THE CORNISH MINER ABROAD

The first narrative which I find noted in my manuscript was related to us by the agent of an English mining com-pany in Peru : he was then on his way to London on business connected with his calling, and seemed a man of quick intelligence, information, and kindly feelings. His description of the golden and beautiful region whence he had come, and the adventurous and prosperous labours of our own countrymen in that distant land, were highly interesting ; but a simple story of the noble conduct of one of his miners—a rude and illiterate Cornishman — caught my attention far more than anything else. and added ano-ther strong link to the chain of sympathy which binds my heart  in  love and  kindly  feeling lo my fellow beings.    I give you his tale as I best can.

In the spring of the year 1838 a vessel sailed from Falmouth, with thirty-two Cornish miners and artisans on board,  engaged by different companies for Peru.    They were principally young and adventurous men, who were readily induced to change the certainty of hard work and Indifferent remuneration at home for the chances of a strange land.  Some of them took their families to share their fate, others left them behind, await 'heir return if unsuccessful. or follow the next year if fortune should befriend the emigrants.

Among those latter  was John Short,  a man of about four-and-thirty years of age ; his brother-in-law. William Wakeham,two or three years his junior, accompanied him : both were skilled and experienced miners.    Mary  Short. the wife of the former, remained with old Wakeham her father,   who was a small farmer,  living  in the neighbour-hood of Penzance. She had been married some twelve years before this separation from her husband.and had two surviving children. both of them young and helpless.

Her father had been much angered  at her marriage; as in those days her young husband bore no very steady character. and was better known in the tap-room of the alehouse than at the labour-muster of the Captain of the mine.   Indeed,  the father had  threatened  to turn her out of doors for persisting in keeping her acquaintance with the Idle miner:  and her brother. William Wakeham, a very robust and quick-tempered young man. had beaten  her lover  severely  in a drunken quarrel,  originating in the same cause.   The  injuries  were  so severe that John Short  was carried to  an hospital, where his kind-hearted but violent assailant paid him the most careful and anxious attention.    A  friendship was there  formed which resulted in William Wakeham becoming a miner  and John marry-ing his sister.    The father was finally and with much difficulty reconciled to both these  arrangements.

The young couple toiled on well enough through their hard life ;  the  alehouse was abandoned,  and  but that poor John was sometimes weak and ailing,  and could not work,  Polly  had  no reason to  regret her  choice.    Wil-liam. who lived with them, was not quite so steady as they could have wished : he often staid out all night,  and they were not without suspicion that the employment of these hours of darkness was scarcely reconcilable with strict obedience to the very arbitrary game-laws.    In short, he was " had up "  several times,  and more Indebted to good luck, than either his innocence or any mild weakness of legislation,  that  he did not  become  one of those whom we have driven forth from among ourselves to be the founders of that great future empire, whose principal geo-graphical feature is Botany Bay.

But  whenever  his brother  was  too ill  to go  down  to the mines, he worked double tides ;  and neither the heathery moors nor shady coverts had charms enough to tempt him away,  when his sister or her family wanted half the loaf his labour was lo purchase.  At  length hard times came upon the neighbourhood : work was scarce and wages low ; the consequence was that the game in the ad-joining  preserves suffered  considerably,  and  the tap-room of the village alehouse echoed with the voice of sedition and discontent, instead of the coarse but good humoured gossip and song which had formerly been wont to be heard within its wails.  This proved an excellent opportunity for the mining agent to secure good workmen for some speculations then being entered upon in South America.    Accordingly  a flaming advertisement  in huge red and blue  letters  was posted up  all over  the country,— " Speedy fortune to be realised —  gold mines of Peru — wanted some steady and experienced minershigh wages —free passage and a bounty. .’’

Poor William Wakeham’s literary acquirements but just enabled him to make out the drift of the offer: Peru or Palestine,  it was all the same him ;  no change  could make him much worse off than he already was.   A picture at the top of the advertisement, of a man with a broad-brimmed hat, pickaxe in one hand, and an enormously plethoric  purse  in the other, had great weight with him ; and a strong hint from a neighbouring magistrate who preserved pheasants, quite determined his acceptance of the opportunity,  if  he could only persuade his brolher-in-law to join the venture.    After  a  good  deal of argument and many consultations, John Short consented to go. He was threatened with ejectment from his cottage for arrears of rent, which the company’s promised bounty would be more than sufficient to discharge ; but what overcame his greatest difficulty was, that he received a promise from the agent,  that Polly and  the little ones  should  follow  them out next spring, for in this present voyage the number of women allowed to accompany the emigrants had been al-ready completed.     In the meantime  she was to receive a portion of her husband's and brother's wages,  which would make her comfortable and independent in her father’s house.    Poor thing ! she combated the scheme strenuous- ly ; and  all the  prospects  of making  their fortune,  and their present dire necessity, could scarcely Induce her to agree to so long a separation.

