Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1890-06-21
A MINERS ERROR.
a Streak of Fire Shoots Through
S the Shaft,
Rtlng II From End to End. Starting .
~ Confiagratlon - Thirty Men En-
8f. tombcd With No Hope
of Rescue,

"a ASVoSoNs
Vsullen, shiverihg roar shook tho
ldEyF miners dwellings on Hill Farm,
i&gettc County, noar Dunbar, Pa, and
hpl reds of affrighted persons, who
kneMthe sound too WE'LL feared another
nrine disaster, and they reasoned far
toqfEsn. In moment the fearful news
hadestread that the Hill Farm Mines
own0 by Philadelphia parties, had ex-
plodeh The low-browed hill from
which the slope entered shook from
mouth to pit, and the score of miners
houses lining the fatal hill shook for
paomSt, and then poured out their
fraDzid inmates by the hun
dAs,s.T. A rush was made- to the
mouth of the pit, but ingress
was impossible, as smoke in dense vol
umes was issuing forth Fifty-two min
ers had gone to work in the morning.
and were in the slope when the explo.
sion occurred. OF these fifty-two,
eighteen were in the left heading and
thirty-two in the right heading. Those
in the left heading got out all right
The retreat OF the others was cut off and
not one escaped. These two drifts
are connected, but the connection
is from the main stem, some half mile
from the entrance. The mine, it seems,
had been somewhat troubled with
water, and an air shaft had been drilled
from the surface to the juncture of the
right and left shafts, where the water
seemed most abundant. AS the miners
branchcd off from this point they knew
that an air hole had been drilled there
that had not yet been broken into. the
mine, but they did not know that the
shaft was to be broken into 80 soon, this
shaft, by the way, being six-inch hole.
A miner named Kerwin had been left in
tho right drift near where that branch
joined the mines exit and in the
course OF his labors broke into
the perpendicular shaft. Tho moment
this was broken into, food of wator
gushed out, and Kerwin ard man
named Landy standing by, yelled out
for some one to save the men in the
right drift, as the water poured down
the hill in stream, and he feared they
would drown. Young David Hayes, who
had seen the affair, leaped forward at
the call and turned down the left drift
in a deluge of water to warn his endan.
gered comrades below. Just as he
passed the air shaft that had been
broken into, the rush of waters had
changed to an ugly roar which blanched
the cheeks of the men who stood be-
hind and towards the light. The flow
of water had changed to deadly vol
ume of fire-damp, and as young Hayes
swung by the shaft flash Of blazing
light slid through the shaft from end Ia
end, it seemed. The daring youth car
ried an open burning miners lamp in
his hat, and had hardly taken step be-
yond the roaring shaft when the sparl,
ignited reservoir of the deadly fire
se,mp, and he sank a corpse ten feet to
ward the men whom he had hoped to save
and the men whom he had certainly
doomed, In an instant an unquenchablC
fire sprang up in the nine foot vein jus
between the main entrance, and on the
right drift, forever shutting off the
thirty-two men imprisoned there. Poor
old David Hays, the father of the mis-
taken hero, driven mad by the fate o.
his son, dashed into the sulphurous
smoke and strangling fire-damp, only tC
fail, blindly, beside his son, and to bt
drawn out an hour later with Jane.
Shearn, both recognized only by their
wives. The fire, famed by air from
tie main drift, and from the fatal shat
itself, soon sprung into an awful contia
grafton.