‘There they go, all mad together! Another moment, and they will shoot over the end of the lofty railway, and go headlong into the Tyne, helter-skelter. But behold! these creatures are not so mad as you imagine them. They are instinct with sense; they have a principle of self-preservation, as well as of speed, in them. See, as they draw near the river they pause, they stop! one by one they detach themselves; and as one devoted waggon runs on, like a victim given up for the salvation of the rest, to perform a wild summersault into the water below, what do we see? It is caught! A pair of gigantic arms separate themselves from the end of the railway. They catch the waggon, they hold it suspended in the air, they let it softly and gently descend—and whither? Into the water? No; we see now that a ship already lies below the end of the railway. The waggon descends to it; a man standing there strikes a bolt, the bottom falls, and the coals which it contains are nicely deposited in the hold of the vessel. Up, again, soars the empty waggon in that pair of gigantic arms. It reaches the railway; it glides like a black swan into its native lake upon it; and away it goes, as of its own accord, to a distance, to await its brethren, who successively perform the same exploit, and then joining it, all scamper back again as hard as they can over the plain to the distant pit.’

The produce of the collieries situated further up the Tyne, where the river is no longer navigable by sea-going craft, is conveyed in a kind of oval vessels, called keels, to the port of Newcastle, or its out-stations, North and South Shields, where it is discharged into larger ships.

Newcastle may well be called the capital of King Coal. Once a town of military importance, as the old, grim-looking donjon-keep of Robert Curthose, the son of the Conqueror, still testifies, it entirely owes its modern importance to the treasures of coal adjacent to its walls. Its quays, black and sooty as the mineral on which its prosperity is founded, are lined with a dense row of counting-houses, and before them in the river still denser rows of colliers lie at anchor; while between both ebbs and flows a black-looking crowd—for all here wear the livery of the article to which all owe their bread. Some idea may be formed of the vast activity waving to and fro in this chief artery of the coal trade, from the fact that the annual arrivals in the Tyne are not less than 13,000 or 14,000, 10,000 of which are on account of the coal trade.

Sunderland, the great port of the river Wear, where annually more than 10,000 cargoes of coal are shipped to all ports of the world; Hartlepool, a town of modern date with magnificent docks; Stockton-on-Tees, and a number of minor places of shipment on the coast, likewise owe their prosperity to coal, so that probably no other article of trade gives constant employment to so many vessels within so confined a territory.

From Tynemouth Priory, a ruin romantically situated on a bold promontory, the visitor frequently enjoys a magnificent marine picture; for when, after long-continued easterly gales, the wind changes to a westerly breeze, many hundred vessels—mostly colliers—put to sea together in a single tide, and distribute themselves over the ocean with their prows turned in almost every direction, some southward and coast-wise, for English ports, for the Channel, and for the southern countries of Europe; others, northward for Scotland and the Norwegian coast; and others, again, due east, for Denmark and the Baltic—all sinking deep in the water, weighed down by that mineral fuel which is more valuable for England than if it were replaced by the mines of Mexico or the diggings of Australia.

Yet a few years, and probably the dingy and crawling craft, which perform the chief part in this animated scene, will be abolished. Clipper screw steamers are rapidly taking their place, and the railroads daily transport a greater proportion of the seven or eight million tons of coal which are annually devoured by our huge metropolis.

Before quitting the Northern coal districts, a few words may be added on the swarthy population whose labours bring their subterranean riches to the light. The chief underground workmen are the hewers, who either remove the coal with pickaxes, or sometimes blast it with powder. To hew well is a work of skill as well as of strength, and men must be early practised in it to earn high wages by piece-work. In tolerably thick seams of coal of five and six feet and upwards, hewing is more a work of strength than skill; but in the narrower seams skill predominates. In these the arm is confined, the blow is shortened, the pick is impeded. To gain space by adaptation of position, you may see one hewer kneeling down on one or both knees, another squatting, another stooping or bending double, and occasionally one or more lying on their sides or on their backs, picking and pegging away at the seam above them. If the seam be hard as well as thin, and the man’s position confined, it is manifest that he cannot get his strength to bear in full, or his full measure of coals. In such cases he is bathed in perspiration, in a state of semi-nudity, enveloped in floating and clinging coal-dust. If to this we add the very faint light imparted by the Davy lamps, the constantly thickening atmosphere, the exhalations from living beings, exaggerated by heat, and not diminished by any free current of air, and remember that eight hours is the usual day’s work of the hewer, we must surely confess that few men have their strength more hardly tasked, or earn their bread in a more laborious manner.

