Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV THE FORD FAMILY

TEN minutes afterwards, James Starr and Harry issued from
the principal gallery. They were now standing in a glade,
if we may use this word to designate a vast and dark excavation.
The place, however, was not entirely deprived of daylight.
A few rays straggled in through the opening of a deserted shaft.
It was by means of this pipe that ventilation was established
in the Dochart pit. Owing to its lesser density, the warm
air was drawn towards the Yarrow shaft. Both air and light,
therefore, penetrated in some measure into the glade.

Here Simon Ford had lived with his family ten years,
in a subterranean dwelling, hollowed out in the schistous mass,
where formerly stood the powerful engines which worked
the mechanical traction of the Dochart pit.

Such was the habitation, "his cottage," as he called it, in which resided
the old overman. As he had some means saved during a long life of toil,
Ford could have afforded to live in the light of day, among trees,
or in any town of the kingdom he chose, but he and his wife and son
preferred remaining in the mine, where they were happy together,
having the same opinions, ideas, and tastes. Yes, they

were quite fond of their cottage, buried fifteen hundred feet
below Scottish soil. Among other advantages, there was no
fear that tax gatherers, or rent collectors would ever come
to trouble its inhabitants.

At this period, Simon Ford, the former overman of the Dochart pit,
bore the weight of sixty-five years well. Tall, robust,
well-built, he would have been regarded as one of the most
conspicuous men in the district which supplies so many fine
fellows to the Highland regiments.

Simon Ford was descended from an old mining family, and his
ancestors had worked the very first carboniferous seams opened
in Scotland. Without discussing whether or not the Greeks
and Romans made use of coal, whether the Chinese worked coal
mines before the Christian era, whether the French word for coal
(HOUILLE) is really derived from the farrier Houillos, who lived
in Belgium in the twelfth century, we may affirm that the beds
in Great Britain were the first ever regularly worked.
So early as the eleventh century, William the Conqueror divided
the produce of the Newcastle bed among his companions-in-arms.
At the end of the thirteenth century, a license for the mining
of "sea coal" was granted by Henry III. Lastly, towards the end
of the same century, mention is made of the Scotch and Welsh beds.

It was about this time that Simon Ford's ancestors penetrated
into the bowels of Caledonian earth, and lived there ever after,
from father to son. They were but plain miners. They labored
like convicts at the work