Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XI.—April, 1851—Vol. II.

Hearing this, we get up to look at the rock above us. We are able to stand upright in the position we now occupy; and flaring our candles hither and thither in the darkness, can see the bright pure copper streaking the dark ceiling of the gallery in every direction. Lumps of ooze, of the most lustrous green color, traversed by a natural network of thin red veins of iron, appear here and there in large irregular patches, over which water is dripping slowly and incessantly in certain places. This is the salt water percolating through invisible crannies in the rock. On stormy days it spirts out furiously in thin, continuous streams. Just over our heads we observe a wooden plug of the thickness of a man's leg; there is a hole here, and the plug is all that we have to keep out the sea.

Immense wealth of metal is contained in the roof of this gallery, throughout its whole length; but it remains, and will always remain, untouched; the miners dare not take it, for it is part, and a great part, of the rock which forms their only protection against the sea; and which has been so far worked away here, that its thickness is limited to an average of three feet only between the water and the gallery in which we now stand. No one knows what might be the consequence of another day's labor with the pickax on any part of it.

This information is rather startling when communicated at a depth of four hundred and twenty feet under ground. We should decidedly have preferred to receive it in the counting-house! It makes us pause for an instant, to the miner's infinite amusement, in the very act of knocking away about an inch of ore from the rock, as a memento of Botallack. Having, however, ventured, on reflection, to assume the responsibility of weakening our defense against the sea by the length and breadth of an inch, we secure our piece of copper, and next proceed to discuss the propriety of descending two hundred and forty feet more of ladders, for the sake of visiting that part of the mine where the men are at work.

Two or three causes concur to make us doubt the wisdom of going lower. There is a hot, moist, sickly vapor floating about us, which becomes more oppressive every moment; we are already perspiring at every pore, as we were told we should, and our hands, faces, jackets, and trowsers, are all more or less covered with a mixture of mud, tallow, and iron-drippings, which we can feel and smell much more accurately than is exactly desirable. We ask the miner what there is to see lower down. He replies, nothing but men breaking ore with pickaxes; the galleries of the mine are alike, however deep they may go: when you have seen one, you have seen all.

The answer decides us – we determine to get back to the surface.

We returned along the gallery, just as we had advanced, with the same large allowance of scrambling, creeping, and stumbling on our way. I was charitably carried along and down the platform over the pit by my trowsers, as before: our order of procession only changed when we gained the ladders again. Then, our friend the miner went last instead of first, upon the same principle of being ready to catch us if we fell, which led him to precede us on our descent. Except that one of the rounds cracked under his weight as we went up, we ascended without casualties of any kind. As we neared the mouth of the shaft, the daylight atmosphere looked dazzlingly white, after the darkness in which we had been groping so long; and when we once more stood out on the cliff, we felt a cold, health-giving purity in the sea-breeze, and, at the same time, a sense of recovered freedom in the power that we now enjoyed of running, jumping, and stretching our limbs in perfect security and with full space for action, which it was almost a new sensation to experience. Habit teaches us to think little of the light and air that we live and breathe in, or, at most, to view them only as the ordinary conditions of our being. To find out that they are more than this, that they are a luxury as well as a necessity of life, go down into a mine, and compare what you can exist in there, with what you do exist in, on upper earth!

On re-entering the counting-house, we were greeted by the welcome appearance of two large tubs of water, with soap and flannel placed invitingly by their sides. Copious ablutions and clean clothes, are potent restorers of muscular energy. These, and a half hour of repose, enabled us to resume our knapsacks as briskly as ever, and walk on fifteen miles to the town of St. Ives – our resting-place for the night.

Serious accidents are rare in the mines of Cornwall. From the horrors of such explosions as take place in coal-mines, they are by their nature entirely free. The casualties that oftenest occur are serious falls, generally produced by the carelessness of inexperienced, or foolhardy people. Of these, and of extraordinary escapes from death with which they are associated, many anecdotes are told in mining districts, which would appear to the reader exaggerated, or positively untrue, if I related them on mere hearsay evidence. There was, however, one instance of a fall down the shaft of a mine, unattended with fatal consequences, which occurred while I was in Cornwall; and which I may safely adduce, for I can state some of the facts connected with the affair, as an eye-witness. I attended an examination of the sufferer by a medical man, and heard the story of the accident from the parents of the patient.

