The Traveller.

Otago Witness, Issue 1581, 4 March 1882, Page 27

The Traveller.

A TRIP TO THE NORTH,

By.V,agoh. , . No. lll.— Springfield (Continued).

Entering the cage \yith Mr Moore, we very soon found ourselves 1 at the bottom. The levels on each side the shaftare veryi good, specimens! of the miner's art,, being wide enough to serve the purpose required — i.e., a double line of rails for some distance from the shaft, and plenty 'of room to move 'about. They are well timbered, of sufficient height to allow one to walk erect, but dirty, wet, and disagreeable under foot. A ittle way . from the shaft a drive is being carried on night and day to connect with another drive coining to meet it, so as to secure communication with the upper , seam, for there', are two seams, 90 , feet apart. This drive is an excellent piece of mining work ; it is about seven feet, wide and 51 high, heavily timbered throughout, the ground being very treacherous, and being meant for a self-acting incline. It has a grade of three inches to the yard. It will be a great convenience when, finished, .facilitating the ventilation considerably, and lessening expense and danger by allowing all the, [coal ■ to be brought to one bottom ; miners will understand the convenience „of this. Going a' little farther along the level we came to the main heading, which branches joff at right angles, going straight to the .rise, but i by a stupid blunder of a former manager; its grade has been made much steeper than it should have, been, so that it is necessary to use a chain for thehaulage of the, trucks, qr hutches, as Scotch' miners call them. However,' the chain is used on a self-acting incline, so that no material extra expense is involved. The blunder I allude to is the driving of the level under the coal, leaving it above for a roof ;"any miner knows the foolishness of that. At present they are driving the level so ithat it may be in the coal. Proceeding, up 'this head : ing— a dirty, slushy affair it is, too— one begins to see the nature of the coal and the difficulty of working it. The seam is a very small onei nowhere exceeding! four and a-half " feet in thickness^ and Very, often under two feetj besides it is,' in places, divided into two parts by a band of yery hard slaty stone about afoot or so in thickness, making the'miners 5 work very hard and the expense much more than it otherwise would, be. i Having several years back been used, to seams of ,a 'good height, wo found, dressed as we were, some trouble in getting along the low roads, not so much from their lowness as from the detestable state of dirtiness they seem to be kept in, in some places the slush being ankle 'deep. What the poor fellows who have to push the heavy hutches about on these roads have to suffer one can imagine. ;You must know that the trucking, as it 1 is called — that is, bringing the coal to the bottom of the shaft— is usually accounted the most laborious work in a mine,' especially .where the grade is steep, unless horses. or mechanical power is used, and when the heavy labour has to be performed, wading through water .and slush, so that the feet and. legs are wet all day long, the discomfort can be imagined. ' These drawing roads are only wet and slushy in some parts, and it is difficult to conceive why they should be so, as a small ditch cut alongside, which could be done at a trifling expense, would make them dry and comfortable. After going into several of the working places, where the men were getting coal, we proceeded to some of the dipworkings. Here the height is a little more reasonable, allowing us to walk stooping, true, but not so much as ,to suggest the idea of crawling. The coal seems to improve and thicken as it goes down to the dip, and possibly it may develop into a good workable seam as it gets into the deeper and more solid ground. Proceeding down one of the drives to the dip, we found a poor young lad sitting all alone, up to his knees in water, and tugging away laboriously at the handle of a small pump, in the seemingly vain endeavour to reduce the level of the water by which he was surrounded. Poor lad ! how I pitied him ! Evidently striving his very best in that dark dungeon, the gloom barely broken by the glimmer of the little lamp carried on his forehead. He seemed to make very litttle progress, indeed, his task seemed too heavy for him, and .though, he spoke cheerily enough to us, I could see that he was just about used up, and was longing for the time when his shift would be finished, and he could get above into the fresh air, and the glad light of day., Such is one of the tasks to which a poor man's boy must submit. Think of it, ye sons of fortune's favourites !, Think of it ! ye, whose life' has been one long holiday ! who have been nursed in the lap of luxury, and have revelled in riches all your days ; who "have never known what 'want is ; who have never, felt hunger's sharp pang gnawing your vitals ; who have only had to luiil a wish, and lo ! it is gratified. Sum up all the miseries that your happy life has yielded, range them in order, picture them. Thou carry your mind to this picture. Think of i 'li-, poor lad, sitting all alone in that black din : >on, the water all around him, numbing his limn, the faint glimmer of his little lamp only making the inky gloom beyond more profound, his young nerves strained to their utmost tension, and his litllc arms aching as he tugs and strains at the never-ending task. Think of this— picture it, and say if all the miseries you have ever known can equal this "one scene; and yet it is only one of the many hard tasks the burdened sons of toil have to endure i» their weary pilgrimage through life. ISrenlho a. sigh foi bins young toiler's hapless fate : pass on ; and thank your sttirs th:tL you fli-i! nob iJooiuDcl to labour in v nine. It war lonp ykiiie I luid jcoh budi a ta,sk. iv i;uch a. place, allotted to a boy ; but I had endured such tor-

