Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1871-04-14
A MINERS STORY.
From the Southern Magazine


"It's caved," exclaimed Bill Beaver,
bursting into the cabin where | was leis-
urely eating breakfast and reading the
news from some last years papers that
were pasted on the wall. "The ground
has caved 1t came down mighty sud-
den and little Jimmy was at the breast.
| was further out in the drift, and had
the start of it; but it made such a close
call for me, that | know he must a got
ketched"
This technical .jargon revealed to me
the fact that our mine had caved and
buried one of our companions; for
little Jimmy" was not an infant but q
mana miner and friend, He had
been working at the breast" or farth-
est end of the "drift," but was now,
perhaps, sleeping his last sleep in the
bosom of the mother of us all.
Three years before this we had come
to this creek. We had prospected the
"side gulches" and the bars, and found
"colors" everywhere. Indications were
favorable, SO we "staked' body of
ground along the main creek, built cab
ins, organized company, of which the
writer was elected President, and went
to work to open our claim.
Those three years had been years of
toll and privahon. We were in the heart
of the Rocky Mountains. Our camp was
pitched in little basin of a valley, warm
and sunshiny, and just at the entrance
of a deep and gloomy canon which we
named "The DEVILS Gate" and through
which our sparkling little stream foamed
and tumbled down to the great river,
the Missouri.
Our ground was deep and very wet !;
drainage was necessary, and we had
driven a tunnel for this purpose through
the earth and boulders that filled the pri
meval bed Of the creek, until we had at
tanned a horizontal distance of 1000
yards but the slope Of the gulch was so
gradual that we had not reached the
"bed rock" where we hoped to find the
gold laid in heaps. Bedrock" being
the objective point, must be reached so
we sank a shaft at the head Of our tun-
mel and betook ourselves to pump.
AS it was a couple of thousand miles
to the nearest foundry, and we could
not afford to await the completion of
the North Pacific Railroad, pump un-
der the circumstances was q problem so
| will tell you how we got one.
We had blacksmith's and carpenters
tools, which most of us could use; there
was plenty of timber growing on the
mountains, and pair of dilapidated
freight-wagons supplied our stock of
iron. Great slabs or segments were cut
from fir-trees, and hewn and dressed on
one side to smooth plane. The other
j Il lad to
surface, so that when four such seq
ments were placed together lengthwise,
secured with pins at the edges, which
were first squared and then made paral-
lei, they formed long hollow trunk or
barrel, iOur-square within, but outside
cylindrical, and tapering slightly from
one end to the other. Upon this were
driven hoops or bands of iron which
forced the joints close like those of a
cask, and thus we had pumps or pipes
of considerable length and solidity.
1t was easy to fit to them valves and
pistons, and to work them with wood
en- walking beam moved by the crank
of a water-wheel. This crank was a
masterpiece. 1t had an arm or leverage
of two feet, and was forged from the
iron axle of one of our wagons, and its
gudgeons or bearings were turned in a
lathe of our own cOntrivlng.
This was heavy iron job for our re-
sources, but it was finished after an age,
it seemed to us, of toll, pulling and
perspiration and we had produced ma
chinery that was capable of raising to a
height of nearly thirty feet many tons of
water per day, and which answered all
our requirements for drainage, SO that
we were able to reach that longsought
"bed-rock" at depth of ninety feet
below the present bed of the creek. L
will mention here that our pump was
twelve inches square inside, and had a
stroke of four feet, raising the water
twenty-nine feet into our drain-tunnel,
whence it flowed out to the surface a
thousand yards down the canon.
We had reached " bedrock" but had
not "struck it very rich" and were
running drift or tunnel on bedrock
across and up the gulch in search of the
pay-streak'' which we were hoping
every day to find, when the announce
ment of a startling accident was made.
Here was the ruin Of our hopes and the
death of our friend for there was little
room to hope for any other result.
1t must not be supposed that much
time was wasted in such reflections, for,
telling Bill to rouse the entire camp, |
rushed off to the mine. Such of the
men as had heard of the occurrence
hurried from their work, bringing with
them their picks and shovels as likely to
be needed, and the miners from wet
diggings came clad in n--coats, high boots
and helmet.shaned CAPS of india-rubber.