To relieve this arduous toil, coal-cutting machines have lately been devised, which are worked either by steam or by compressed air, and will probably in time perform a great part of the hewer’s labour, as those already in employment appear to be well adapted to the purpose for which they are contrived, and further improvements in their construction will no doubt be introduced. Coal-cutting machines, which act either by picking or gouging, have been found to work more economically than manual labour, while at the same time much less coal is destroyed and reduced to slack. A matter of still more importance is the diminished risk to the persons and lives of the employed, who, when working in a constrained position, and consequently unable to relieve themselves from the fall of a superincumbent mass of coal, are frequently crushed to death. The application of machinery to cutting coal gives another advantage of national importance, as, by enabling the working to be carried into the deeper seams of coal which lie at so high a temperature as to present serious or insurmountable difficulty to handwork, it will render available to posterity new and hitherto inaccessible stores of coal.

The hewers may possibly fear to be thrown out of employment by its introduction on an extensive scale; but as it will relieve them from their most irksome drudgery, and allow them to reserve their strength for less injurious trial, they cannot but be thankful for the aid which it affords them.

They are usually paid according to the number of baskets or tubs they are able to fill. These are then conveyed by the putters through the smaller or lower galleries of the pit to the headways, where they are hoisted by the crow-men upon the rolleys or waggons for transporting the coals from the crow to the shaft. The roads along which the rolleys are driven are made sufficiently high for an ordinary horse by cutting away the roof or the floor. Some of them are two miles long, and are kept in repair by a rolley-wayman. Where tubs are used for the conveyance of coal the whole way, no crow is necessary, but a lad, termed a ‘flatman,’ who links the tubs together at the level or the flat.

Next to the hewers, the putters are the hardest labourers in the pit; and in some places their labour is even harder, for it is no easy matter to push corfs or tubs, weighing from six to ten hundredweight, along galleries which are often but three or four feet high, where the heat not seldom averages about 78° Fahr., and in consequence of the increased pressure of the air, water boils at 220°. The term ‘putter’ includes the specific distinctions of the ‘headsman,’ ‘half-marrow,’ and the ‘foal.’ Where full tubs or baskets are to be pushed along the rails from the hewers to the crow and the rolley-drivers, the headsmen take the chief part; a half-marrow goes at each end of the train alternately with another half-marrow; while a foal always precedes the train. At the bottom of the shaft the ‘onsetters’ are stationed, who attach the tubs to the ropes which hoist them to the surface. Besides these various classes of workmen, we find the ‘shifters,’ who keep the galleries in repair, and the little ‘trapper-boys,’ whose duty it is to open the ventilating-doors whenever they hear the drivers or trains of coal-waggons coming on one side or the other. Their task, though humble, tedious, and requiring the least amount of intelligence, is of great importance, as the numerous doors which they guard must remain open only long enough for the passage of the trains, and must then be closed again immediately, or the current of air needed to ventilate the mine would be diverted in its course. It is hardly possible to imagine a more joyless childhood than that of these little fellows, condemned to sit in solitary gloom during the greater part of the day, and only comforted by the sudden shout or song of a team-driver, approaching with his train of waggons, and demanding the opening of the door.

Besides the workers underground, a number of labourers or artisans are constantly employed above pit, from the ‘banksmen,’ whose duty it is to see all things living and lifeless up and down the shaft, to the ‘staithmen,’ who attend to the staith or shipping place of coals. Many find constant occupation in the raff-yard, where old waggons, ironwork, and woodwork are duly hospitalled and refitted for fresh duty.

The daily work of the mine is conducted according to the strictest discipline. The ‘resident viewer’ is supreme, and has subordinate viewers, overseers, and wastemen, lamp-keepers, and other officers, who have each their departments, and discharge their duties assiduously.

Thus a first-rate northern colliery establishment—where a total of more than five hundred persons are variously employed—resembles a little community in itself. Men of all educations, arts, grades, and duties, and males of almost all ages, from ten years, are here; men, too, of all appearances—from the gentlemanly viewer to the doubtful wasteman, and from the underground workers-in-chief—the hewers—to the humble trapper-boys.

