by Mr. Curr at the collieries under his care. Among these was the use of self-acting incline planes, whereby a train of full carriages in descending was made to pull up an empty train at the same time, the two being connected by means of a rope passing round a sheave, or pulley-wheel, at the top. By the employment of cast-iron rails these incline planes could be employed whenever the fall of the road amounted to three inches per yard.

Mr. Curr's improvements were a great step in the direction of modern arrangements. His rails and flat ropes soon came into general use throughout the kingdom; but his shaft fittings were not sufficiently matured to admit of their introduction into the deeper mines, though they answered the purpose remarkably well in the shallow collieries about Sheffield, and other parts in the south.

The introduction of Mr. Curr's cast-iron rails (or plates as they were termed) underground relieved enormously the slavish labour of the barrow-men, or coal-putters, who conveyed the coal between the working places and the horse roads. It would appear from the following stanzas that the improvement was received with much gratitude :

"But heavy puttin' 's now forgotten

Sic as we had i' former days;
Ower holey thill an' dylls a-splittin',
Trams now a-run on metal ways.

"God bless the man in peace and plenty That first invented metal plates;

Draw out his years to five times twenty, Then slide him through the heavenly gates.

"For if the human frame to spare Frae toil an' pain ayont conceivin', Hae aught to dae wi' gettin' there,

I'm sure he maun gan' strite to heaven."

CHAPTER XIII.

GREAT DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED IN OPENING OUT THE FAMOUS WALLSEND COLLIERY.-JOHN BUDDLE, SENR. -CAST-IRON TUBBING..

In the district situated between the town of Newcastle and the mouth of the River Tyne, there lay a tract of land beneath which existed an important seam of coal known as the "Main Coal," the peculiar excellence of which for household purposes rendered it the most valuable seam in the Great Northern Coal-field at this epoch. The tract in question-locally termed "the Tyne basin"-being intersected by the River Tyne, presented unusual facilities for the shipment of coals; but the depth of the seam from the surface had hitherto operated to retard its development.

Near the centre of this tract stood the village of Wallsend (so named from its position at the eastern end of the Roman Wall), in the vicinity of which the opening out of the famous Wallsend Colliery was commenced in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

Though this colliery eventually became exceedingly prosperous and profitable, and the excellent quality of its coal led to the name "Wallsend" being adopted as a password by other collieries, the winning of the pits proved one of the most arduous mining enterprises which had up to this time been attempted. Difficulties arising from quicksands, water, and inflammable gas, taxed to the utmost the arts of the miners, and occasioned numerous disasters during the infancy of the colliery.

Sinking operations were commenced at Wallsend in 1778, but the first pit was lost in a quicksand. A second attempt narrowly escaped the same fate; but by means of successive tiers of piles the shaft was carried through the sand, though its diameter was reduced in the process to five feet eleven inches. Two shafts-the A pit and the B pit, the latter being nine feet in diameter-were at length carried down to the seam at a depth of about one hundred fathoms, and the working of coal began in 1781.

Pumping engines were applied in both pits, but they were of inadequate power; a circumstance which, aggravated as it was by great abundance of fire-damp met with, caused the greatest difficulty to be experienced in carrying on the colliery. In October, 1783, a "blower" of fire-damp ignited at the candle of a hewer, who fled precipitately without attempting to extinguish the flaming gas. The overman made a

courageous attempt to reach the seat of the fire, but was overpowered by the smoke and noxious gases and suffocated; and it having become evident that the coal itself had been set on fire, the burning district was flooded with water in order to extinguish it.

The above accident did not long delay the colliery operations, but two years later an explosion occurred which entailed a long series of disasters. On the 9th of October, 1785, the discharge of fire-damp so overloaded the ventilating current as to raise it to the firing point, when it ignited at the ventilating furnace and produced a severe "blast" in the upcast, or B pit. Fortunately the few men who were in the mine at the time were occupied at the bottom of the other pit, and succeeded in escaping to the surface without serious injury; but the woodwork supporting the pumps in the B pit was blown out, and the coal at the pit bottom set on fire, so that it became necessary to seal up the mouths of the pits, and to flood the workings with water a second time in order to extinguish it.

The pits remained covered up till the 2nd of November, when three men descended the B pit to examine the state of the shaft by the light of a steel mill; but no sooner had they reached a depth of seventy fathoms from the surface than an explosion took place which killed the whole of the exploring party. Up till this time implicit reliance had been placed in the safety of the steel mill by the Wallsend