Her husband and brother embarked after a cheerful but affectionate parting.  She went home to her father’s, who treated her kindly enough,  and cried her eyes out for a week ; but  then the toils and anxieties of daily life dis-tracted the sadness of her mind,the strong hope of soon joining her husband again, and of their returning to Eng-land in a few years’ lime,  supported her through the tedious interval.

The brothers were astonished at all they saw on board. The ship itself — the rudder  — the compass, every thing was new to them : they had scarcely ever been out of their own remote parish before,  and the strangeness and novel-ty of what they saw diverted their simple minds for a time even from poor Polly  and her parting sorrow.    But when the vessel was once fairly under way, and the verdant slopes and woody hills of their fatherland had begun to grow dim in the distance,  and the gloomy monotony of the great sea lay around instead,  a dreary anxiety possessed their minds,  and a vague feeling,  almost of terror,  sank into their stout hearts. They would then have gladly sacrificed all their gilded prospects, to be back once again in their little cottage, with poor Polly and their poverty.   It was, however, too late ;  they could scarcely tell, in the fading light of evening,  whether  it were a cloud or a dim line of hills  which stretched close  along  the horizon,  in the direction where lay  the home they had left behind, per-haps for ever.

Before them was the ocean ; to them a confused and indistinct idea —  unknown and uncertain as their  future fate.

I an sorry to say William Wakeham’s  education had been no means elaborate.   Perhaps he was not alto- gether to blame for this ; for though the masters he had laboured under cared very closely for the development of his stout and vigorous limbs,  his  moral improvement by no means interested them. But, worse than all, his ideas on theological subjects were exceedingly indistinct —  the only  religious  instruction  he had ever received having been in a small chapel of the Ranting persuasion, which, as the only house of worship close at hand. he occasionally attended.   Indeed, his stock of knowledge on these sub-jects consisted in a vague notion that the Pope and the Devil  were  perpetually engaged  in  mining operations, with explosive intentions, under houses of parliament.

But there was an instinct of reverence in his rude mind, an impression of awe and love for  that God of whom he had heard his mother often speak, many years ago, when he was  a little child,  before her  early death.   Sometimes in the  bright  summer nights,  when he was labouring in the bowels of the earth,  he would rest awhile from his work,  and  gaze up through the shafts at the blue sky,  till the dim but holy memories of the past crowded on his brain.     He  fancied  then that  the  Great Being looked down from the  high Heaven through a million starry eyes, into the deep mine  —  into his simple heart ; and he  felt that there was One far greater than the Captain of the workmen, or even than Squire Trebeck, the neighbouring magistrate,  and  to whom the strength of his vigorous limbs was but the weakness of a child.

 When in the summer Sunday afternoon he  rambled on the pleasant surface  of the earth.  in  the fresh open air,  with his brother and sister,  and felt the warm sunshine, and saw the golden corn, and the lazy cattle, and the trout leaping  in  the  pool and  heard  little  fidgety  birds  with very big voices,  singing with  all their might to tell how happy  they  were ;  he felt that  He who is great  is also good--that He who has all power has boundless mercy too.

But ignorance and evil companions very often led poor William  astray : and  when  temptations pulled one way and  his good instincts another  it sometimes ended  that he could poach, and drink, and fight as much as any of them,  and prove very sore and penitent  the  next  morning.  John Short  was  what is called  " a  good  kind  of man," with  few  of  the  faults or   virtues  of  his  brother-in-law.  He was quite  industrious, and a good husband, but of a weakly constitution, and not much character or peculiarity one way or the other.   And this friendship helped them through  many  a  pinch,  and  cheered  many  a  rough day.

It would be needless to follow the miners all through their voyage,—to tell at  length  how  they  wondered  that the sea could be so wide and the world so large.—how the sun, as they went westward, seemed to travel so much faster ,—and  that,  in spite of all they could do, their great fat  watches  could not  keep up  with him ;   and how a great storm arose, and blew for three whole days and nights in their teeth, and raised up monstrous waves to drive the vessel back ;—then how the calm came, and the sails, wet with the heavy dews, hung idly on the spars like Polly's washing on the lines in  the back-yard at home.