On the 7th of August last, a boy fourteen years of age, the son of a miner, slipped into the shaft of Boscaswell Down Mine, in the neighborhood of Penzance. He fell to the depth of thirteen fathoms, or seventy-eight feet. Fifty-eight feet down, he struck his left side against a board placed across the shaft, snapped it in two, and then falling twenty feet more, pitched on his head. He was of course taken up insensible; the doctor was sent for; and, on examining him, found, to his amazement, that there was actually a chance of the boy's recovery after his tremendous fall!

Not a bone in his body was broken. He was bruised and scratched all over, and there were three cuts – none of them serious – on his head. The board stretched across the shaft, twenty feet from the bottom, had saved him from being dashed to pieces; but had inflicted, at the same time, where his left side had struck it, the only injury that appeared dangerous to the medical man – a large, hard lump that could be felt under the bruised skin. The boy showed no symptoms of fever; his pulse, day after day, was found never varying from eighty-two to the minute; his appetite was voracious; and the internal functions of his body only required a little ordinary medicine to keep them properly at work. In short, nothing was to be dreaded but the chance of the formation of an abscess in his left side, between the hip and ribs. He had been under medical care exactly one week, when I accompanied the doctor on a visit to him.

The cottage where he lived with his parents, though small, was neat and comfortable. We found him lying in bed, awake. He looked sleepy and lethargic; but his skin was moist and cool; his face displayed neither paleness, nor injury of any kind. He had just eaten a good dinner of rabbit-pie; and was anxious to be allowed to sit up in a chair, and amuse himself by looking out of the window. His left side was first examined. A great circular bruise discolored the skin, over the whole space between the hip and ribs; but on touching it, the doctor discovered that the lump beneath had considerably decreased in size, and was much less hard than it had felt during previous visits. Next, we looked at his back and arms – they were scratched and bruised all over; but nowhere seriously. Lastly, the dressings were taken off his head, and three cuts were disclosed, which even a non-medical eye could easily perceive to be of no great importance. Such were all the results of a fall of seventy-eight feet!

The boy's father reiterated to me the account of the accident, just as I had already heard it from the doctor. How it happened, he said, could only be guessed, for his son had completely forgotten all the circumstances immediately preceding the fall; neither could he communicate any of the sensations which must have attended it. Most probably, he had been sitting dangling his legs idly over the mouth of the shaft, and had so slipped in. But, however the accident really happened, there the sufferer was before us – less seriously hurt than many a lad who has trodden on a piece of orange peel as he was walking along the street.

We left him (humanly speaking) certain of recovery, now that the dangerous lump in his side had begun to decrease. I have since heard from his medical attendant, that in two months from the date of the accident, he was at work again as usual in the mine; at that very part of it too, where his fall had taken place!

It was not the least interesting part of my visit to the cottage where he lay ill, to observe the anxious affection displayed toward him by both his parents. His mother left her work in the kitchen to hold him in her arms, while the old dressings were being taken off and the new ones applied – sighing bitterly, poor creature, every time he winced or cried out under the pain of the operation. The father put several questions to the doctor; which were always perfectly to the point; and did the honors of his little abode to his stranger visitor, with a natural politeness and a simple cordiality of manner which showed that he really meant the welcome that he spoke. Nor was he any exception to the rest of his brother-workmen with whom I met. As a body of men, they are industrious and intelligent; sober and orderly; neither soured by hard work, nor easily depressed by harder privations. No description of personal experiences in the Cornish mines can be fairly concluded, without a collateral testimony to the merits of the Cornish miners – a testimony which I am happy to accord here; and to which my readers would cheerfully add their voices, if they ever felt inclined to test its impartiality by their own experience.

