The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1869-09-23
HOYT & CO., Proprietors.

on w eQneSuay morning I"o ooo'S
found, both fearfuly dis6gured and unre
cognizable. About $50 party OF four
succeeded in penetrating some distance
into one of the principal galleries, and
came upon the bodies of over sixty moro
where they had met their fate together
They had constructed two barriers oi
cars and refuse coal, and stripped off their
clothes to stop the crevices. One poor
fellow, whose duty it seems to have been
to close the last aperture after all had
passed beyond it, had fallen dead on the
outside, his work not yet completed
Fathers and sons were found in each 9TH
er's arms. Some lay with their hands
cIenched as if in agony, some with their
faces buried in the ground, some in the
attitude of prayer. While we write the
labor of bringing out the bodies Still goes
on.
The causes of this horrible affair seem
plain enough. The shaft upon which the
lives of these two hundred mon depend
ed was tindcr. box, and fire was made
in the bottom of it! Not stick of
wood should be used in such places if iron
can be substituted, as for most Of the
equipment of mine it certainly can be.
And that there was not separate shaft
for ventilation is simpl Y monstrous. The
miners are said to declare that not an
other days work shall be done in any
mine which has not a ventilating shaft.
Doubtless they are in earnsst, but we
have no confidence that their resolution
will be kept. The most reckless OF men
are always those whose occupations are
most perilous. Miners we know are not
ignorant of their danger. Mine-owners
are not heartless. But both manifest o
propensity to run fearful risks, which
seems to US entirely inexplicable. If
men are the victims of such suicidal ten
denotes, it is the duty of the government
to protect them against their own folly.
A correspondent of the New York
Times, writing at later period, thus
sketches an experience of the time en-
ployed in rescuing the dead:
The history of the catastrophe. like
that of battle, will probably never be
complete. The minute details in which
lie the dramatic force of the event can
never be fully gathered. One man could
no more absorb the events momently oc-
crrring during those four intense days
and nights at Avondalo Shaft, than could
a single observer take in the minutia of
y battle like the Wilderness. But as
these incidents are cullsd from the mem
cries ut the actors in the great drama
they are as worthy of record as though
seen by the fresh individual.
Everything in the work of rescuing
the entombed was done, devised and su-
pcrvised by committees of miners. On
the last day OF bringing up the dead, the
person in charge OF the rope that was at
tached to the platform used for that pur
pose and letting down the rcscuers, be-
came convinced of it's insecurity, and a
committee" went to examine it, These
men, after minute inspection, pronoun-
ced the rope perfectly reliable and even
better than new one. and would not
have it changed. A little later another
committee was called, and another in
spection being made, arrived at the same
conclusion, whereupon the person in
charge, by merely shaking the rope vic
lently, unloosened the ends where it was
spliced, and despite the protests it was
removed and new rope substituted.
No men or set OF men wele probably
ever before called upon to endure such
extreme hardships in the midst of q
thickly-peopled country, as wcre'the men
engaged about the mine. A field telc-
graph Office was established on pile of
boards, near tho crater, and there an op.
orator sat, without adequate protection
from the weather, for forty-eight hours,
without u moments relief. The miners,
sheriff, coroner, jury and others, were
engaged, night and day, during the four
days, with short respites for some of
them, and even the brutes were called
upon by the magnitude Of the disaster
for extraordinary exertion, as the little
bay horse was required to trot around
the drum, coiling the rope that was
hosting the dead for thirty consecutive
hours
There were many weird night scenes,
especially during Tuesday and Wednes-
day nights, when the great crowd did not
diminish and there were no other means
of illumination than u few lanterns. The
imagination can scarcey conceive the
solemn weirdness of the scene when one
of the dead was borne out of the tunnel
upon the little plateau, and the dim Ian
tern light being thrown upon the face,
the coroner's jury gathered around for
the official viewing of the dead. Nor is
it an experience of everyday life for o
man to spend stormy night in u freight
car piled high with cofflns, with, little
way above him, ON the mountain side, a
miners dwelling, where woman walled
all night long over the dead bodies of her
husband and two talwart sons | have
spokcn as l was bound to do of the sub.
lime courage and devotion displayed by
tho man who went down the shaft to re-