tures in my own boyhood, and I could feel for him. Boys are generally fairly well treated in coal-mines now-a-days. But I can remember the time when they were treated more like boasts of burden than as human beings. Forced into the mines at an age when other children wore learning their letters, compelled to tasks beyond their feeble strength, and often mercilessly beaten if they failed to perform them ; the lowest drudgery of the mine was thoirs, thoir toil was ceaseless ; often, in the winter months, thoy never saw the light of day, save on Sundays ; their fare was fcoarse, and scanty ; and performing their tasks in the deepest gloom, mentally and physically, surrounded by brutal, ignorant companions, unlettered and unthinking, who knew little, and cared less for religion and morality, what wonder that they grew up to manhood, inured to_ toil and suffering indeed, but brutal, ignorant, unthinking as savages, merciless and unfeeling as their oppressors, and_ they in turn oppressed the boys who took their places, and so the wretched systom went on, till the term "miner" came to be regarded as synonymous for all that was brutal and degraded in human nature. Happily all this is now changed. No boy is now admitted into a mine till he can read and write, and even then, till he has reached a fair age, or changing only for a limited number of hours during each day, and their labour is by no means so heavy— all the lighter portions of the work being allotted to them. The ventilation of mines also is more perfect ; the miners have become more enlightened and better educated, so that the position of the boya employed in mines is a vast improvement ' to what it waa even- 10 or 12 years ago, so rapid has been the change. Now it is not often that anyone attempts to beat a 'boy in a coal-mine. Tnen it was a daily, almost hourly, occurrence for a cruel father or brother, or indeed anyone having control over a boy, if he should unhappily displease him, to so belabour the hapless lad that his limbs and body were all bruised and bleeding, and for days he could not move' himself without pain; all. the same, he must perform his allotted task, no matter what the agony he suffered. Often and often have I wept, boy as I was, as I heard the piteous appeals for mercy uttered in vain to the pitiless tyrant who stood over his little victim ; and as the cruel blows descended, oh ! how the shrieks and sobs pierced the heart. I seem to hear them even now ringing through mine ears as they did when I heard them ring through the vaulted caverns of the gloomy mine, echoing along the sepulchral corridors, and speeding into the inky darkness, aB though they would rend assunder /the rocky covering and ascend on high to the great 1 throne of Mercy, praying him to do justice, and stay such cruel tyranny. Ah, me ! these were terrible days to us, who were then boys.. Oh, the cruelty, the suffering we were compelled to endure. Verily a going through the fire to Moloch ! A sacrifice offered up to that more powerful god, Mammon. Those days were days of bitter torture. for too many hapless children whom fate, or the cupidity of their parents, forced so early to a life; of toil in the bowels' of the earth. But, , thank' God, the darkest part of the night of, suffering is past.Already, the bright rays, of the morning of •knowledge, which is, to usher in the glorious day of happiness,. are chasing, away the black shadows, and piercing in, every. direction the clouds of ignorance which have hung so long over this fair world of ours, like.a dark pall, of inky gloom; ■ Swiftly, steadily advances, ,the .light, growing ever clearer .and, clearer, opening the minds of men and, showing >them the hideousness of tyranny and cruelty, andjthe loveliness of justice and mercy ; spreading over all the lands it has descended even unto the depths of the earth, whe,re, amid danger and darkness, the humble miners are toiling to contribute their quota- to the i comfort, the prosperity, and the progress of mankind, and is elevating them and ennobling. They are now learning the great lesson, that it is not wise to degrade the boys, the boys who will be the men of the next generation; and those who are the wiser of them are endeavouring by all means to relax the iron chains by which Fate has bound them to a woful life of toil, that their children mayienjoy a. measure of happiness they themselves were not fated to know. And they have succeeded wonderfully. They have, made it possible for a boy to receive a fair education ; they have so managed that but very f little exhausting toil is exacted from him before his limbs have become strong enough to bear the strain. He is now. by far better fed and clothed, and in the mine at least he is secured in. a measure from personal abuse, the miners as a rule detesting and shunning one of their number who dares to beat a boy, and for the wretches on whom public opinion has little restraining influence the wholesome terrors of the law act as a powerful deterrent : so that a pitboy's life is., not so horrible as it was only a short time ago. Of course, our collieries not being very extensive as yet, there are not so many boys employed in any mine in the Colony as in one in the Home land, but there is a considerable number, and the endeavour of everyone should be to make their labours as light as possible, and give them every chance to educate themselves, so that their children may attain a higher position, and by this means the status of the miners as a class shall be raised to the level of other classes, and it shall not be a term of reproach—" He is a collier." I cannot tell how, but looking at that young toiler sitting there alone in the gloom and darkness, benumbed by the icy water he sat in as he strained at his laborious task, the scenes I had witnessed in my own boyhood flashed upon my mind, and memories of the tortures pitboys had then to endure crowded upon me thick and fast, and it was with a sincere feeling of regret that I saw there were still some, even in this free land of peace and plenty, who were compelled to taste of the bitter portion, and as. we reached the surface, glad to see once more the green grass and the blue^ sky above, and to feel the warm rays of the bright sun, a sigh escaped me, and I could no£ help murmuring, " Poor boy ! early condemned to the hard toil, the many miseries, and the short life that falls to the lot of a

miner."

( To be continued).

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