raised from the pits, and the mines were pumped clear of water, had the effect of directing their attention to the same agency as the most effective means of accomplishing that object.

Among the upper-ground workmen employed at the coal-pits, the principal are the firemen, enginemen, and brakesmen, who fire and work the engines, and superintend the machinery by means of which the collieries are worked. Previous to the introduction of the steam-engine the usual machine employed for the purpose was what is called a "gin." The gin consists of a large drum placed horizontally, round which ropes attached to buckets and corves are wound, which are thus drawn up or sent down the shafts by a horse travelling in a circular track or "gin race." This method was employed for drawing up both coals and water, and it is still used for the same purpose in small collieries; but where the quantity of water to be raised is great, pumps worked by steam power are called into requisition.

Newcomen's atmospheric engine was first made use of to work the pumps; and it continued to be so employed long after the more powerful and economical condensing engine of Watt had been invented. In the Newcomen or "fire engine," as it was called, the power is produced by the pressure of the atmosphere forcing down the piston in the cylinder, on a vacuum being produced within it by condensation of the contained steam by means of cold-water injection. The piston-rod is attached to one end of a lever, whilst the pump-rod works in connexion with the other, the hydraulic action employed to raise the water being exactly similar to that of a common sucking-pump.

The working of a Newcomen engine is a clumsy and apparently a very painful process, accompanied by an extraordinary amount of wheezing, sighing, creaking, and bumping. When the pump descends, there is heard

10

THE PITMEN.

CHAP. I.

a plunge, a heavy sigh, and a loud bump: then, as it rises, and the sucker begins to act, there is heard a creak, a wheeze, another bump, and then a strong rush of water as it is lifted and poured out. Where engines of a more powerful and improved description are used, the quantity of water raised is enormous-as much as a million and a half gallons in the twenty-four hours.

The pitmen, who work out the coal below ground, or "the lads belaw," as they call themselves, are a peculiar class, quite distinct from the workmen employed on the surface. They are a people with peculiar habits, manners, and character, as much so as fishermen and sailors, to whom, indeed, they are supposed, perhaps from the dangerous nature of their calling, to bear a considerable resemblance. Some forty or fifty years since they were a very much rougher and worse-educated class than they are now; hard workers, but very wild and uncouth; much given to "steeks," or strikes; and distinguished, in their hours of leisure and on pay-nights, for their love of cock-fighting, dog-fighting, hard drinking, and cuddy races. The pay-night was a fortnightly saturnalia, in which the pitman's character was fully brought out, especially when the "yel" was good. Though earning much higher wages than the ordinary labouring population of the upper soil, the latter did. not mix nor intermarry with them; so that they were left to form their own communities, and hence their marked peculiarities as a class. Indeed, a sort of traditional disrepute seems long to have clung to the pitmen, arising perhaps from the nature of their employment, and from the circumstance that the colliers were amongst the last classes enfranchised in England, as they were certainly the last in Scotland, where they continued bondmen down to the end of last century. The last thirty years, however, have worked a great improvement in the moral condition of the pitmen; the abolition of the twelve months' bond to the mine, and

the substitution of a month's notice previous to leaving, having given them greater freedom and opportunity for obtaining employment; and day-schools and Sundayschools, together with the important influences of railways, have brought them fully up to a level with the other classes of the labouring population.

The coals, when raised from the pits, are emptied into the waggons placed alongside, from whence they are sent along the rails to the staiths erected by the river side, the waggons sometimes descending by their own gravity along inclined planes, the waggoner standing behind to check the speed by means of a convoy or wooden brake bearing upon the rims of the wheels. Arrived at the staiths, the waggons are emptied at once into the ships waiting alongside for cargo. Any one who has sailed down the Tyne from Newcastle Bridge cannot but have been struck with the appearance of the immense staiths, constructed of timber, which are erected at short distances from each other on both sides of the river.

COAL STAITH ON THE TYNE. [By R P Leitch]

But a great deal of the coal shipped from the Tyne comes from above-bridge, where sea-going craft cannot

12

THE KEELMEN.

CHAP. I.

reach, and is floated down the river in "keels," in which the coals are sometimes piled up according to convenience when large, or, when the coal is small or tender, it is conveyed in tubs to prevent breakage. These keels are of a very ancient model,-perhaps the oldest extant in England: they are even said to be of the same build as those in which the Norsemen navigated the Tyne centuries ago. The keel is a tubby, grimy-looking craft, rounded fore and aft, with a single large square sail, which the keel-bullies, as the Tyne watermen are called, manage with great dexterity; the vessel being guided by the aid of the "swape," or great oar, which is used as a kind of rudder at the stern of the vessel. These keelmen are an exceedingly hardy class of workmen, not by any means so quarrelsome as their designation of "bully" would imply the word being merely derived from the obsolete term "boolie," or beloved, an appellation still in familiar use amongst brother workers in the coal districts. One of the most curious sights upon the Tyne is the fleet of hundreds of these black-sailed, black-hulled keels, bringing down at each tide their black cargoes for the ships at anchor in the deep water at Shields and other parts of the river below Newcastle.

These preliminary observations will perhaps be sufficient to explain the meaning of many of the occupations alluded to, and the phrases employed, in the course of the following narrative, some of which might otherwise have been comparatively unintelligible to the general reader.

THE Colliery village of Wylam is situated on the north bank of the Tyne, about eight miles west of Newcastle. The Newcastle and Carlisle railway runs along the opposite bank; and the traveller by that line sees the usual signs of a colliery in the unsightly pumpingengines surrounded by heaps of ashes, coal-dust, and slag; whilst a neighbouring iron-furnace in full blast throws out dense smoke and loud jets of steam by day and lurid flames at night. These works form the nucleus of the village, which is almost entirely occupied by coal-miners and iron-furnacemen. The place is more remarkable for the amount of its population than for its cleanness or neatness as a village-the houses, as in most