t It general shape of this basin is thus rather oval than round. Its How long will the coal in the great English deposit last-is a question which is frequently asked, and to which very different replies have been returned. It will be generally found, that the scientific and theoretic calculators fixed the period of duration at a far shorter term than did the practical workers and overlookers of the mines. Dr Buckland, for instance, gave us 400 years to hew, to raise, and burn the northern field of fuel. But the doctor was afterwards practically found out in a most important mistake. His calculations were based on the theory, that there was no coal below limestone-a fallacy which the pick and the screw soon put an end to. One practical coal-engineer of great experience, Mr Hugh Taylor, enlarges our time of enjoyment of the coal-field to 1720 years; that is, if we continue to raise a quantity not much greater than at present. This calculation goes upon the supposition, that the available depth of coal is eight feet. Subsequent speculatists have allowed ten feet, after making all deductions for flaws, troubles,' breaks, and so forth. This ten feet they calculate to extend over a superficies of 924 square miles. The produce would be 9,107,000,000 tons of coal. From these subtract, in round numbers, 2,000,000,000 tons as already excavated, and we have a balance of 7,107,000,000 tons to come and go upon. Now, take the present annual consumption from the northern field, at home and abroad, as, roughly, 6,000,000 tons, and the time necessary to exhaust our supply will amount to 1184 years. We may add, that recent calculators, although differing in detail, have generally agreed in fixing the period of the exhaustion of coal at above 1000 years off. At all events, it is too remote to occupy seriously our present attention; while it is very likely that long ere the epoch arrives, chemical science will have found out a substitute for the old black diamonds. We have mentioned the flaws and breaks which sometimes occur in otherwise excellent strata of coal. These are known to miners as faults,' 'hitches,' 'troubles,' and 'dikes.' Sometimes a vein of stone intersects the coal; sometimes it breaks off, and continues at a different level, either above or below. A great break-off constitutes a dike; and two of these intersect the northern coal-field, both running in a general easterly direction. The Great Dike flings at once the seams generally worked near Newcastle and Shields to an extra depth of about 40 fathoms; so that two collieries, within a quarter of a mile of each other, may each be working the same seam, one with a shaft of 90, the other of 130 fathoms in depth. The other dike is called the Hemerth. South of this, the main seams suddenly rise 25 fathoms. The Great Dike has been so far useful in keeping the main seam from cropping out; and, on the whole, if these phenomena sometimes sink the coal to an inconvenient depth, they counterbalance the evil by, on other occasions, raising it to a practicable working-level. The temperature of coal-mines rises as you descend to their depths, but seldom attains a greater height than from 75 to 80 degrees. The process of ventilation we shall afterwards describe. The accidents to which the pitmen are exposed are partially atmospheric, partially connected with the machinery, and partially caused by the falling-in of portions of the pit. A great proportion of these are considered to be remediable, by improved arrangements of ventilation, and greater carefulness on the part of the men. The accidents by explosion are most frequent in warm weather, when the ventilating current moves slowest ; and a great proportion of them have taken place in consequence of the tampering by the colliers with t their safety-lamps. It is indeed a curious fact, that whereas, during the eighteen years preceding Sir Humphry Davy's invention, t the number of lives lost by explosion was 447, the number in the eighteen subsequent years amounted to 538, the apparent anomaly being accounted for by the working of many fiery collieries, previously inaccessible, by the foolhardiness of the pitmen, and the neglect of the ventilating measures, which it had been previously a matter of absolute necessity to carry rigidly out! bitten when tile bo, isqo ba The great northern coal-basin was worked under royal charter as early as the thirteenth century; and notwithstanding attempts to put down the use of the fuel, as filling the air with noxious vapours, the pits grew steadily deeper and deeper, and more and more abundant. In 1615, the coal-trade employed 600 sail of ships; and under the First Charles it monopolised one-fourth of the sailors of the kingdom. In 1714, the first rude steam engine north of the Tyne began to work, and then the trade marched forward with gigantic strides. In 1772, not less than 5585 coalladen ships left the Tyne, carrying 330,200 tons; the vessels must therefore have been small. The total export now from all the districts of the northern coal-field may amount to about twenty times as much. There existed in 1844, in the Valley of the Tyne, 66 collieries, employing 16,515 hands; in that of the Wear, 31 collieries, employing 13,172 hands; and in that of the Tees, 22 collieries, employing 4211 hands. The engineering progress of the coal-mines was of course at once a cause and an effect of the fast increasing demand for the carboniferous deposit. Coals were first pulled to the surface by horse-windlasses, called "gins; and water was got rid of by chain-pumps and strings of buckets, working in the fashion one sees in dredging-machines. By 1720, steam had d supplanted the poor old horse-drudges, who used to pace the weary round of the gins. In 1732, the first furnace for the promotion of ventilation was kindled in the Fatfield Colliery; and in 1756 the first air-tube, or double shaft, was sunk at North Biddick. Women were then occasionally employed under ground, but they principally laboured at screening the coal, and emptying the wagons on the surface. It was not until 1769 that the first steam-engine, in the modern sense of the term, began to work. Previously, the ventilating apparatus had undergone successive improvements; gunpowder had been introduced for blasting, and horses taken down into the mines to draw the wagons. Presently, cast-iron tram-ways lightened the labours of the latter, and the inclined-plane system enabled the full wagons running down to draw up the empty ones; while about 1813 or 1814, the first rude locomotive engine drew a train of wagons from the pit-mouth, along a rail or tram way, to the staith or river loading-place. The condition of the working colliers has improved with the amelioration of machinery. One hundred years ago, hewers' wages ranged from 1s. 6d. to 18. 