SATURDAY IN A LONDON MARKET. 12

On a Saturday – the coster's business day – it is computed that as many as 2000 donkey-barrows, and upward of 3000 women with shallows and head-baskets visit this market during the forenoon. About six o'clock in the morning is the best time for viewing the wonderful restlessness of the place, for then not only is the "Garden" itself all bustle and activity, but the buyers and sellers stream to and from it in all directions, filling every street in the vicinity. From Long Acre to the Strand on the one side, and from Bow-street to Bedford-street on the other, the ground has been seized upon by the market-goers. As you glance down any one of the neighboring streets, the long rows of carts and donkey-barrows seem interminable in the distance. They are of all kinds, from the greengrocer's taxed cart to the coster's barrow – from the showy excursion-van to the rude square donkey-cart and bricklayer's truck. In every street they are ranged down the middle and by the curb-stones. Along each approach to the market, too, nothing is to be seen, on all sides, but vegetables; the pavement is covered with heaps of them waiting to be carted; the flagstones are stained green with the leaves trodden under foot; sieves and sacks full of apples and potatoes, and bundles of broccoli and rhubarb, are left unwatched upon almost every door-step; the steps of Covent Garden Theatre are covered with fruit and vegetables; the road is blocked up with mountains of cabbages and turnips; and men and women push past with their arms bowed out by the cauliflowers under them, or the red tips of carrots pointing from their crammed aprons, or else their faces are red with the weight of the loaded head-basket.

The donkey-barrows, from their number and singularity, force you to stop and notice them. Every kind of ingenuity has been exercised to construct harness for the costers' steeds; where a buckle is wanting, tape or string make the fastening secure; traces are made of rope and old chain, and an old sack or cotton handkerchief is folded up as a saddle-pad. Some few of the barrows make a magnificent exception, and are gay with bright brass; while one of the donkeys may be seen dressed in a suit of old plated carriage-harness, decorated with coronets in all directions. At some one of the coster conveyances stands the proprietor, arranging his goods, the dozing animal starting up from its sleep each time a heavy basket is hoisted on the tray. Others, with their green and white and red load neatly arranged, are ready for starting, but the coster is finishing his breakfast at the coffee-stall. On one barrow there may occasionally be seen a solitary sieve of apples, with the horse of some neighboring cart helping himself to the pippins while the owner is away. The men that take charge of the trucks, while the costers visit the market, walk about, with their arms full of whips and sticks. At one corner a donkey has slipped down, and lies on the stones covered with the cabbages and apples that have fallen from the cart.

The market itself presents a beautiful scene. In the clear morning air of an autumn day the whole of the vast square is distinctly seen from one end to the other. The sky is red and golden with the newly-risen sun, and the rays falling on the fresh and vivid colors of the fruit and vegetables, brighten up the picture as with a coat of varnish. There is no shouting, as at other markets, but a low murmuring hum is heard, like the sound of the sea at a distance, and through each entrance to the market the crowd sweeps by. Under the dark Piazza little bright dots of gas-lights are seen burning in the shops; and in the paved square the people pass and cross each other in all directions, hampers clash together, and excepting the carters from the country, every one is on the move. Sometimes a huge column of baskets is seen in the air, and walks away in a marvelously steady manner, or a monster railway van, laden with sieves of fruit, and with the driver perched up on his high seat, jolts heavily over the stones. Cabbages are piled up into stacks, as it were. Carts are heaped high with turnips, and bunches of carrots, like huge red fingers, are seen in all directions. Flower-girls, with large bundles of violets under their arms, run past, leaving a trail of perfume behind them. Wagons, with their shafts sticking up in the air, are ranged before the salesmen's shops, the high green load railed in with hurdles, and every here and there bunches of turnips are seen flying in the air over the heads of the people. Groups of apple-women, with straw pads on their crushed bonnets, and coarse shawls crossing their bosoms, sit on their porter's knots, chatting in Irish, and smoking short pipes; every passer-by is hailed with the cry of "Want a baskit, yer honor?" The porter, trembling under the piled-up hamper, trots along the street, with his teeth clenched, and shirt wet with the weight, and staggering at every step he takes.