The peculiar nature of his underground occupations, which condemns the pitman, while working, to a position of great restraint, and taxes the limbs and muscles in a very unequal manner, naturally influences his outward appearance, so that he can be easily distinguished from every other operative.

His stature is diminutive, his figure disproportioned and misshapen; his legs being much bowed, and his chest protruding like that of a pigeon. His arms are long, and oddly suspended. His countenance is not less strange than his figure, his cheeks being generally hollow, his brow overhanging, his cheekbones high, his forehead low and retreating, his complexion pallid. Many of these bodily peculiarities or malformations are probably hereditary. Pitmen have always lived in communities; they have associated only among themselves, and have thus acquired peculiar habits and ideas. They almost invariably intermarry, and it is not uncommon in their marriages to commingle the blood of the same family. They have thus transmitted natural and accidental defects through a long series of generations, and may now be regarded in the light of a distinct race of beings. In spite of the general march of intelligence, their education is still very imperfect, and they are just emerging from the greatest possible moral and intellectual darkness—an improvement due mainly to the Wesleyan Methodists. The untiring labours of this religious sect not only imparted to the colliery population in the North of England a higher tone of moral feeling, but in their efforts to instil religious principles into their minds, afforded them, through Sunday-schools, a slight amount of education and an imperfect capability of reading. These first seeds of improvement will, it is hoped, gradually ripen into fruit, and oppose a strong barrier to the prominent vices of colliers—gambling and intemperance.

A lack of mental and personal openness and boldness, a great inclination to injury and theft, the grossest superstition, and a want of the commonest economy and forethought, are likewise faults which are said to be very common among them. Deception is so much a practice with them that they deceive when no earthly advantage can be obtained from their dishonesty.

Oh the other hand, the proofs of filial affection which they exhibit, and the noble feelings and heroism which they display when explosions or accidents take place, prove that the groundwork of their character is good, and merely requires the influence of a better education to remove a great part of the blemishes which ignorance has engrafted upon an originally wholesome stock. Under every disadvantage, several eminent men have sprung from their class. Thomas Bewick, the celebrated wood-engraver, was early immured in pits; the late celebrated mathematician, Dr. Hutton, was originally a hewer of coal; Professor Hann, of King’s College, in London, was a boy working underground in a northern colliery; and George Stephenson, the illustrious engineer whose wonderful inventions have revolutionised the world, and who, after the lapse of many ages, will still be reckoned among England’s most illustrious sons, began life as a trapper.

Though the use of coal was already known to the ancient Britons, yet the first public notice of the mineral is mentioned by Hume to have been in the time of Henry III., who, in the year 1272, granted a licence to dig coals to the town of Newcastle. Somewhat later in 1291, the abbot and monastery of Dunfermline in Scotland obtained a similar grant. The first coal is said to have been brought to London about the year 1305, where it was used only by smiths, dyers, and soap-boilers. The smoke, which was supposed to be injurious to health, caused great annoyance to the wealthier inhabitants of the city, so that in 1316 its use was prohibited by a decree of Edward I. This ordinance seems, however, to have been but little attended to; for a few years later inspectors were named to levy fines in case of its non-observance, and if these proved ineffectual, to demolish the fireplaces arranged for the burning of coal. The complaints against this fuel continued several centuries, for as late as 1661 King Charles II. was prayed to remedy the nuisance by banishing from town manufacturers who required large quantities of coal.

Yet, in spite of all the interdictions, complaints, and prejudices arrayed against it, coal continued to grow in use; for as early as 1615, Newcastle gave employment to about four hundred vessels, one-half of which number supplied the demands of London. French ships even then fetched coals in that port, and the Hanse towns conveyed them to Flanders.

About the middle of the seventeenth century the coal trade, notwithstanding an increase of price, required nine hundred vessels; and fifty years later, half a million of tons were exported from Newcastle, requiring fourteen hundred vessels for their carriage. During the eighteenth century the northern coal trade constantly increased with the steady growth of London, which in 1770, although not possessing one-sixth of its present population, already consumed seven hundred thousand tons; and it would have been impossible for the collieries to satisfy the constantly growing demand if the invention of the steam-engine had not lent its powerful aid to raise larger quantities of coal from a greater depth, and to drain many works which otherwise would have been deluged with water.

The other English coal-fields began to be worked at a much later period than that of Newcastle, but rapidly grew in importance with the vast increase of our manufactories and smelting furnaces.