10d. per day; they now vary from 3s. to 4s., or even more. The hewer at the period referred to obtained 1d. per peck of coal worked. Women gained, for emptying the wagons into the keels or barges which bore the cargo to the ship, from 1d. to 14d. per ton. Now the work is performed by machinery. The 'putter'-who pushed the small wagons of coal from the hewer to the bottom of the shaft, and who now makes his 3s. per day earned only 10d. a day, or the stipend paid at present to the little trappers,' who sit by the air-sluices, and open and shut them as the putters, with their trains of tiny wagons, go by. Many industrial crises and great strikes have marked the progress of social improvement in the collieries; and in 1840, the legislature took the matter in hand. A commission was issued, and from its report proceeded the act of parliament which is now in force in, all mines and collieries in the kingdom. By its stipulations, no woman whatever can be employed under ground, on any duty, or on any pretence. No boy can be so employed until he has completed his tenth year, and no apprenticeship can last for a longer period than eight years. Further, to have the charge of shaft-machinery, the individual must be more than fifteen years of age; and no wages are allowed to be paid in public-houses. Still, this enactment did not touch the grievances complained of by the workmen, and in 1844 happened the great coal-strike. It was the fourth industrial disturbance in the district since 1826. The colliers demanded weekly payments; to be guaranteed five days a week, at 3s. a day; to be paid by weight; hewers not to be called on to put or push coal-wagons from the workings to the horse-ways; while the day's work was to be eight hours. The owners, on the other hand, would give no guarantee for work or wages. Their term of engagement must be twelve months, terminable at a monthly notice; pay once a fortnight; and the hewers to put or do any work required. On this issue, the strike commenced in all the collieries of Northumberland and Durham. The people were perfectly peaceable. Every day they held great meetings, and expounded and enforced their complaints and demands. A religious feeling, too, became mingled with the movement. The chapels of the Ranters-a powerful sect in the coal district-were crowded, and prayers for the strike were offered from the pulpit. The people went to chapel, and held prayermeetings, as they said, to get their faith strengthened.' The preachers were frequently working-men, gifted with a rude energy and picturesque fluency of language, and possessing almost unbounded influence over their hearers. The strike advanced; the savings of the men were soon spent; the credit of the 'little shops' was soon exhausted; the pawnbrokers' funds at length failed, and the last articles they accepted were wedding-rings. The funds of the benefit-clubs were next appealed to. They, too, were distributed and exhausted, and the men on strike had to look starvation in the face. Meantime the masters were using great exertions to obtain labour; and from the midland, the westland, and the Welsh collieries labour came pouring in. The northern miners saw strangers flocking to their own shaft-head, their courage failed them, and they gave in, but not before much damage had been inflicted on all concerned. The masters lost about L.200,000 by four months' partial cessation from labour; while many of the old colliers, who saw their places filled by south-country labourers, were obliged to betake themselves to the ironworks then, and still, springing up on the moors of Durham, Northumberland, and Yorkshire. The surface aspect of the coal district presents the appearance of a softly undulating range of country, with peculiarly wavy outlines the expanse dotted every now and then with the cluster of grimy buildings surmounted by a dumpy chimney, and a strong frame of scaffolding, marking the mouth of a pit. The spectator will remark the web of small, rude, coal-powdered railways which intersects the fields, and he will be attracted by the blazing and smoking masses of small coal, which burn unattended to, by every 'pit heap,' the oxygen of the air causing spontaneous combustion in the crumbling masses of earthy-looking mineral. We will approach one of these establishments, and examine it more minutely. Following a road very often ankle-deep in coal-mud, we come to a considerable heap or mound, formed of the original contents of the shaft added to by the small-coal accumulations of years this is the pit-heap. Scattered round it stand a cluster of mean office, storehouse, and stable buildings, with the engineshed smoking and puffing out its gushes of hot white steam. the summit of the heap rise the massive scaffoldings alluded to, their highest points furnished with vertically-set wheels, about eight feet in diameter, and round which run ropes or chains, the one rising as the other sinks. By the help of these, we shall presently descend into the pit. Looking from the top of the heap, which is partially and rudely roofed in, we perceive beneath us a sloping and oblong expanse of iron grating, at the lower end or caves of which stands upon a rough railway a train of wagons. Over a stout ledge of wood-work at the top of the heap, the contents of the tubs, momently coming to the surface, are tilted right upon the sloping screen. The small coal escapes between the bars, while the knubbly' bits go down in avalanches into the wagons. The tubmen are big, hardy fellows, in flannel dresses, with leathern leggings, and they tumble the heavy 'corves' On |