Inside, the market is all bustle and confusion. The people walk along with their eyes fixed on the goods, and frowning with thought. Men in all costumes, from the coster in his corduroy suit to the greengrocer in his blue apron, sweep past. A countryman, in an old straw hat and dusty boots, occasionally draws down the anger of a woman for walking about with his hands in the pockets of his smock-frock, and is asked, "if that is the way to behave on a market-day?" Even the granite pillars can not stop the crowd, for it separates and rushes past them, like the tide by a bridge pier. At every turn there is a fresh odor to sniff at; either the bitter aromatic perfume of the herbalists' shops breaks upon you, or the scent of oranges, then of apples, and then of onions, is caught for an instant as you move along. The broccoli tied up in square packets, the white heads tinged slightly red, as it were, with the sunshine – the sieves of crimson love-apples, polished like china – the bundles of white glossy leeks, their roots dangling like fringe; the celery, with its pinky stalks and bright green tops, the dark purple pickling-cabbages, the scarlet carrots, the white knobs of turnips, the bright yellow balls of oranges, and the rich brown coats of the chestnuts – attract the eye on every side. Then there are the apple-merchants, with their fruit of all colors, from the pale yellow green to the bright crimson, and the baskets ranged in rows on the pavement before the little shops. Round these the customers stand examining the stock, then whispering together over their bargain, and counting their money. "Give you four shillings for this here lot, master," says a coster, speaking for his three companions. "Four-and-six is my price," answers the salesman. "Say four, and it's a bargain," continues the man. "I said my price," returns the dealer; "go and look round, and see if you can get 'em cheaper; if not, come back. I only wants what's fair." The men, taking the salesman's advice, move on. The walnut-merchant, with a group of women before his shop, peeling the fruit, their fingers stained deep brown, is busy with the Irish purchasers. The onion stores, too, are surrounded by Hibernians, feeling and pressing the gold-colored roots, whose dry skins crackle as they are handled. Cases of lemons in their white paper jackets, and blue grapes, just seen above the sawdust, are ranged about, and in some places the ground is slippery as ice from the refuse leaves and walnut-husks scattered over the pavement.

Against the railings of St. Paul's Church are hung baskets and slippers for sale, and near the public-house is a party of countrymen preparing their bunches of pretty colored grass – brown and glittering, as if it had been bronzed. Between the spikes of the railing are piled up square cakes of green turf for larks; and at the pump, boys, who probably have passed the previous night in the baskets about the market, are washing, and the water dripping from their hair that hangs in points over the face. The curb-stone is blocked up by a crowd of admiring lads, gathered round the bird-catcher's green stand, and gazing at the larks beating their breasts against their cages. The owner, whose boots are red with the soil of the brick-field, shouts, as he looks carelessly around, "A cock linnet for tuppence," and then hits at the youths who are poking through the bars at the fluttering birds.

Under the Piazza the costers purchase their flowers (in pots), which they exchange in the streets for old clothes. Here is ranged a small garden of flower-pots, the musk and mignonnette smelling sweetly, and the scarlet geraniums, with a perfect glow of colored air about the flowers, standing out in rich contrast with the dark green leaves of the evergreens behind them. "There's myrtles, and larels, and boxes," says one of the men selling them, "and there's a harbora witus, and lauristiners, and that bushy shrub with pink spots is heath." Men and women, selling different articles, walk about under the cover of the colonnade. One has seed-cake, another small-tooth and other combs, others old caps or pig's feet, and one hawker of knives, razors, and short hatchets, may occasionally be seen driving a bargain with a countryman, who stands passing his thumb over the blade to test its keenness. Between the pillars are the coffee-stalls, with their large tin cans and piles of bread and butter, and protected from the wind by paper screens and sheets thrown over clothes-horses; inside these little parlors, as it were, sit the coffee-drinkers on chairs and benches, some with a bunch of cabbages on their laps, blowing the steam from their saucers, others, with their mouths full, munching away at their slices, as if not a moment could be lost. One or two porters are there besides, seated on their baskets, breakfasting with their knots on their heads.

As you walk away from this busy scene, you meet in every street barrows and costers hurrying home. The pump in the market is now surrounded by a cluster of chattering wenches quarreling over whose turn it is to water their drooping violets, and on the steps of Covent Garden Theatre are seated the shoeless girls, tying up the halfpenny and penny bundles.

THE HORRORS OF WAR

In a work recently published in London, entitled "Lights and Shades of Military Life," M. de Vigny, the author, gives incidents from his own experience which place in a striking light some of the unutterable horrors of war.

