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

58 ping between the two pits. . By his observations every one understood that his attention had been attracted to my conduct and perseverance on this occasion, and from this time, up to his leaving the colliery and dis- trict, he continued to be my patron and friend. While writing the above, our district is again visited with one of those serious and ever-to-be-lamented calamities that the miners have so much reason to dread. The recent explosion at Walker Colliery almost leads me to conclude that my writing on the subject is in vain, and induces me to believe that similar accidents will occur in spite of all the skil] and practical knowledge that man can possess. I am compelled to admit this, because I am perfectly acquainted with Mr. Cole, the resident and prac- tical viewer, and know him to be a cautious clever miner, far beyond the common herd. Yet in his case the evil lies in his absence. I can. with ease persuade myself that, if he had been in the pit, the accident would not have occurred •, that by his superior presence, he would have antici- pated the approach of danger, and discovered the column of inflammable gas before it reached the vicinity of the workmen, as the process of accumulation would be of gradual increase, originating from the slacken- ing of the furnace and the gas from the goaf. But it would be absurd on my part were I to presume to point out the cause where and how the accident did occur, after the examinations and opinions given in their depositions by those eminent viewers at the coroner’s inquest. Yet there are three distinct ways in which the accident might occur. First, by the slackening of the furnace they destroy the attractive power, and produce a serious diminution of the circulating volume of air, thereby reducing the weight and pressure of the atmosphere on the goaves, whose contents were previously pent up by compression. But now, that pressure being removed, the result is an expansion takes place, extending its bulk, and spreading throughout the board-rooms and juds. In this attenuted state it reaches the atmospheric air, unites with the oxygen, when the product is a volume of inflammable gas. Suppose the men’s lamps to be stuck in props hanging behind them, filled with the flame of gas, the men dreading nothing nor observing this, continue to work on for a time unconscious of danger. The process goes on for hours, the goaf becomes an empty void by the removal of the hitherto pent up gas, and the solidity of its particles—which would be a support to the upper strata of the goaf, and prevent it from falling—this being removed, a fall of the upper strata, the full extent of the goaf, is the result. These lamps, or any other lamps filled with the flame of hydrogen gas within the range of this blast of air, would have the flame forced through the meshes of the gauze and produce an explosion. Second, if the men were working in an inflammable atmosphere, with or without the knowledge thereof, and an accident happened to any of their lamps so as to injure, or break the gauze, that would produce the explosion. The third and last way is, through the wasteman, who was found beside the two men engaged in blast- ing the stone at the trouble, if he was such a man as I myself have seen— presumptive without skill or knowledge. Suppose the inflammable gas had reached to near the top of the trouble, this man goes in, perhaps re- quested by the stone men to examine the place as they are about to firo