The extraction of coal is indeed constantly increasing at a truly gigantic rate. Thus, in 1845 our whole annual production was rated at thirty-five millions of tons; in 1859 it amounted, according to trustworthy returns, to sixty-eight millions; in 1865 it had advanced to ninety-six million tons; and now probably exceeds one hundred million tons—a mass so enormous that with it a girdle of coal three feet wide, and about seven high, might be put round the earth.

The question of the duration of our coal-fields is evidently one of great national interest. It has of late excited the attention both of statesmen and philosophers, but unfortunately it is more easily put than answered. While some authorities give us the cheering assurance that we have enough to last us for the next two thousand years at least, others limit our supply to three or four centuries, or assign even a couple of hundred years as the period when our descendants will have to seek their coals in the mines of other countries. The quantity of fuel left in the Newcastle basin—the most anciently worked of our coal-fields—was estimated by Mr. Hall, in 1854, at 5,121,888,956 tons. Dividing this total by 20,000,000 of tons as the present annual consumption, the future supplies of this famous coal-field would thus be limited to about two hundred and fifty years—a very short period in the history of a nation. The immense consumption of coal in the iron furnaces and foundries of Staffordshire will probably lead to an exhaustion of that coal-field even before Northumberland and Durham, for its area is scarcely more than one-half of the area of the Northern Coal-field. It has, indeed, one very thick seam of coal of from thirty to forty feet, but this will not alone compensate the difference. The coal-fields of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Derbyshire, situated amongst the numerous iron-works and manufactories, as well as large populations, justify a similar prophecy; but, on the other hand, better prospects are held out by the great coal-field of South Wales.

After deducting the coal practically unattainable from its depth, sixty thousand millions of tons may be considered a liberal estimate of the available mass. At the present rate of extraction (ten millions of tons) this would give a supply for the next six thousand years; but supposing the other sources to fail, the extraction of coal from the South Wales basin would of course be increased to such an extent as to limit its duration to six or seven centuries. It may be remarked that the largest estimates of future coal supply are based on the assumption that mines may be worked at a depth of four or five thousand feet; but this is very problematical. Mechanical skill may indeed pierce shafts to this depth, or even deeper; but the increase of temperature which is raised by one degree for about every successive seventy feet, along with the increasing density of the air, must ever oppose insuperable obstacles to human labour at such a distance below the level of the sea. To the natural heat and density arising from depth must be added the corruptions arising from human perspiration, which are constantly on the increase during working hours in working places. ‘We speak,’ says the author of an excellent article in the Quarterly Review,^[66] ‘from some brief personal experience of what these things are at a depth of nearly eighteen hundred feet, where the actual temperature varied from eighty-five to eighty-six and a half degrees. Such experience is necessary to qualify any man to judge of the vertical limit of human labour, and we hesitate to fix it at more than two thousand five hundred feet, and should fix it at that depth only for the hardiest of hewers and haulers of coal.’

The pressure of superincumbent strata, which renders the upholding of the roof, even at fourteen or fifteen hundred feet, a problem of ceaseless anxiety and expense, must also be taken into account. At depths much exceeding two thousand feet, it is very doubtful if the roofs could be securely upheld except at such an outlay as would considerably raise the cost of extraction, while the coal itself would be more and more dense, and therefore more and more difficult to dislodge. For these various reasons, all the strata of coal situated below the depth of two thousand five hundred feet, or at the very utmost three thousand feet, may be considered as practically unworkable; and thus sober-minded calculators, on comparing the available solid contents of our coal-fields with the rate of extraction, have come to the conclusion that a thousand years is the maximum of the probable future supply of England and Wales. Adding to this the Scotch and Irish coal, which are not included in the estimate, and swelling our account with lignite and peat, we have at any rate sufficient materials for keeping our fires burning for a good time to come, and may safely leave all desponding views on the subject to distant generations.

Next to England, no European country has so rapidly increased its coal production as the German empire, where, thanks to the railroads, the consumption of mineral fuel is yearly extending over a wider range, and gradually supplanting in many localities the use of wood. The official tables inform us that in 1866, 432,594,926 cwt. of black coal, and 130,661,182 cwt. of lignite—together, about 28 million tons—were produced, a mass considerably greater than the joint production of France and Belgium, and equal to about seven twenty-fifths of the production of England. The chief coal-fields are those of Upper Silesia, of the Ruhr, of the Saar, of Waldenburg (in Lower Silesia), of Dresden and Zwickau (in Saxony), of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), Ibbenburen, and Minden, which not only supply the greater part of Germany, but also yield a considerable exportation to France, Switzerland, and Holland.

