(4.) – DOWN THE MINES. […]

On the third day of my visit to Raub, Sunday having intervenced, I accompanied Mr. Bibby down the Raub Hole. Gold-mining, to judge by Raub, is a very comfortable business. I have been down one of the deepest coal mines in England, and I found it a very disagreeable experience. e air, laden with ne dust, was hot and foul; and to have to crawl through long galleries, with a Davy lamp in one’s teeth, was not nice. At Raub, both in the Raub Hole and elsewhere, the air is uniformly good, and the galleries high and broad, while candles may be carried without the slightest danger. e only inconvenience is the water, which requires the pumps to be constantly going. e water carries with it in suspense enormous quantities of iron oxide, and that is not a good thing to get upon one’s clothes. Encased, as it were, in an old khaki suit with a cap on my head, and a candle in my / hand, I was completely equipped to descend to where the gold comes from. e work at present going on at the Raub Hole, as I was able to see for myself, is almost entirely of a development and prospecting character. Down below, in the bottom level, Chinamen were busily engaged on the face of the hard black slate, extending the feelers which the manager is throwing out to ascertain the directions of the ore chutes. Driving is proceeding north and south along the course of the lode. e drive going north was in for one hundred and eighty feet on the morning of my visit, and the other drive about four hundred feet. ere is also a crosscut going in a westerly direction, and this had been carried a distance of one hundred and seventy feet. e manager expects to go some ve hundred feet before getting any de nite result. e southern drive, before-mentioned, o ers an excellent illustration of the changes and chances of the miner’s work. As Mr. Bibby explained in his last report, he expected to reach the main ore chute long before. But four hundred feet have not su ced to reach it, and it is highly probable that some geological fault has abruptly cut it o in that neighbourhood. At the present time, as I previously remarked, there is not much ore being taken from this mine; but, in a short time, Mr. Bibby expects to be turning out a fair quantity of high grade ore, there being still a large extent of ground ready for stoping between the bottom and the intermediate levels. Just now, the only stoping that is proceeding is that in the No. 2 or bottom level. I wonder how many people there are, who have anything like an accurate idea as to what stoping means. I will endeavour to explain this and other terms. To begin with, it should be understood that the level or drive is, in the main, merely a road running to the face of the lode. Steel rails along it serve for the passage of the little cars, which bring to the bottom of the sha the ore that has been shot down through the chutes from the stopes above. Having got the drive up to the

lode, the next thing is to extract the ore overhead, and this is done by running up stopes, or small galleries, into the lode. e ore is taken out, and shot down into the level, by means of chutes, as the Americans spell the word, and then the space so emptied is lled up with mullock and strongly timbered, to secure the ground, and another stope is made at the most favourable place for working. is stoping work is largely facilitated by the winzes, or sha s, that are put down between the various levels. ese winzes are extremely useful, also, for the purpose of ventilation. e large extent of ground between Raub and Bukit Koman is as yet untouched; but Mr. Bibby thinks there is every reason to believe that this district will prove highly auriferous. e new workings at Bukit Itam will dispose of the question before very long.