The Miners Are Found In All
Tools Except Their Auger Drills, Which They All Use, And Which Cost
Some $30 Each.
Each miner has an allowance of one ton of coal per month
for his own use.
There was a little drip at the foot of the shaft we
went down, but otherwise the mine was quite dry. The mode of unloading
the cars at the wharf was rather primitive, but at the same time simple
and ingenious. When the car has been weighed it is run forward by five
Chinamen to the end of the wharf, the front end of the car being hinged
at the top, with a catch opened by a lever, a short piece of track
sufficiently long for the car to stand upon is built projecting beyond
the wharf and over the hold of the vessel, this piece of track is laid
on a framework, which is hinged to the wharf in front so as to tip up
from behind, to it is attached a long wooden pole as a lever, round the
end of which is a rope, made fast to the wharf by a belaying pin; as
soon as the car is on the tipping track, the lever on the front end of
the car is knocked up so as to allow the coal to fall out, and the end
of the long wooden pole is allowed to rise slowly by the rope being
loosened, the coal then shoots out of the car. When empty the Chinamen
weigh down on the pole and bring the track, with the car on it, back to
its former position, making the rope fast to the belaying pin, and the
car is run back to make way for another. We were told that in this way
five Chinese have put 1,000 tons of coal on board a vessel in a working
day.
"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.
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