Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1881-07-30
sEwANkE COAL WINES.

beneath its surface, where the stall
wart convict forces from its hiding
place the artificial sources of our
light and heat, available in the cold
and darkness of night and winter.
The railroad which ascends this
mountain from Cowan's Station,
climbs very steep declIvity from
that Station TO within a mile of the
University, but from that point
loses altogether its character as a
mountain road, and runs nearly on
level from Sewanee to Tracy City,
distance of eleven miles. This il
the coaling metropolis of the dis
trict, and the aspect was quite a
surprise to me. l have said that 1t
Is nearly on the same level as the
University, but, when you arrive
there, you find yourself surrounded
by an amphitheatre of hills, rising
from the general surface of the pla-
teau to a further elevation of from
100 to $50 feet. 1t is in these hills
that the coal is situated, and the
mode of access demolished all my
preconceived ideas of a coal mine.
Instead of descending into the bow
els of the earth through shafts to
the depth of hundreds after humid
reds of feet, you walk straight up to
your mountain and bore a hole in
it. The hole through which / en-
tered was bored many years ago,
and, without a change of level up
wards or downwards, / advanced
through it to a distance of three
quarters of a mile in one of the
trains of coal trucks drawn by the
miners locomotive, which is a
mule, who, from morning to night,
pursues his labor in the bowels of
the mountain industriously and
increasingly, but under protest
which is the way with mules. The
passage through which this journey
is made is cut through seam of
coal and is rooted and floured with
the black slate or shale, which
seems to run in strata above and
below all the seams of coal here.
This slate is a very remarkable
substance; it is everywhere finely
laminated, and between its thin
lamina, frequently not thicker than
paper, are deposited layer after
layer of the fossil remains of the
vegetation of the coal period, ferns
and equiseta, the delicate reticula-
tions OF the ferns and the slender
situations of the equiseta being pre-
served just as perfectly as they
could have been observed in the
living specimen untold ages ago.
Sometimes great mass of the bark
of sigillaria is found l saw con-
siderable fragment, that must have
come from tree of not less than
two feet in diameter, and every
scar which had been left by the fall
ing off of the side leaves was as per-
feet as if they had been separated
yesterday.
All the work in these mines is
done by convict labor brought from
the Nashville penitentiary, and the
melancholy transverse stripes,
which mark with us the livery of
crime, are everywhere visible. This
is not cheerful sight, and, to be-
come reconciled to it at all, one
has to reflect that nearly all those
men are now better employer than
they have been for years before
their conviction. l have no reason
to believe that their necessarily dis
NAL lot is aggravated by any gratu-
itous cruelty or oppression but
where a man is made over to a
company as human machine,
from which the largest possible
profit is to be made, abuses are al
ways liable to creep in, to guard
against which, vigilance is impera-
lively demanded. The state is not
insensible to this duty, and pro-
vides a warden of Convicts" to
reside constantly upon the spot and
exercise a supervision over the
whole matter. Capt. Williams
holds this Office, at present, and, l
have reason to believe, performs his
duties with humanity and judg-
ment. 1t is his duty to look to the
conduct and welfare of the convicts,
and to see that all the stipulations
made in their favor by the govern
ment with the company are carried
out. l believe that this is faithful
ly done and that the difficult prob
lem of employing state convicts is
as satisfactorily solved here as else
where. One feature, however, af-
fected me with painful feeling,
which l have not yet got over; it
was the presence, among these
hardened criminals, of boy under
fourteen years old. OF course
neither the company, nor the war
den, nor even the executive of the
state, is responsible for this; it is
the sin and shame of the whole |
people of Tennessee; the two damn
ing spots upon our escutcheon are
the insufficiency of accommodation
for the insane and the absence of !
provision for juvenile delinquents.
Surely, now we have made what |
looks like permanent settlement
of the debt question, our next legis-
lature will feel itself compelled to |
grapple with these two problems. !
In justice to the parties concerned,
l should state that the company
and the warden both manifest de- |
sire to palliate this evil as much as
the work given to the boy
is light, and Captain Williams
takes pains to keep him apart from
the other convicts during respite
from work and at night but these
are only palliatives after all the
boy ought not to be there.