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OBSTACLES AND PERILS
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43
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and with only a few cubic feet of compressed stagnant air to breathe.
When
a tunnel is being driven there is only one way of escape, and the
working face is called a dead end, though not on account of its deadly
nature in cases of a mud rush, for it is a common term in miners'
parlance. In point of fact these dead ends are the safest places in the
vicinity of a mud rush. The mud, which first fills the mouth of the
tunnel, forces the air ahead of it, and compresses it to such an
exteni that it checks the advance of the mud. Hence, if a native is
hemmed in, he has sufficient air to breathe until he can be rescued. On
more than one occasion when natives have been caught in the rush of
mud, their narrow cell would not have held sufficient air to keep them
alive had it not been that a large quantity of air was compressed into
the small space.
On one occasion two natives were shut up in the dead end of a tunnel for ninety-five hours. They
had no food, but managed to obtain a small quantity of water as it
trickled down from the roof and sides of the tunnel after finding its
way through the blue ground from the level above. These men had more
air space than is usually the case, and the temperature in the ends of
the tunnels ordinarily ranges from 75 to 90 degrees. When rescued they
were greatly exhausted, but after a few days of medical treatment they
were quite fit again, and resumed their work in the mine. At another
time, when natives were shut in for nearly two days, they swallowed
small balls of soft mud, and when rescued it took a considerable time
to bring their digestive organs back to their normal condition. On
several occasions the white miners have been victims to similar
experiences, and now and again a white miner has lost his life by being
overtaken and enveloped in the mud. The longest period of time that a
white man has been confined in the end of a tunnel is about two days,
and there were a dozen or more natives with him. By giving the usual
miners' signal of tap-tap — tap-tap-tap, on the walls of the tunnel, we
knew he was alive, and it
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