WONDERS OF SUBTERRANEAN LANCASHIRE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2215, 13 August 1896, Page 50

WONDERS OF SUBTERRANEAN LANCASHIRE.

Romantic Facts About Disced Coalpits. j. More. than oue^balf of Lancashire, it in computed,, is' undermined, but a considerable portion of that amount consists- of. disused pits.. In some distriots nearly, all. the coal except that which lies at a considerable depth has been. won,. This- is, bo at Wigan, for:4pßtance, comparatively, few men being, at, woik under' that, town; In the. case, of onr colliery on.the bordereof ifc, the miners, on- reaching, the* bottom* of the -shaft, .have, half-an-hour!tt walk away from it before they, come to 'the " face." About, Clifton^ again; ; there are a number of old . pits, , while, south ■ of'Boltbn there are othgr exhausted^ workings; from which enormous quantities of coal. were oarrried down to Worsley by, the .underground canal, perhaps the most remark-able-waterway, in the world. The main trunk of this, interesting prerailway aqueductjrana from that village for

and for a considerable distance, too— through a disused pit. Hotly pursued by a policeman, be rushed on the bank of a' mine that was working, jumped into the cage as.it .was aboat to descend, and was lowered into ttiedepbbs below. On reaobinjrthebottom he took a road he knew; and madehir way to an old pit, with which' there was 1 a communication for ventilating puiposw Passing through this; he entered another oolliery where coal was being got,and'so reached the surface" again fully two miles fromwherothe bad baffled the constable by-disappearing: Meanwhile, the officer, bent, on oatcblng. his man, had descended the other shaft in pursuit. He questioned first one collier and then -another, and was sent this way and then that, till at last he was obliged to give up the ohwe in disgust ; and it was not until six months afterwards, when the transgressing, pitman inoautiously ventured into the distriot again, that he secured bis quarry. The filliDg up of old roada, however, Jssometimes attended with awkward consequences above, though not very frequently in Lan« casbire, owing, to the depth of the pits in that' county. Yet even there subsidence! are not' unknown: At Wigan,s6m«.years ago a itable and two horses, disappeared beneath, the ground one night— dropped out of sight, and hearing, leaviDg a yawning gulf on the spot, i Innumerable cartloads of rubbish were tipped into thegreathole befoie.it waß filled More startling, waa i the subsidence of a length of a small oanal. which sank about 2ft-in aiingle night; In spike of this drop, -however, no great quantity of. water was wasted; and, all things considered; the damage done was comparatively trifling. Had the sinkage taken place on- the railway, the result might have been terrible. That stories of orimeolnster round old pits will not be wondered at. What more obvious or more safe place for the disposal of a corpse

mony with their neighbours have been erected in place of houses two or three oenturies old, to the advantage of the light, as the upper parts used to • projeofc over, the shops, but to the- grave, defacement oMh'e, street's aspect from the artist's point of view. , The modernising' hand- still hovers over Booksellers' row, bat it has not yet touched the succession of old bookstalls on the south side, of which those of Messrs Myers and 00. are among .the msst pioturesqaely prominent. The crowd that moves' alon#BooVsellera' row is leisurely and- cosmopolitan. Men of air races saunter down the solely pedestrian thoroughfare, looking backward as if loth to leave the booths unexplored! Literary enthusiasm levels all olasses, so that the statesman rabi shoulders with the penniless student in scanning the contents' of the shopman's shelves. One-third of' the members of the- preßent House of. Commons, Mr Myers will tell you, are among, his-ous-tomers; BARE BOOKS AHD. PBIOEB, , There is this 1 inconsistency about' the puc# chase of old books, that* although a rare book is almost always a good- investment, there is no class of property more curiously, affaotecL in value by, the circumstances of its Bale. A book that formed part of an eminent' man's 'library may, oornmand £10 at the v sale,, andwhen next sold under less interesting condi<tions may not fetch 153. Mr Myers-has now in his possession a rare book which he purohasedfor 12s. It was sold at the Sunderland sale for £10 159, and' without any special reason dropped in valae by the time ifc was sold again to £2 Bs. Ib is not at all likely that the books of the Althorp library, if sold separately, would have realised anything like bo much a« the library did'aa a whole. The exact sum paid by Mrs Rylands for the unequalled Spenoßr oolie'otlon was- said at the