"Jules Vernes - The Underground City" - читать интересную книгу автора (Verne Jules)

the two Americas. The manufactories, appropriated to so many
different uses, locomotives, steamers, gas works, &c., were not
likely to fail for want of the mineral fuel; but the consumption had
so increased during the last few years, that certain beds had been
exhausted even to their smallest veins. Now deserted, these mines
perforated the ground with their useless shafts and forsaken
galleries. This was exactly the case with the pits of Aberfoyle.
Ten years before, the last butty had raised the last ton of coal
from this colliery. The underground working stock, traction
engines, trucks which run on rails along the galleries, subterranean
tramways, frames to support the shaft, pipes--in short, all that
constituted the machinery of a mine had been brought up from its
depths. The exhausted mine was like the body of a huge
fantastically-shaped mastodon, from which all the organs of life
have been taken, and only the skeleton remains.
Nothing was left but long wooden ladders, down the Yarrow
shaft--the only one which now gave access to the lower galleries of
the Dochart pit. Above ground, the sheds, formerly sheltering the
outside works, still marked the spot where the shaft of that pit had
been sunk, it being now abandoned, as were the other pits, of which
the whole constituted the mines of Aberfoyle.
It was a sad day, when for the last time the workmen quitted the
mine, in which they had lived for so many years. The engineer,
James Starr, had collected the hundreds of workmen which
composed the active and courageous population of the mine.
Overmen, brakemen, putters, wastemen, barrowmen, masons,
smiths, carpenters, outside and inside laborers, women, children,
and old men, all were collected in the great yard of the Dochart pit,
formerly heaped with coal from the mine.
Many of these families had existed for generations in the mine of
old Aberfoyle; they were now driven to seek the means of
subsistence elsewhere, and they waited sadly to bid farewell to the
engineer.
James Starr stood upright, at the door of the vast shed in which
he had for so many years superintended the powerful machines of
the shaft. Simon Ford, the foreman of the Dochart pit, then fifty-five
years of age, and other managers and overseers, surrounded him.
James Starr took off his hat. The miners, cap in hand, kept a.profound silence. This farewell
scene was of a touching character,
not wanting in grandeur.
"My friends," said the engineer, "the time has come for us to
separate. The Aberfoyle mines, which for so many years have united
us in a common work, are now exhausted. All our researches have
not led to the discovery of a new vein, and the last block of coal has
just been extracted from the Dochart pit." And in confirmation of
his words, James Starr pointed to a lump of coal which had been
kept at the bottom of a basket.
"This piece of coal, my friends," resumed James Starr, "is like the
last drop of blood which has flowed through the veins of the mine!
We shall keep it, as the first fragment of coal is kept, which was