In his first march, with his ambition glowing as brightly as his maiden sword, and his hopes yet fresh as his untarnished epaulets, he falls in with an old chef de bataillon. He was a man of about fifty, with mustaches, tall and stout, his back curved, after the manner of old military officers who have carried the knapsack. His features were hard but benevolent, such as you often meet with in the army, indicating, at the same time, the natural goodness of the heart of the man, and the callousness induced by long use to scenes of blood and carnage. This old soldier of the Empire is marching along beside a little cart, drawn by a sorry mule, in which sits a woman – a maniac – whose story he tells with a soldier's frankness, as a part of his own history. The old man had been a sailor in his youth, and at the time of the Directory was captain of a merchantman. From that situation he was promoted, aristocracy being at a discount, to command the Marat, a brig of war, and one of his first duties was to sail with two political prisoners, a young Frenchman and his wife. He supposed that he was to land them at Cayenne, to which place other exiles had previously been dispatched in other vessels; but he carried sealed orders from the Directory, which were not to be opened till the vessel reached the Equator. On the passage, the captain and his young passengers became greatly attached to each other, so much so that he wished to leave the service, and, with what fortune he had, share and alleviate their fate. In their youth and innocence, and earnest love for each other, the young unfortunates had twined themselves about the rough heart of the sailor, and he regarded them as his children. But there was the ominous letter, bearing the red seals of the Directory, which was to decide their fate – and the time arrived for it to be opened. The seals were broken, and what was the captain's horror to find that it contained an order for him to have the young husband shot, and then to return with the wife to France. After he had read the paper, he rubbed his eyes, thinking that they must have deceived him. He could not trust his senses. His limbs trembled beneath him. He could not trust himself to go near the fair young Laura, who looked so happy, with tidings that would blight her existence. What was he to do? He never seems to have thought of leaving the order unexecuted; the iron of unreasoning obedience had seared his soul too deeply for that. The horrid task, revolt at it as he might, was a duty, because he had been ordered to do it. He communicated the order to his victim, who heard his fate with a stoicism worthy of an old Roman. His only thought was for his poor young wife, so fair, and fond, and gentle. He said, with a voice as mild as usual, "I ask no favor, captain. I should never forgive myself if I were to cause you to violate your duty. I should merely like to say a few words to Laura, and I beg you to protect her, in case she should survive me, which I do not think she will." It is arranged between the victim of slavish obedience, and the victim of the cruelty of the Reign of Terror, that poor Laura should know nothing of what was to be her husband's fate. She is put into a boat at night and rowed from the ship, while the tragedy is being acted out; but she sees the flash of the muskets, her heart tells her too plainly what has happened, and her reason fails under the shock. "At the moment of firing, she clasped her hand to her head, as if a ball had struck her brow, and sat down in the boat without fainting, without shrieking, without speaking, and returned to the brig with the crew when they pleased and how they pleased." The old captain spoke to her but she did not understand him. She was mute, rubbing her pale forehead, and trembling as though she were afraid of every body, and thus she remained an idiot for life. The captain returned to France with his charge, got himself removed into the land forces, for the sea – into which he had cast innocent blood – was unbearable to him; and had continued to watch over the poor imbecile as a father over his child. M. de Vigny saw the poor woman; he says, "I saw two blue eyes of extraordinary size, admirable in point of form, starting from a long, pale, emaciated face, inundated by perfectly straight fair hair. I saw, in truth, nothing but those two eyes, which were all that was left of that poor woman, for the rest of her was dead. Her forehead was red, her cheeks hollow and white, and bluish on the cheek bones. She was crouched among the straw, so that one could just see her two knees rising above it, and on them she was playing all alone at dominoes. She looked at us for a moment, trembled a long time, smiled at me a little, and began to play again. It seemed to me that she was trying to make out how her right hand beat her left." It was the wreck of love and beauty, torn by the blind slave obedience, at the bidding of vengeance and hate. M. de Vigny was a young and thoughtless soldier; but young and thoughtless as he was, the phantom glory must have beamed brightly indeed, to prevent him from seeing the gloomy darkness of such a shade of military life as this, and keep him from shaking the fetters of blind obedience from intellect and mercy. He never saw the old chef and his charge again; but he heard of them. In speaking to a brother officer one day of the sad story, his companion in arms replied, "Ah, my dear fellow, I knew that poor devil well. A brave man he was too; he was taken off by a cannon-ball at Waterloo. He had, in fact, left along with the baggage a sort of crazy girl, whom we took to the hospitable of Amiens on our way to the army of the Loire, and who died there and raving at the end of three days."