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FIRE IN THE EARTH
are hauled up the shaft so fast that a man couldn't stand the speed.
Back
in the tunnel it is noted that the solid rock in the walls is not the
same as that in the loaded cars. This is a haulage tunnel. The visitor
is not in the blue ground—yet. Since the shaft is not sunk directly
into the vein or "pipe," as it is called, of blue ground, but is
parallel to it, he must walk a distance through hard, worthless rock in
order to reach the workings.
Soon
the tunnel divides: the "empty" track winds off in one direction and
the visitor heads the other way, toward the source of the loaded cars.
Now he is in the pipe, which is pierced by a narrow, single-track
tunnel lined with massive timbers. Next is a wide spot in the tunnel,
where Negroes are loading "blue" from a chute. This is an "ore-pass,"
into which the rock has been dumped from "sub-levels" above. Every
forty feet, above the head, is a drift, or blue-ground tunnel. But only
every tenth one is connected to the shaft by a haulage tunnel. So the
rock from the other nine must come down the ore-pass before it can
reach the skips.
Beyond,
in the darkness illuminated by the underground lighting system, are
numerous cross-tunnels. In one of them two dusky miners are boring into
the solid rock with a thundering compressed-air drill. They will load
the holes later with dynamite cartridges and blast the previous blue
blocks away—patiently advancing the tunnel a few feet at a time.
This
is the end of a finished drift. Under a protecting canopy of timbers,
beside a great pile of broken "blue," is the inevitable black man with
his little steel car. Where does his rock pile come from? Near by is a
"pole-road." This is a hole in the wall. It leads upward, with poles
hitched in the rock for steps. You climb this strange lad-
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