After many weeks they touched at Rio  Janeiro, when they went ashore  for a little while to stretch their limbs. They were astonished at all they saw .— the vast fleet of ships, the busy quays, the crowds of strange-looking brown people, who  were dressed  like  the  man  they  had seen in the play  long ago  at   Penzance  fair,   and  the  queer way they all talked, so that our friends could not under-stand a word they said ; and the priests with loose robes and comical hats, who made them wonder if there were a ?????? at Rio, for it would be surely blown up ;   mules larger than horses, with coats as smooth as satin ; and

above all they were astonished seeing a crowd of very ugly black people chained hand to hand in one of the squares, tethered for all the world like sheep on the market green at home.   They were fairly bewildered ;  and when they got on board again they agreed that they could not attend to  digging,  even for gold itself,   if  Peru  were  half so foreign a looking place as that.

They have left Rio,  and  steer along the Patagonian shore;   the weather grows colder, the seas more stormy. They pass  the gloomy mountains of  the desolate and mysterious  " Land of fire."  Sometimes in the dark and tempestuous nights they  can  distinguish,  far  away  over the western sea. sudden bursts of volcanic flame issuing from these unknown solitudes, illuming the frowning sky above, and the rocky wilderness around.  In a long-con-tinued storm of wind  and sleet,  and snow, they  double Cape Horn ; then. in a short  time more, as they tend again towards the delightful regions of the tropics, the soft breezes of the Pacific sill their sails, and the calm sea and gentle climate repay  them for the storms and hardships they have struggled through.

They touch at Valparaiso for a few days, where their simple wonder is again renewed ;  and finally, early in August,  disembark at  Lima,  having  gone  through their long voyage in health and strength. After a short time allowed them to recruit, the emigrants were divided Into several  parties,  and  pushed  to the  different  stations  in the interior.   The mine  which our friends were destined to aid in working, was about ten days' journey from the coast. At some remote period of time  it  had been worked with great success  by  the Indians ; but  till  its recent re-discovery by singular accident, when it passed into the hands, of a wealthy English company, had remained unknown :  the secret of its locality having died with the Indian chief, whose hatred of the rapacious Spaniards had caused him to fill up the shaft,  and  hide all traces by which it  could  be found.     There  was a continual ascent:  for  a few days  they  passed  through  comparatively peopled lands and usually stopped at some village or hamlet by a river's side, where provisions and refreshments could be obtained for themselves and their mules. without trenching on their stores. Indeed, the abundant  wild fruits, and rich and luxuriant grasses,  would  have stood them in good stead with but little other assistance.

But the last three days of their journey was through savage  and  sterile  hills,  by rocky gorges cut in the hard soil by streams now nearly dry ;  and  the  unbeaten track told them that travellers but rarely intruded on this lonely district.   At length  they  reached their  journeys end,  and set stoutly to work to erect huts,  and establish themselves for the  coming winter.    Numbers of Indians  and  half-castes  soon  joined  them  to  assist in  the simpler labours of the mine, and supply the workman with provisions and other necessaries of life.    Twelve of the Cornish men were employed  in this party.     Their  first  labours  were directed to sinking a shaft of considerable depth in the mountain’s side, at the place which the discoverer pointed out.

Some months elapsed before the miners arrived at any satisfactory indications of precious ores ; but, confident in ultimate success, our friends had got the clerk to write for  them to Polly  to say   " all’s well,”  and  that  she  must not fail to come, as they were now housed and ready to make her and the little ones comfortable in that strange country.

At  the  time  of the  expected  arrival of the ship which was to bear her,  the  completion  of the great shaft was close at hand ;  the  appearance of the veins of  ore were such as to create the most sanguine expectations, and a day was fixed for finishing off the shaft previous to commencing to raise the  precious  object  of their labours  They worked till   late  on  the  evening  of  the  appointed day in boring and tamping for a large blast which was to clear away the last ledge of  rock lying between them  and  the vein of metal.

When  the  charge  was completed, William Wakeham and John Short  were left below to fire it.   The other workmen were raised upon a stage by the windlass in the usual  manner ; and with most culpable carelessness has-tened off to the spirit shop  which had already cursed the little settlement  with its presence, to  make  merry  for having  arrived  at this  stage  of their  labours,   leaving only a weakly boy of fourteen or fifteen years of age at the windlass.     There was some delay in fixing the match ; and ere all was ready, the short twilight of those sultry regions had darkened into night, and William's old friends, the stars, looked down on him again through the deep well, as they had often done of yore.    Then  he  and John talked of the old times  and the  old country,  and Polly’s  coming soon, and how the little ones would have grown,  and how,  in a few years, they would all go back home again over that terrible sea, and lay their bones to rest at last under the Cornish soil.  They had no business to linger so long over their work ;  but  once  they  began to talk over such things as these, it was hard to stop them.

