Page:The Overland Monthly Volume 5 Issue 3.djvu/16



obliged to suspend operations, in a measure, during the hot, sultry months of September and October—a fact which can ..ardly be otherwise than discouraging, and is always detrimental.

The water is let to the different €ompanies at a certain price per inch, the general average being about fifteen cents; and, as they use from five to seven hundred inches daily, it will readily be seen that the money for water, only, is no inconsiderable item in the annual budget of expenses.

The water is not brought into the mines by the ditches, but to a point on the hillabove them. Here, a large sheetiron pipe communicates with the ditch, and carries the water on to the bed of the excavation. The pipe in question

varies in size from sixteen to twenty inches in diameter, and is laid on an airline to the centre of the mine, in order to give the strongest possible pressure.

At the centre of the excavation it discharges the water into a smaller pipe, and laid at right-angles with it. This smaller pipe again discharges the water through an apparatus, attached to either end, into the distributing pipes, for immediate usage upon the banks. The latter-named pipes are still smaller than the others, and are capped with nozzles, the mouths of which are about three inches in diameter. The nozzles are thus small, because larger ones would make the stream of water so large that it could not be thrown against the bank, and yet smaller ones would not furnish enough water for washing away the débris.

With the mines thus fitted for the workmen, we will now give a glimpse of a day's work in one of them.

Fifteen minutes to seven o'clock, and the sun looks over the eastern hills which overshadow the village. Some one says, "Fifteen minutes, boys;" and the foreman rises slowly, and steps off forthe mine. One after another follows,

until there is a file of men reaching from the boarding-house to the bank of the mine; and were it not for the clay pipes in their mouths, and their strange working dress, he could be forgiven who would sing a reguiem to their motion. The mine reached, work begins, yet the same resolute resistance to any show of interest is manifest. There is no talking, no hurrying to and fro—nothing that indicates earnest labor. The pick rises in a slow, undecided manner, and falls of its own weight; the shovel drops into the flume, and is moved along by the simple force of the water; while the drill, the bar, and the sledge dare not or care not to encroach upon the established precedence of the pick and shovel. A San Franciscan might well be discomfited were he obliged to imitate these miners for a single week. And do they work? Look into the mine, note the changes, and you will not need to repeat the question for an affirmative. True, the motion is slow, very slow, slower perhaps than you have ever seen outside of the mines; yet, with this ponderous slowness, there is a precision and a regularity of movement which are most effectual—'tis the old story of the rain-drops and the rock. The huge blocks of cement crumble to pieces under the fall of the sledge and pick; the drill drops into the slate bowlders like magic; a dozen streams of water are shooting against the rocky bank, now at the base, now at the top, now at the centre—anywhere that the hand of the water-tender sends them; the bank bows again and again under the powerful influence of the water, and the flume is gorged a hundred times with the débris that the water feeds it. With the coming of noon, the miners have made an entire change in the part of the mine they have worked, however feebly they may seem to have acted; and, as the sound of the heavy dinnerbell is borne to them, all the work is stopped abruptly, and they move with