A STICK OF THE PITMEN.

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of persons, particularly from Wales, left their houses, removed their families, and went to work in the north. The northern coaches were crowded with the adventurers, and the stage-waggons were piled with their bedding and boxes: many from the shorter distances of Staffordshire or Yorkshire, walked or hired light vehicles-and certainly to see the numerous haggard pedestrians, or the cart loads of squallid women and children, in and about the town of Newcastle, going and returning, was a grievous sight! Many of the strangers found matters so little flattering, that they hastily bent their steps back again; others staid and entered upon their work; not a few, especially of the Welsh strangers, fell victims to the cholera, which raged sorely at several of the collieries; in almost all cases, the condition of the new comers was irksome in the extreme. It was no uncommon thing to see the native pitmen idly reposing on the grass, or unaccountably traversing the neighbourhood, while a policeman with a drawn sword in his hand, or a firelock on his shoulder, was walking to and fro, on the adjacent pit-hill, to protect the party at work within! The police were out every night on duty about the several collieries, to prevent damage to the works or outrage to the men.

It was not to be supposed that in a state of things like this, however discreetly the bulk might act-and certainly the conduct of many was irreproachably peaceful—that all the parties who were so highly excited, would demean themselves in such a manner as not to be overtaken in any direct breach of the law. Unfortunately, some very heinous offences, including two or three murders, were perpetrated. The writer cannot forget his feelings when, one evening, re

turning from the delightful marine village of Tynemouth to Newcastle, during these disturbances, and seeing a crowd about a public-house, he enquired what was the matter, to receive for reply" the police have shot a pitman!" This turned out to have been really the case, in a fray that had just ended. Another case, which created considerable interest at the time, not only in the neighbourhood of the collieries, but throughout the country, was the murder of Nicholas Fairless, Esq. a highly respectable and humane Magistrate of South Shields, by two pitmen of the names of Jobling and Armstrong. The last named culprit succeeded in getting out of the country; • but Jobling was taken, tried, and executed at Durham, and afterwards, pursuant to his sentence, hung in irons on a gibbet, in a mere called "Jarrow Slake," and within a few score yards of the spot where the fatal act had been committed. This gibbet was particularly obnoxious to the pitmen; and various rumours circulated to the effect, that it would never be allowed long to remain an object of horror to so intrepid a body of men. A few weeks afterwards, the writer of this notice, and a friend with whom he was walking along the head of the Slake, were struck with the altered appearance of the gibbet, and on approaching it they ascertained from various parties, that during the preceding night, the tall post had been ascended, the end of the transverse piece sawed off, and the body carried, as was supposed, out to sea, and there sunk: no tidings either of it, or the persons concerned in the unpleasant and daring enterprise, were ever received.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE COAL TRADE.

Fossil Coal little if at all known to the nations of Antiquity-Mentioned by Theophrastus - Supposed to have been used by the Ancient Britons— Old Cinder Heaps-Coal mentioned by Saxon Authors-Extract from the "Bolden Book”. Charter to the Inhabitants of Newcastle to dig Coals-Sea Coal-Evidence of Early Modes of Working-Hostemen-Earliest Notice of Exportation of Coals-Charitable Donations of Coals -Formerly burned along with Wood-Early states of the Coal Trade-Richmond Shilling-Complaints of the decrease and waste of Fire-woodHistorical Notice of the Introduction of Pit Coal into common use-Evelyn's Lamentation on the Decay of Forests-Coincidence in the Deposits of Coal and Ironstone-Difficulties encountered in substituting Pit Coal for Charcoal in making Iron -Notices of the Coal Trade on the Rivers Tyne, Wear, and Tees.

It is hardly possible to contemplate the prodigious amount of manufacturing power and domestic convenience dependent on the produce of our coal mines,

X

without wishing to know something of the introduction of so invaluable a source of national wealth and comfort. It is, however, a singular circumstance, that we are met on the very threshold of the enquiry with two unwelcome facts-first, that there is almost as much obscurity as brevity in the notices on this subject which occur in our elder writers; and— second, that the use of pit-coal,* in a large way, appears to have no claims to very high antiquity, either in this or any other country.

Authors appear to be agreed that, the earliest express mention of fossil coals, used as a fuel by artificers, occurs about two thousand years ago, in the writings of Theophrastus, the scholar of Aristotle, who, in his Book on Stones, gives the subsequent very particular description of them :-"Those fossil substances, that are called coals, and are broken for use, are earthy; they kindle, however, and burn like wood coals. These are found in Liguria, where there is also amber, and in Elis, in the way to Olympias over the mountains: they are used by the smiths."+

* Perhaps it may not be useless to remark that the word coal, or as it was formerly more commonly written cole, did not originally signify fossil fuel, with which meaning, however, it is now generally identified, but wood or other matters used for fires. In this sense the term occurs repeatedly in the English Bible: and Thomas Britton, the noted musical "small coal man," was so called, not because he sold broken pit-coal, but little bundles of chopped wood or sticks, used for kindling fires in London. Coal, is represented in several of the languages of Northern Europe by words similar in sound, as col, Saxon; kol, German; kole, Dutch; kul, Danish, &c.

+ Hill's Theophrastus, p. 62. On this passage, the translator has the following remarks:-"The substance here described, whatever mistakes there may have been among authors since about it, appears to me to be evidently no other than the common pit-coal; and I have made it appear as clearly so in the translation, only by having properly rendered the word av paxes, the carelessly misunderstanding of which word alone, has been the occasion of all the erroneous guesses about the substance here described. The authors of these seem all to have understood the word avdpa, as signifying fossil or pit-coal; and, therefore, as the author compares the burning of this

EARLY HISTORICAL NOTICES.

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Sicculus Flaccus says, that coals, among other things, were used for landmarks; and St. Augustine describes them as applied to that purpose on account of their imperishable nature-a singular assertion, truly: they who pitch them," says he, "are wont to throw them underneath, to convince any litigious person, who should affirm, though ever so long after, that no land mark was there."*

Whether or not the aborigines of this island had any knowledge of the coal so abundantly discovered in later times, is a question that has been repeatedly discussed. Whitaker, in his History of Manchester, is of opinion that the primeval Britons used coal. He argues first from the probability of their discovering it: "Our currents," says he, "frequently bring down fragments of coal from the mountains, the extremities [of the strata] rising into daylight, and being washed away by the rains and rivulets,— the Britons would soon mark the shining stones in the channels, and by the aid of accident, or the force of reflection, find out the utility of them. But we

substance to that, they were necessitated to think of some other substance that he might here mean, as it was impossible he should intend to compare a thing with itself. Wormius, on this foundation, imagined that he meant the cannel coal. Quod Galenus vocat ampletidem, &c. Theophrastus vocat carbones, quod eorum colorem habeat et vices gerat. Thus is Theophrastus, according to custom, accused of saying things he never meant; because the people who quote him have not been at the pains to understand him: εκκαίονται δὲ καὶ πυρενται καθαπερ οι αιθρηκες, is evidently, they kindle and burn like wood-coals, or, as we call it charcoal; for that is the genuine and determinate sense of the word apağ in Greek, and carbo in Latin; as is evident from other works of this author, Pliny, and all the other old naturalists. Even the more correct of the moderns, when they would express what we call pit-coal, the substance here described by the author, never use the words av pa or carbo alone, but always carbo fossilis, and λdavdpaš. The similar use of this bitumen got it the name of coal, but always with an addition that distinguished it from what was more commonly and properly so called, that expressed its not being of vegetable but fossil origin." * Lib. d. Civ. Dei. 21, c. 4.