The Adventures of a Coal-Mine (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 72 CHAP. V. The animated parts of the scene in a northern coal-district are not less peculiar than other objects which strike the eye. Occasionally bands of " pit-men," as black as sweeps, each one carrying a safety-lamp hanging at his belt, are seen traversing the dingy lanes on their return from their portion of labour. Their countenances are strongly marked from the nature of their occupation,and their living as they do, apart from other classes of the people. The cheek-bones are high, the middle part of the face is very wide, and the lower portion has an angular form. In these respects they are quite a distinct race from the neighbouring peasantry. The colliers who work in mines where the seam of coal is of sufficient thickness to permit the free use of muscular action, are erect and of good figure; while in others, "where the seam is of smaller dimensions, the miners have the spine curved and the legs frequently bowed. Their complexion, when it i can be seen in its own hue, is generally sallow and unhealthy. A very amusing description of the Staffordshire colliers was thus given some years ago, by a writer in Knight's Quarterly Magazine :? " Many of my readers must recollect crossing, in the route from London to Holyhead, a miserable tract of country commencing a few miles beyond Birmingham and continuing to Wolverhampton. If the volumes of sulphureous vapour, which I shall not compliment with the name of smoke, permitted them at intervals to view the dismal situation wasteand wild,' they would observe the surface of the desert around them scarred and broken, as if it had just reposed from the heavings of an earthquake. Now and then they would shudder as they passed the mouth of a deserted mine, left without any guard but the wariness of the passenger. Some...