The Marion daily mirror. (Marion, Ohio) 1892-1912, 1908-07-06
BENEATH GROUND.
In a British Columbia Gold Mine.


When the manager OF gold mine
at Rossland offered to take us down
we accepted readily, and il was only
when we were invited to "step in'
that we thought of the light summer
suits which most of us were wearing,
We had left the boat at l.obson and
come on to kossland to learn some
thing of that vast mineral wealth up
on which, with lumber and fisheries
and fruit growing, the commercial and
industrial future of British Columbia
Is to be built. At the Centre Star tho
slant of the shaft is one of about W
degrees and the body of the skip slopes
back to the rails upon which 1t fails
into the depths. Which means that
when the eight of us are packed tight
ly in the innocents who have entered
fret find themselves tilted on their
heels, their backs upon the cold, wet,
rusty iron, and held fast Dy the ov-
erlying strata of human avoirdupois
which fills the skip.
1t was at the third floor window
that the man stood who heard the OPP
timist, hurrying by on his long fall
from the roof of the twenty story
skyscraper, murmur to himself that 1t
was "All rignL so far" II is at about
that stage of his downward journey,
probably, that the man who descends
a mine for the first time begans to
take the cheerful view. His earlier
mind Is complex, elusive and difficult
of analysis, but at any rate 1t Is not
cheerful. Sudden blacklist darkness;
the feeling of falling out of ones hair;
the whirling cable that may snap:
the engine man who may lose control;
an upward glancing of the soul 10 all
Defending Powers; and then oblivion
an oblivion cloven as II were,, In
past the openings, one below the 9TH
er, of the dimly lit galleries at deep
er and deeper levels. The skip slack
ems speed, hovers hesitatingly for a
moment and then comes to a stand
and we step out.
you'll want candles saya the
manager, and on the threshold of this
new world we light them propitlator-
lily, as upon an altar. 1t is world or
gray. The walls before us and the
roof above, upheld by huge timbering,
are gray, relieved only at nearer
view by the simmer OF the imprison-
ed metals. The galleries that extend
to right and left, the cars which pass
us laden and the men who bend be-
hind them are gray as the ore which
they dump between the rails. into a
chamber below. The electric lamps
which line the roofs OF the galleries
burn gray, as II seems, and the very
air Is gray. On the mountain above
the sun is shining, and thank Goo
for the green world that one can look
upon thence.
"Ollabo'd!" cries our guide. Obedl-
emily we Chamber into the little square
trucks which have been brought up
In row to carry us through the
mine. Each man has his truck, rides
alone upon his own plank and lights
himself with his own. particular can
die.
ib AIlOhiCHI uiC III TIC bdlltI1s
AS we meet the sharp current of air
the hot wax cutters over onto our fin
gers and we slant the candles back to
the horizontal
At the end of d long gallery, where
a second shaft descends, we cnmb out,
penetrate a gloomy, narrow passage
In which heaps of ore lie waiting to
be trucked away, and croucning enter
from below little chamber. some 8
by feet. blasted In the rock
Here, where the air Is still full OF
the odor of gelignite, is a driller at
work with his machine. We squeeze
ourselves fiat and bend low against
the sloping walls and watch.
The heavy iron arm shoots out and
In, striking the face of the rock full
square perhaps fifty times a minute,
every blow falling with the weight
Of 1000 pounds. twisting as 1t strikes
as II to bore through what II cannot
break away. The man behind the
drill turns on us an impassive face.
No one speaks or would be heard for
the echoes of the thrust and thud and
the vibration of the machine. We
wonder that beneath such blows and
amid such din the sleeping masters or
gray underworld should not awake
and bring the foundations down up
ON us.
At the bottom of the shaft we wait
while the men OF the night shift flash
by us. skip after skip. to Ineir work
In the lower depths. and then we
are drawn out of the void as wa mama