THE ENTOMBED MINER.

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 March 1907, Page 3

THE ENTOMBED MINER.

VARISCHETTE'S MESSAGE, [ft? Telegraph—Press Association.) PERTH, This Day. Divers Hughes and Hearne went below again yesterday afternoon and Hughes again visited the entombed man, and took him supplies of food in tins.

The diver brought back "a written message from Varischetti, stating that he felt his strength diminishing every day and asking his rescuers to be quick, LATER. Varischette, tho entombed miner, sent up a message saying that the water in the mine rose with indescribable rapidity and in a minute the drive was full. He adds: ' T was quite prepared to accent death. I wish to tell you to be quick, that I feel as if my bones were dying. Dear men, have pity on myself. I send you my greetings. Farewell ! —I atm, your miserable friend, Modesti Varischette. Between all of you help me."

The achievement of the heroic diver Hughes is a triumph, and probably a unique one, in the annals of mining rescues. The diver had to descend through water 100 ft by ladderway down the shaft, then to grope his way for 300 ft along a level, or drive, and then to scramble 30ft up a rise, that is an excavation made more or less perpendicularly from the level into the country above tho same. As food and water can bo conveyed to Varischette, the length of time in which he can live in his confinement would appear to be dependent on the quantity of air in the rise, and how long it will take to become vitiated by his own respiration. At first it was thought to get him out in a diving dress, but this has since been found impossible. Descending ladderways and clambering up rises are not very simple feats even in ordinary circumstances, and the navigation of the flooded workings must be an'undertaking of extreme difficulty. A recent message stated that the water in the mine was being lowered at the rate of six feet per day.