" Now we have done with this weary blast, " said Wakeham, as he lighted the fuse, and stepped with this brother,  on to the stage.   He  then  sounded  the  whistle, the signal for  working the windlass to raise them.  They  rose very slowly — unpleasantly so, indeed, for the fuse would  burn  but  for  five  minutes.     " Hurry on, wind faster," shouted William.    Instead  of  that  the stage stopped altogether, and a feeble childish voice from the top of  the  deep  pit  cried,  " You are too heavy,   I can only raise one at  a time."   "  Get help quickly or we'll be blown up, " shouted  William,  now  seeing  the  imminent  peril.  For some twenty feet below in the dark hole he saw the match burning rapidly down,  fizzing and flashing as if running a race with them for life.  " Get help,"  again he shouted.   But  the  feeble voice,   now  in a terrified tone, told them  that  all  were gone away  but that one weak boy.  " But I think  I  can raise  one."   There  was  but  a moment to spare—perhaps not even that.

What passed through William Wakeham's mind at that tremendous  time  no  tongue  can ever tell.   He  dearly loved life ;  his  pulse  beat  in  the  full  vigour of sturdy health ; he had learned but little of that hope whose ful-filment " passeth all understanding ; "  he had never read how the  Roman the Greek sought death in a good cause, and gave their names to brighten history’s page, and gain what in  our vain  human talk  is  immortality.    But  that Great Being  whose  power  and  love  had  spoken  to  him in the bright stars  and pleasant fields, had planted in the rude miner’s breast a good and gallant heart,  and in that time of trial  he  did  as  brave  a  deed  as  ever  poet  sang. “ Good-by, John —look  to   poor  Polly! ”    One   grasp  of his brother’s hand,  and  he leaped  from the  stage down into the darksome pit.

Now  the windlass  winds  freely up ; there  is  hope  for the one left;  but the match  burns quickly too, and writhes and  flashes  close  down  to  the  charge.  Lay on stoutly ! lay on !—strain  every nerve  weak boy!—on  every pull is the  chance  of  a human life!   John Short  reaches the mouth  of the shaft  in safety ;  but  before  he  springs  out on the ground he turns one look below.   His brother lay motionless on the bottom on one side of the rich vein of metal ;  at the other,   the  terrible  match  blazed  up  just as it reached the  charge.    Senseless  with  terror,  he fell on his face  at  the  pit's mouth,  and  the  next  moment  up burst the mine,  shooting the rent rock and the heavy clay into the air above.

When  John Short  recovered  himself  from  his  stupor, he looked  down  the gloomy hole  with  hopeless agony, from whence the heavy sulphurous  smoke  of the powder still  ascended ;  and   as  he   wrung  his   hands   he  cried, " Oh ! poor Bill, dear boy,  would that I had been there instead of you ! "      But  stop—surely  that  is  a  voice—listen closer—yes—God of mercy ! he  is alive  still.    Up from the bowels of the earth  comes that cheery, hearty, voice, not a tone the worse.

How my heart warms as  I  tell this tale!   Would that words came  now  at my desire to stir up the spirit to love and  admiration!     Gallant   William  Wakeham—  noble child of nature—chivalrous boor—hero unstained by slaughter!    Were  there  in the sight of the Omnipotent aught  of  glory in any human action,  surely  your brave deed would shine before  him in a brighter light than £ the sun of Austurlitz ” shed upon the bloody field where the power of an empire was trampled in the dust.

Down went the stage,—up came Bill, blackened and bruised a  little to  be  sure,  but  not  to  signify a  jot ;  he had  struck his head  in  falling  against  the  side  of the shaft, and was stunned by the blow.  It  so  happened, by one of those wonderful contingencies which sometimes occur when, in human eyes,  escape seems impossible, that he fell in a corner  protected  by  the tough metallic vein which projected  a  little  above  the  level  of  the bottom. The explosion  bent this by its  force,  instead  of  shattering it  like  the  surrounding  rock,  and turned the ledge over him.    This in a great measure  defended him from the stones which fell back again into the mine. The shock aroused him  from the  stunning effect  of  the  blow  which he had received in failing,  and he shouted heartily, ‘* All right, John ! all right !”

His reward soon, came — Polly and the children arrived safe  and  well.     When  she  wept  with  joy and thanked him  in her own simple way  for having saved her husband for her, he was so happy in their happiness that he would readily  have jumped into the bursting mine again, rather than they  should  be parted  any more.   When  our nar-rator, the mining agent, left Peru, the brothers were pre-paring  to  return to England ;   they  had  got on well enough,  and  had  saved  sufficient  money to enable them to stock  a little farm,  near the village in   Cornwall where they were born.