452 DEATH BY SUFFOCATION. must remain, under water, and the bodies have never been recovered. Some of the most terrible mining accidents are those which occur in consequence of the closing of the shafts. Where a mine has two shafts there is little liability of such accidents; but where there is only a single shaft the danger is constantly threatening. The terrible calamity at Avondale, which is fresh in the minds of many readers, will be described elsewhere. A similar accident at an English coal mine, a few years ago, was even more terrible in its results than the calamity at Avondale. The beam of the pumping engine gave way, and killed five men who were at that moment coming up in the cage. One hundred and ninety-nine men and boys were then working under ground. The enormous beam of the engine weighed more than forty tons. In its fall it carried down all the timbers of the shaft, damaging the walls in several places. The rubbish and broken timbers accumulated in the shaft, and closed the only mode of egress for the miners. The beam and timberings cut off all connection between the interior of the mine and the outside world. The mine was furnished with ventilating furnaces, in which a large quantity of fuel was burning, and it was supposed that the imprisoned miners died of suffocation within twenty-four hours. Some of the men who were imprisoned tried to force an outlet, but they were unable to do so, and died in the effort. Many accidents of this kind might be described. In the various coal-mining countries of the globe, they may be said, in the aggregate, to be of almost weekly occurrence. Where the owners of mines neglect or decline to provide their works with two entrances, it is imperatively necessary, for the protection of life, that the law should interfere, and compel them to do so. A few years ago, at a mine in France, the engineer one day observed that the cages did not work properly in the guides. Fifty-six yards below the surface he discovered that the lin ACCIDENT AT A FRENCH MINE. 453 ing of the shaft deviated from the perpendicular. The joints and displacements were visible at several points. All the men, three hundred in number, were ordered to leave the mine. Men went down the shaft to cover the openings, but the result was only to create fresh ones. For the next two days the lining of the shaft repeatedly cracked. The planks broke one by one, and the water rushed into the works. The consulting engineer of the mine was called in, and when he arrived he descended with the superintendent, both of them in fear that they were going to certain death. Their lamps went out while they were descending, but they carried a lantern, which was hanging to the bottom of the tub in which they descended. By the light of this lantern they discovered an enormous opening in the middle of the lining. Stone, and earth, and rubbish were continually falling, and a torrent of water ran through. "Let us go up again," said the engineer. "The water is master of the situation, and all hope of saving this working is gone." In relating this incident afterwards, the engineer said, I lived ten years in half an hour. My hair turned white in that perilous descent, which I shall never forget as long as I live." A few hours afterwards, holes which began at the middle of. the shaft extended from top to bottom. At the pit's mouth, an immense opening had formed nearly forty yards in diameter, and ten yards deep. Engine, boilers, buildings, machinery, and scaffolding gradually fell into the opening. At each movement of the ground a fresh ingulfment took place. The sky was dark and covered with clouds. The timbering of the shaft gave out sparks under the enormous friction which was caused by the sudden fracture of the wood. A peacock, shut up in the neighboring court-yard, gave signs of alarm, and uttered loud cries at every movement of the ground, and at every fresh fall. "No poet could describe, nor painter represent, the desolating spectacle which we wit nessed," said the engineer, in concluding the account of the occurrence. 454 STATISTICS OF ACCIDENTS. In this country it is next to impossible to give correct statis tics of the number of lives lost by these accidents. In Great Britain and France statistics are obtainable. In those countries, according to the report of the inspectors of mines, about one half the mining accidents are occasioned by falls of the roof and coal. A third of the accidents are in the shaft in various ways. The remainder, or one sixth of the casualties, occur from blasting, explosion of fire-damp, suffocation, and, finally, inundation. According to an English report, there was one death for every two hundred and sixteen persons employed in the mines. It was estimated that one life was lost for every sixty-eight thousand tons of coal obtained. In some districts of England the proportion was one life lost for every twenty-two thousand tons. In the year 1866, six hundred and fifty-one lives were lost from explosions of fire-damp. In the previous year there were only one hundred and sixty-eight deaths from the same cause. Altogether, in the year 1866, there were fourteen hundred and eighty-four deaths from mining accidents in Great Britain alone. The total number of deaths from all violent causes in the mines of Great Britain, in ten years, was nine thousand nine hundred and sixteen. Twenty per cent. of these were caused by fire-damp explosions. The greatest number of lives lost at any one time through mining accidents was at the Oaks Colliery, in 1866, when three hundred and sixty-one miners lost their lives. At the Hartley, Wigan, and Bury Collieries, many fearful accidents have taken place within the past few years, whereby many lives were lost. These accidents, in justice to the owners, or superintendents, let it be said, are not always due to the want of precaution on the part of the managers, but from gross neglect, or through non-observance of the rules under which the mine is worked. For example, the men were very careless in the use of the safety-lamps. Every lamp is locked before it is given out, and every care is taken to prevent its being opened. The men will occasionally amuse themselves by trying to pick the locks, and that, too, in places where the GREAT LOSS OF LIFE. 455 air is full of explosive gas. So accustomed are they to danger, that they hold it in great contempt; and the result is, that fatal accidents were much more common than if men were cautious and obedient. At the time of the Oaks Colliery explosion, great sympathy was manifested throughout England, just as was subsequently seen in the Avondale disaster in America. For days after the occurrence, the daily papers were filled with long details of the horror, the recovery of the bodies of the victims, the distressing scenes at the mouth of the mine, and at the graveyard, and the brave deeds of the men who were fortunately absent from the mine at the time of the explosion. Subscriptions were opened in nearly every church for the benefit of the survivors, and at the suggestion of Queen Victoria, the then Lord Mayor of London and Common Council held a public meeting to raise money for the families of the victims. The appeals were liberally responded to through the whole country. Many of the wives of the dead miners received life pensions, and all the bereaved families were placed above immediate want. THE MAMMOTH CAVE. ROMANCE AND MYSTERY OF CAVES. -THE FAMOUS CAVES OF THE WORLD.THE GREATEST CAVERN ON THE GLOBE. ITS IMMENSE, FAME.AMERICANS' NEGLECT OF IT. THE MAMMOTH CAVE. CAUSE OF THEIR INDIFFERENCE. — SITUATION OF ITS MISERABLE MANAGEMENT. — ANNOYANCES AND UPON TOURISTS. -JOURNEY THROUGH THE VAST TUNNEL. WHAT ONE SEES, FEELS, AND does. CONSUMPTIVE GHOSTS. — WONDERS OF THE STAR-CHAMBER. DESCENT INTO THE BOTTOMLESS PIT. MARVELLOUS ECHOES.-STARWOMEN IN AWKWARD SITUATIONS. -CROSSING THE STYX AND THE LETHE. TLING ACCIDENTS. -- CAVES in all ages have been associated, not only with mystery and romance, but with sorcery and superstition of every conceivable kind. Fable and tradition have converted them into the abodes of demons and witches, and history shows that robbers and law-breakers have always made them places of refuge and shelter. Every mountainous or picturesque region I have visited has abounded in witches' caves, robbers' caves, murderers' caves, and caves generally, in which supernatural rites and horrid deeds are supposed to have been celebrated or committed. The dark, dreary, and weird quality of many caves, added to their unique and fantastic formation and uncertain windings naturally awake a feeling of awe, and appeal strongly and strangely to the imagination. The ancient priests, in order to influence favorably the minds of the ignorant, pretended that the divinities they claimed to interpret had their residence in deep and dreary caverns, and that thence they revealed their mighty purpose to their mortal agents. The oracles of Delphos, which princes and sages were wont to consult, were interpreted, as it was assumed, by a priestess sitting at the mouth of a cave, and |