Down the Historic Susquehanna; A Summer's Jaunt from Otsego to the Chesapeake (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 edition. Excerpt: ...and the piles are being turned over to get this out. The mine boilers and plant are fed with it, even though it is not put on the market. There is a feeling among thoughtful men that Wyoming's coal will not last forever and that it is best to be prudent. Many of the mines are directly beneath cities and towns. This is a never-ending amazement to the unthinking, some of whom are so ignorant as to walk the streets of Wllkesbarre quaking in their boots for fear the earth may literally swallow them up, and much relieved when the day's visit is over. Yet the bowels of the earth. are honeycombed with gangways, galleries and passages best adapted to enable the miners to attack the coal with the most ease. These excavations are of course far beneath the streets and have been planned with much science and caiculation. Some of the mines run under the Susquehanna to the other side from the opening, and, as au instance of engineering skill, I was told of a mine at Pittston which was started directly beneath another which had to be abandoned because about 20 acres of it caught on fire and burned for years. The courtesy of a mine superintendent today enabled me to go down into a mine which is being worked under Wilkesbarre. I had planned the trip because I wanted to imagine how I would feel hundreds of feet beneath a big city, but to tell the truth, I almost forgot this prearranged notion in the interests of the depths. Halls and chambers "of Cyclopean proportions" were found after we had descended the shaft. The tiny safety lamps in the miners' caps--T had one, too--looked like willo'-the-wisps as they moved about, and no sound was heard but the miners' tools or the report of a blast in some distant gallery. I felt awed in these midnight...