"On The Following Morning We Visited The Mine At Nanaimo, Of The
Vancouver Coal Company, And Mr. S. Robins, The Superintendent, Showed
Us Over His Works, And Accompanied Us Down The Shaft Into The Mine.
The
shaft is 600 feet deep, and the heading and workings are under the sea
to a distance of 400 or 500 yards.
The coal is hard and of good
quality, making a good gas coal (which the West Wellington coal does
not do). There have been one or two faults met with lately in the seam,
which is 7 feet thick; but Mr. Robins thinks they have been overcome.
There is only one shaft working, and the output in the 24 hours of the
day previous had been 434 tons. The coal comes to the surface in two
'boxes' at a time, each containing about 35 cwt. This Company has good
railway tracks of 4 feet 8-1/2 inches gauge, with English locomotives,
&c. The machinery and appliances at this mine were all better and more
costly than at the West Wellington mines, and the cars were hopper
bottomed, and discharged their contents directly into the hold of the
vessels by simply opening the hopper bottom. The staff of men employed
at the present time amounts to 350, and the miners are white men, with
Chinese labourers. The work at this mine and West Wellington is all
done by piecework.
"ESQUIMALT HARBOUR AND DOCK.
"The harbour at Esquimalt is quite land-locked, and can be very easily
protected from an enemy approaching by sea, the heights around being
easily fortified, as there are many in good positions for commanding
the entrance, both at a distance from it, and also in the immediate
vicinity; there is plenty of depth of water at low tide to enter the
harbour. A fort on the Race Rocks, where there is a lighthouse, and
which are some 2 miles or so from the coast, would, if supplied with
heavy guns capable of long range, command the whole of the San Juan de
Fuca Straits, the distance from Race Rock to the American shore not
exceeding 8 miles.
"The harbour contains an area of about 400 or 500 acres, in which there
is sufficient depth of water for large vessels to lie at all states of
the tide.
"The line of railway from Nanaimo to Esquimalt touches the harbour, and
has a wharf at which coal from Nanaimo and West Wellington mines may be
delivered at any time.
"The graving dock, which has been some eleven years in progress, or
rather which was commenced eleven years ago, but which practically has
been constructed within the past two years, has a length of 430 feet on
the ways, and could easily have been made, in the first instance, 600
feet in length for a comparatively small additional cost. The cost will
have been, when completed, about $700,000, and it is now waiting only
for the entrance caisson, which is being made at the Dominion Bridge
Company's Works, near Montreal.
"The masonry of the dock is of a hard sandstone, the character of the
workmanship being very good, and the dock very dry and free from
leakage; it has been constructed, so as to save excavation, in a small
creek, but this has caused an additional thickness for the walls, and a
considerable quantity of filling behind them. It would appear that it
could have been built for very much less money had a site been selected
among the numerous rocky situations in the harbour, where the rock
would only have required facing with masonry instead of the work having
been done as it has.
"The naval-yard is a fair size; the workshop is small, however, and
apparently little or no materials for the repair of vessels are kept on
hand. It will be a necessity for this to be remedied if the graving
dock is to be of any use for ships of the navy. We saw two torpedo
boats, and some Whitehead torpedoes, the boats were built in Great
Britain for Chili, and purchased from the Chilians two years ago.
"SAN FRANCISCO TO CHICAGO.
"Left San Francisco on 29th September, 1886, at 7.30, by steam ferry to
Oakland, 4 miles across the harbour; left Oakland by train at 8.10
a.m.; 32 miles from Oakland we reached Port Costa, where the train was
ferried across an estuary of the sea to Benicia; for 20 miles from
there the line (the Central Pacific division of the Southern Pacific
Railway Company) runs, across a flat, marshy country, then into a
cultivated country with the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada
rising around it, the country being very dry and parched, having had no
rain since March: the farm-houses have the Eucalyptus, or Australian
blue gum, planted around them; and about 75 miles from San Francisco we
entered the vineyard country, which continues to and past Sacramento.
Reached Sacramento, which is 90 miles from San Francisco, and only 30
feet above the level of the sea, at 12 o'clock; the schedule time from
Oakland, including the ferry at Port Costa, being 25 miles an hour. At
Sacramento we crossed the Sacramento and American Rivers, the former by
a Howe truss bridge, one of the spans being a swing-bridge, and having
a total length of 700 or 800 feet; the latter by a Howe truss bridge,
and fully a mile of trestle work.
"From Sacramento the line begins to rise so as to cross the Sierra
Nevada Range; the country is rolling, and with the 'live oak' trees
scattered over it among the grass presents quite a park-like
appearance. The grades as we ascend are very steep, 116 feet to the
mile, this line being well ballasted. In the valleys the line was laid
originally with steel rails of 50 lbs. weight, and 3,080 ties to the
mile, in the mountains with 60 lbs. rails, but no renewals are made
with less than a 60 lbs.
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