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

jected to (amounting to obstruction) in the present return passage, and had told the authorities that by doing so they would double the quantity or volume of air in the pit. They disregarded my advice, and set it at nought. For several years I could not prevail upon them to believe in its utility. At last, however, after the strike of 1844, the country became agitated, and a rumour was raised of persons being appointed by Govern- ment to inspect the coal mines. The viewers knew that the air s return passages were the places for a Government Inspector to look to for criti- cism or defect. Consequently, more from dread than a belief in its utility, they set to work in right earnest, breaking in at several places together, determined to make anothei’ return drift, the distance of one mile and eleven hundred yards. From this point to the up-cast pit, we had plenty of air-way at command. The object was, or at least ought to have been, to drive this drift parallel with the horseway, or as near that as possible, to save both cost and labour. The coal stood in the form of angnlar barriers: we drove places up west, say, twenty yards or so, and then, turned them away north-east and south-west, with plumb lines put up with the compass, to guide the workmen in their course, and to keep the drift parallel with the horseway if possible. At this point branched off a district, known as the Wellington way, which was won out by a pair of headways to north a great distance. When working in the whole, this district was aired with the same volume and current of air, as was the interior workings, after it returned back by the water level board, to a board, driven up to the east winning headways for purposes of convenience, (See the plan,) it there crosses over the main horseway by an arch, and also over an arch in the east headways, when, it was borne up the west head- ways by two doors to south; ventilating the workings to the north, and returned back south-west by the east headways passing through under- neath the arch at three stentings up, and over the horseway by an arch at the east headways end into the water level again. At three stentings up, and the inbye side of the double doors marked red, was one place where the men were appointed to watch tlie state of the air as it returned back from the inner workings, there being then a daily dread of an explosion; such was the seriously vitiated state of the returning volume, arising entirely from the want of ample area in the return passages, added to the distance of one mile and twelve hundred yards of excavated drift, and other workings penetrating varied strata, each sending forth its native gas or material par- ticles, when it is absorbed by and united with the current of air, which no longer possesses its own natural body (atmospheric air), but a body of compound matter occasionally dangerous to life, and at all times injurious to health. This, however, was several years before the time that I am now w riting of, and long before I got charge of the ventilation, of the mines; when the coal was all wrought off, and this district brought back as a goaf to within forty or fifty yards of the horseway, the seam of coal dipt to the south, and this being the south-east angle, the vacancy was filled up with water. The horseway here was north 27 degrees east. I measured away from the east headways end 125 yards, and set off a place to west; at 20 yards up, I stopped it, to drive the air drift each way, and parallel with the horseway, leaving a wall of coal 20 yards thick sufficient