a viewer, had the curiosity to come down and see it when finished. The principle I adopted to exclude the action of the air from operating on the clay was simply this—I caused the men to get each a bit of deal, to dip it in water, and by friction form a liquid coating on the top of the dam, which was solidly filled with clay; I then fixed a deal (made for the purpose) the exact width of the clay, between the planks, and set props upon it to the roof, correspond- ing with and betwixt the bars of iron; I then covered the whole with a coating of lime, which readily adhered to the liquid clay, and would absorb, or unite with the carbonic acid, and thereby form a crust over the top of the dam. We had also built a pipe, three-and-a-half inches diameter, into the second course of planks, and below the level of the horseway, for the purpose of running the water off, if necessity required it. All being now done, we then drove the plug into this pipe, and submitted the dam to the ordeal for testing its utility; each man would write his name with chalk on some favourable stratum, with the day of the month and year, as a memorandum of the completion of the dam. On the front of this dam is a female’s head, intended to represent our