Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 29, 2025
Now then, out you go;" and as the cage stopped the men all stepped out and started for the places in which they were working. "Coom along, Jack; the viewer told me to put you at No. 10 gate." It was ten minutes fast and as Jack thought very unpleasant walking. The sleepers on which the rails for the corves, or little waggons, were laid, were very slippery.
When the train of rolleys reaches the shaft, the full corves are hoisted up, and empty ones let down, which are placed on the rolleys, and carried back for the hewers to fill. No spirits are allowed in mines, but as the heat and the work makes the people thirsty, tubs of water are placed at intervals, at which they can drink.
"How often do the corves come along?" Jack asked as the man prepared to run on after the waggons, the last of which had just passed. "There be a set goes out every ten minutes, maybe, on this road, and every twenty minutes on the other, two o' ours to one o' theirs;" and he moved forward.
Twice two is four;" and so Jack passed the hours of his first day in the pit, recalling his lessons, reproaching himself continually and bitterly with the time he had wasted, breaking off every ten minutes from his rehearsals to open the door for the train of corves going in empty and going out full, exchanging a few words each time with the drivers, all of whom were good-naturedly anxious to cheer up the new boy, who must, as they supposed, be feeling the loneliness of his first day in the pit keenly.
All he knew was that he had sat there in that dark corner trapping for many, many weary hours, and that he should have to sit there many more till he was big enough to become a putter. Then he should have to fill corves with coal, and push them along the tramways for some years more till he got to be a hewer like his father.
Samuel now went back to work with his pick, and Dick returned to the charge of his trap. Day after day Dick sat by the side of his trap, all in the dark and by himself, opening and shutting it, as the corves and rolleys came by, and Samuel worked away as usual with his pick and spade. Though not as strong as many of the other hewers, he made as much as any one else by keeping at his work.
The corves were placed together in a cage, between which and the pit-ropes there was usually from fifteen to twenty feet of chain. The approach of the corves towards the pit mouth was signalled by a bell, brought into action by a piece of mechanism worked from the shaft of the engine.
Other men were engaged at the foot of the shaft, hooking on the corves full of coal to be drawn up by the machinery above. There were three shafts. At the bottom of one was a large furnace kept always burning that it might assist to draw down the pure air from above and send the bad air upwards. Down another shaft was a huge pump, pumping up the water which got into the mine.
Previous to the introduction of the steam-engine the usual machine employed for the purpose was what is called a “gin.” The gin consists of a large drum placed horizontally, round which ropes attached to buckets and corves are wound, which are thus drawn up or sent down the shafts by a horse travelling in a circular track or “gin race.” This method was employed for drawing up both coals and water, and it is still used for the same purpose in small collieries; but where the quantity of water to be raised is great, pumps worked by steam power are called into requisition.
As the evening drew on, the women retired into their cottages to prepare supper for their husbands and sons, whose return home they were now expecting. Already the corves which took them down to their work in the early morning must be on their way up to the surface, and it is time to have the savoury messes ready for dishing up.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking