Page:All the Year Round - Series 1 - Volume 19.pdf/336

328[March 14, 1868.] going on, this is a heavy loss, and makes coal cost twice as much to get to the surface? and, as this preacher has the knack of getting 'em to work, what I say is, let the owners buy up his Doortose shop, and jest plant him down here to look after the men."

"Wouldn't answer, Muster Black! wouldn't answer, sir!" interposed an underviewer, respectfully; "the instant they found out he'd ought to do with t' owners they wouldn't listen to him. They know he don't get a penny by coming among 'em, ' all for love of their poor souls,' as he says; and once they knew he was planted here to coax 'em to work, he might whistle and pray until he were blue."

We are in a northern county of England; and are holding this conversation in the dark, and thousands of feet underground. I am called over the coals for the second time, and am exploring one of the largest and deepest pits in the kingdom. Above us is a village with a population of two thousand souls, every one of whom is directly dependent upon the pit. Twelve years ago, not one of those symmetrically ranged dwellings was to be seen, and the schools and chapels, shops and taverns, which have rapidly followed in their wake, are of still more recent date. Take a section of Aldershott or Shorncliff, and spread their huts over a larger space; or magnify the toy-houses of your children until their monotonously even sides and sloping roofs are large enough to hold men and women; plant your dwellings in long rows so as to make a succession of streets leading to and coming from nowhere in particular; let your pathways be unpaved and muddy, your public-houses numerous, and your shops of a decidedly "general" kind; throw in several chapels, and some well-built schools, and you have the pit-village of Cornope.

It is early morning, and we have driven miles to be with the chief viewer before he sets out on his inspection for the day. At his house we have doffed our clothes and hats, for blue flannel garments and black leather skull-caps. Divining-rods, or wands of a prescribed length, and without handle or curve, are put into our hands, and in a few minutes we are crouching in the "cage," and descending swiftly down a bricked shaft into the earth. The descent is not unpleasant. There is none of that foul hot stench, that oppressive sensation of being choked with sulphur, that parched scorching of lungs, and eyes, and tongue, which distinguished my first visit. Nor does the mingled wet and coal-dust come down in great black blobs upon our face and hands. It is rather warm and close, but nothing more. The crouching attitude, the darkness, the creaks and grunts of the machinery, the very knowledge that we were bottoming one of the deepest pits in England, make the jaunt remarkable; but its pleasures exceed its pain. A passing jangle of chains and the other cage passes us on its upward way, and a short time afterwards I am handed out by two grimy giants in waiting.

A tremendous draught, which whistles by our ears and gives our beards the sensation of being brushed by machinery, is the first feeling. Many pairs of mighty bellows are focused at our legs and bodies, and we mechanically turn up our pea-jacket collars, stamp upon the ground, and fold our arms sturdily, like the wind-beset traveller in the fable. "Nice ventilation, you see!" sounds like a mockery, but it is given in good faith, and we plod our way along underground tramways for miles. There is very little stooping; for the excavations are a goodly height, and we pass from workings to stables, and to the brick-work where new shafts are being sunk, noticing little more than that the gradations from heat to cold are sudden, and that we are treading on a jointed tramway which has a tendency to trip one up every twenty yards or so. Changes from gusty windiness to tropical heat are sudden. Lifting a coarse canvas curtain, and passing under it, takes us at once from Siberia to the torrid zone. In the first we are among vast currents of air coming fresh and cold into the pit; in the second we stand amid hot and exhausted air which is being forced outwards by the furnace. Canvas or "brattice-work" divides the two, and the vast labyrinthian passages along which coal has been or is being worked are cold or hot according to the turn the ventilation has been made to take. It is in a particularly hot passage, and after I have knocked my head against a cross-beam, in obedience to the cry, "No need to stoop, sir, plenty of room here — six-foot heading this," that I am favoured with an explanation of the talk about the preacher. "He has made 'em serious for a time, like the revival people did; and while it lasts, which won't be long, they'll work better—that's all. Our men are a roughish lot; good fellows in the main, you know, but fond of their own way, and liking their own pleasures. Cock-fighting (in a whisper, as if even underground walls might have ears) is a favourite sport of theirs; many of 'em have dogs they'll match for a ten-pound note for fighting, you know; and here and there is a boxer who'll back himself, and get his friends to back him for money. Times aren't good just now, and the coal trade's flat; but when work's plentiful, and wages high, you can't prevent them indulging as they like. T' owners set their faces again' it, t' parson preaches again' it, t' children are taught t's wrong. But it takes a long time to alter t' habits which have grown and got strong all along t' country-side. We're doing it, however, we're doing of it. Billiards was a foine thing for t' pitmen, foine thing. No, sir, I dawn't mean skittles, and I dawn't mean lorn-billiards, as ye call 'em. I'm just meaning a green table, and the long sticks they ca' 'kews,' and balls, and pockets, and cushions, and such like. A regular billiard-table such as t' gentlefolks play on, that's what I mean. They've got 'em in cottages knocked into one happen, or a hoose older and bigger than the rest, and a small subscription of a few pennies a week, and the men jest play when they like. They're let smoke, and they can have coffee and