CHAPTER XXVII.

WAR IN THE MINE.

Little difficulty has ever been experienced from firedamp, in the mines along the Comstock lode. Firedamp is a gas which is more frequently generated in, and more strictly confined to, coal mines than to any others; yet in a few instances it has been found to exist in mines on the Comstock. It is probably generated by decaying pine-timber.

On one occasion, a mining superintendent of Gold Hill went into an old drift of the Segregated Belcher mine, and while passing along it, happened to lift his candle to its roof, to examine the rock. Much to his astonishment, he set fire to a stratum of carburetted hydrogen (firedamp), which produced a brilliant flash that extended the whole length of the drift. Some miners working in the Gould & Curry mine on one occasion had a similar, but much more lively, bit of experience. On tapping an old drift in that mine quite an explosion occurred, though no harm was done, further than the singeing of the hair and whiskers of the astonished miners.

In the early days of Washoe it occasionally happened that adjoining mining companies drifted into each other’s works, far below the surface. On such occasions there was war down in the bowels of the earth. In case pistols and similar weapons were not used, the battles were fought after the Chinese stink-pot plan. Each company sought to smoke the other out. The latest instance in which these underground amenities of the amiable miner were indulged in, was in May, 1874, when the Kossuth and the Alhambra folks ceased to admire each other.

The works of the two companies made an unexpected connection several feet below the surface. As to what passages at arms may have occurred in and about the breach below when it was first opened, those of the surface world are not informed. However, the Alhambra folks presently smelt something burning. They were not long in doubt as to the nature of the fumigation. The odor wafted to them was not that of sandal-wood, neither of frankincense nor myrrh. That which reached them was the hot, pungent, stifling smoke and gas that told of burning pitch-pine. The Kossuth folks had secretly prepared and lighted in a drift of their mine, connecting with the Alhambra shaft, a large bonfire of pine-wood. There being a draught into and up the shaft named, the men working therein soon found themselves in danger of suffocation, and made all possible haste to reach the surface.

The superintendent of the Alhambra mine narrowly escaped losing his life. When he was hoisted to the top of the shaft, some hundreds of feet, he was asphyxiated to the verge of insensibility, and fell back, but luckily caught at the edge of some planks and held on long enough to give those standing near time to snatch him away. Had he fallen to the bottom of the shaft, it would have been certain death, for had he not been dashed to pieces by the fall, the smoke and gases ascending the shaft would have prevented his friends from going down to his assistance, and he must have inevitably perished.

Turning the tables on the Kossuthites was now tried by the men of the Alhambra. They covered the mouth of their shaft with planks and wet blankets, in order, if possible, to force the smoke back into the Kossuth mine. The smoke still appearing to gather in their shaft, several large casks of water were got in readiness, the planks and blankets were raised, and a flood of water turned suddenly down. To what extent this experiment discommoded the Kossuthites was never made public, but the indications were that they received at least a temporary hoist from their own petard, as, shortly after, their numbers above ground were observed to have increased.

During the war, a deserter came over to the Alhambra side and informed them that he had been ordered to drill a hole under the bottom of their shaft, charge it with giant-powder, and blow them all to the lower levels of Lucifer’s brimstone pit, when they came to work in the morning. Rather than become a second Guy Fawkes, the man threw up his situation; at least this was his story. The Kossuth folks caused to be published a statement of the affair, in which it was said that their foreman was a second Uncle Toby—he wouldn’t harm a fly. As for the smoking business, they had explained to the Alhambra folks the fact that they were about to kindle a little fire to dry their drift, and had told them that in case they found the smoke disagreeable, they could “go aloft.”

There is nothing so much dreaded by the miner as fire. When millions of tons of rock begin to settle down he is not frightened. He goes among them when they are being splintered in all directions and are cracking like pistols; coolly puts in double timbers and braces, drives wedges, and builds up sections with rock, for he knows that the settling must be gradual, and that if it is not stopped it can only continue till all the timbers in the place are pressed out as thin as wafers—shortly before which time he will depart. When caves of ore fall from the breasts in a stope, he knows that they only endanger the few men who happen to be under or near them. When the premature explosion of a blast occurs, only those in the immediate vicinity are killed or wounded. But when there is a fire in a mine, the life of every man is in peril.

One great reason why a fire in a mine is so much dreaded, is because there are so few avenues of escape open to the miner. Probably there is but a single shaft (if the mine is connected with no other) and up this, a thousand or fifteen hundred feet, he must go to escape. The smoke and deadly gases may reach the shaft before he arrives, and then he can but sit down and await his death. In case of a fire, there is liable to be a panic. A panic in a church or other building on the surface is always a terrible thing; then what must be a panic in a mine where there are eight hundred or one thousand men, perhaps, all to go up a single shaft a thousand feet, a cage-load at a time? At such times, too, there are explosions of gases which extinguish all of the lights, and the men rushing to and fro are exposed to the danger of tumbling headlong into scores of pitfalls in the shape of chutes, winzes, and other excavations.

All these things being often in the miner’s mind give him a wonderful delicacy of nostril. He can scent a fire afar. He knows the smell of burning fuse, of giant-powder, of black powder and of everything with which fire ordinarily comes in contact in a mine, and the scent of these are no more noticed than is noticed the air he breathes on the surface of the earth; but let any unusual substance be ignited and, like the hunted stag, his nose is in the air at once. Let but a splinter of pine be held in a candle, and soon the smell of the burning wood is detected by the miners above and around, and there is a commotion such as is seen when a hive of bees is disturbed—men drop down from, and rush out of, all manner of places where no men were seen before. A bit of burning rag or anything of that nature creates uneasiness.

On one occasion, I was in the 1500-foot level of the Consolidated Virginia mine when a gentleman from San Francisco was getting some samples of ore. These he tied up in small sacks. When he tied up the first he found that he had left his knife above, in changing his clothes. Having no knife with which to cut the string he had tied about the sack, he held it in the flame of a candle and burnt it off. The string was of cotton, and a length of about two inches was consumed in all. In less than a minute afterwards a man from some part of the mine hastily approached, and said to the underground foreman,

“What is burning?”

“Is there anything burning?” inquired the foreman, giving us a wink.

“Yes, sir; there is something burning in this part of the mine.”

“What makes you thinks so?”

“Well, I smell it. It’s cotton rags or something of that kind.”

The foreman then showed the man the cotton string that had been burned off, and he left, giving the San Francisco man a sour look as he departed. Even a dead rat in any close or heated part of the mine annoys the men, and is speedily scented out and sent above. So with everything else from which there can arise the slightest effluvium.