The Camden journal. [volume] (Camden, S.C.) 1866-1891, 1872-07-04
In a q caIPitJEhe Life Of the English
Golfers.

A coal pit viewed from the surface, does
not present very imposing appearance. 1t
is simply round black hole about twice the
size of an ordinary table, and standing over
it is sort of a gallows, wire rope, as thick
as ones wrist hanging down over a wheel,
and lost in. the depths below By-and-by
the action is reversed, a clinking is heard in
the adjoining engine shed, and up comes the
tub, "a square box, holding some 2,20G
weight,) filled with coal. Viewed the coarse,
strong tub with appreciation, making sure
that as soon as it was emptied we should all
get into it, but in this 1 was disappointed
1t was not in the tub, BUT on the grating on
which the tub had stood that we had to de-
scend; on the naked grating, with nothing to
hpld on to but the cross-chains over head
But the pit was only six hundred feet deep,
and the coal smoke that arose from the enor-
nous mine furnace below was not unbeara-
BILE by the time it had bcnumbed ones senses
bit,
:. Six hundred feet be ow, and half a mile
this way or that, under the low arched roof
from Which depended frequent feeces of
fungus, snow white, and looking like lambs
wool and making the black floors and the
black walls lit by feeb.e tallow dips stuck
there in daps Of clay, blacker than ever. We
all carried tallow dips, stuck in daps of clay,
and in Indian file followed the "Buttoy" and
his foreman through the turpiugs and wind
ings that led to the "chambers" from which
coal was being hewn. The chambers are as
wide as an ordinary street, and as high as a
threc-storied house; and on every side when
the light of the red-nosed dips was shifted
was revealed human creature, naked to the
waist, and blacker than any sweep, and with
q weapon in his hand, that in the uncertain
light looked like tomahawk, grinning at
you, or apparently with his weapon making
dash in the direction Of your visage, but
which alights harmlessly on the face of the
coal wall.
Heavers, packers, tubbers, f1lers--these
are all men, d;hard as the work is they
earn good wages. They don't dislike the
labor, and they are jolly enough; all except
the boys. 1t was these boys that so perpetu-
ally haunted my coal scuttle after I returned
from Staffordshire. 1t is Yillainously cruel
to serve the poor little chaps 30. The matter
stands this way, the heger is the man whose
business tits to "hew in" at the foot of the
coal-wal1- He lies on his side or on his
stomach and breaks in right along for length
say, Of twenty feet, gap that is two feet or
less IN hight. He pecks his way in:o the
rock until he has burrowed sixteen or eight
eer feet. Naturally, in the process Of picking,
he nfakss deal of "slack" or small, and the
boy in question is called the ''slack boy
Regarded as boy, as a human being he is
slack indeed. He Ii not mitch like boy, he
is more like large sized monkey All fours
Is his perpetual posture, and hewears leath-
eren girdle about hir waist, from which an
iron chain depends, the other end being at
tached to an iron cart The slack-boy has
an iron shovel as well, and the business Of
his miserable life is TO crawl into the hole
which the newer makes, to fill his cart with
chips and dust, and then to crawl out again
with the load, always on hjs hands and knees,
and with his poor limbs hung about with
rags of which nakcdness might be asham-
ed.-LonRon Society.