The German ports on the North Sea and the Baltic still largely consume British coal, which, however, has been entirely driven from the Rhine; and Berlin, which in 1860 burnt 202,970 tons of English coal, consumed little more than one-half that quantity (123,401 tons) in 1865, in spite of a considerable increase of population; while at the same time the consumption of coal from Upper Silesia increased from 61,700 to 323,712 tons.

The small but thriving kingdom of Belgium, where the collieries of Liège, Namur, and Hainaut give rise to a commercial activity unequalled on the Continent, occupies the third rank among the coal countries of Europe, its production in 1863 having amounted to 10,500,000 tons. The provinces of Namur and Liège consume almost all the coal they produce, while Mons and Charleroi, in Hainaut, export more than three millions of tons to France.

This country, which, in 1862, produced 9,400,000 tons of coal, requires at least 16,000,000 for its consumption, and imports the difference from Belgium, England, and Germany. The chief coal-basins are situated in the departments of the Loire, du Nord, Saône-et-Loire, and Gard, which furnish about seven-eighths of the whole production. Austria, whose principal coal mines are situated in Bohemia, produces about 3,500,000 tons. Spain possesses magnificent coal-fields in the Asturias and Santanders, but as yet they have been but little worked.

Besides the coal-basins of the mother country, Britain is richly provided with coals in many of her colonies. In New South Wales and Tasmania, in Labuan and Farther India, in Hindostan and New Zealand, in British Columbia and Honduras, valuable basins or seams of coal have been discovered; and a magnificent coal-field, far surpassing in magnitude those of the British Islands, extends from Newfoundland, by Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia, across a large portion of New Brunswick. Thus far it has been but little worked, in countries but thinly peopled, and covered for the most part with boundless forests; but as from its general proximity to the sea it offers every advantage for mining operations, a brilliant future may safely be predicted for the lands it underlies.

The coal-fields of the United States are of still more ample proportions, as they surpass in extent all the known coal-basins of the world besides. Beyond the Alleghany Mountains we find the magnificent Appalachian Coal-field, traversing eight of the principal States in the American Union, from the northern frontiers of Pennsylvania to Alabama, and covering a space of about sixty-five thousand square miles.

Of scarcely inferior extent are the vast coal-fields of Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky, which nearly equal in magnitude the whole of England; and another smaller but highly important coal region is situated between the lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan, not to mention the minor coal-basins scattered here and there from Texas to Missouri, and from New York to Maine.

As yet, the Americans have not derived full benefit from their extraordinary coal deposits; but the possession of so vast an accumulation of power allows us to predict a future of almost boundless enterprise and production for that wonderful country.

While in most of our coal-seams deep shafts have to be sunk to obtain the coal, and steam power has to be constantly employed to prevent its submersion, the Appalachian Coal-field is intersected by three great navigable rivers, the Monongahela, the Alleghany, and the Ohio, all of which lay open on their banks the level seams of coal. At Brownhill, on the first of these rivers, the main seam of bituminous coal, ten feet thick, breaks out in the steep cliff at the water’s edge. Horizontal galleries may be driven everywhere at very slight expense, and so worked as to drain themselves, while the cars laden with coal, and attached to each other, glide down on a railway so as to deliver their burden into barges moored to the river’s bank. The same seam may be followed the whole way to Pittsburg, fifty miles distant. Being nearly horizontal, it crops out, as the river descends, at a continually increasing, but never at an inconvenient, height above the Monongahela. Besides this main seam, another layer of workable coal, six feet thick, breaks out on the slope of the hills at a greater height. Here almost every proprietor can open a coal pit on his own land, and the stratification being very regular, he may calculate with precision the depth at which coal may be won.

One of the most remarkable collieries in the world is that of Maunch Chunk (or the Bear Mountain) in Pennsylvania, where an enormous bed of anthracitic coal, nearly sixty feet thick, and probably caused by the doubling back of a twenty-eight feet seam upon itself, is quarried in the open air; the overlying sandstone, forty feet thick, having been removed bodily from the top of the hill, which, to use the miners’ expression, has been ‘scalped.’