Visit to Torbanehill

VISIT TO TORBANEHILL.—ITS MINERALS.

FIRST ARTICLE.

We lately paid a visit to Torbanehill. Unknown to yourself, reader, you have an interest in the place, for that brilliant jet of gas, as well as the Parraffin oil in the moderator lamp, are manufactured from product of its mines, besides, some years ago there was, in connection with this said Torbanehill, or rather its mineral, one of the most remarkable law-suits which ever came into court; and though decided at the time, yet, it seems, the lawyers have been again applied to, and will soon have their hands full of it.

On the Edinburgh and Glasgow line of Railway, and at the Ratho Station, a branch with a single line of rails may observed to strike off to Bathgate. This town lies twenty miles south-west of Edinburgh, and again to the south of this busy inland place lies the small estate of Torbanehill; but are to embrace, in our visit, a wider district, stretching away farther west and south. We set ourselves down the centre of this district for some fourteen days to examine the mineral and the moral, the material and spiritual, features of it.

The district of which we here particularly speak, apart from its minerals or its men, is certainly not an inviting one. There are at least many more desirable and lovely spots in our “north countrie”. The soil is cold and unkindly immense tracts are covered by moss; the water tastes unpleasant and bitter; and the crops were late for the season, and not abundant. In short, should think, it is one of the poorest corners, agriculturally viewed, of all the Lothians.

But its mineral treasures are vast and, not to speak of the peculiar Torbanehill mineral, of which more anon, there are immense stores, in its subordinate strata, of various and valuable kinds of coal, ironstone, cement, fireclay, and sandstone. Indeed, when you once get beneath the soil, every layer to a profound depth is of intrinsic and commercial value. It is only, however, within the lifetime of the present generation that these mineral resources have commenced to be earnestly and successfully wrought. But now the whole district is being covered with a complete network of railways for mineral traffic; and far and near there meets the eye the chimney stalk of the engine, with the other presentiments of the mine - the dense smoke, and the large heaps of matter raised from beneath, most of it of immediate and marketable use, and all of it of some.

The first step in the search for these precious things of the earth is the process of boring. With an augur the borer pierces the solid strata, and registers in his notes the materials below - their order, their depth, and their seeming amount and worth. If the borer’s report be favourable, a deep pit is dug in the earth, which is called shaft. At the mouth of this shaft a steam-engine is erected, with pumps and other machinery attached, for raising the water, allowing the miners to descend and ascend, and for bringing to the surface and the light of day the products of the mine; coal, iron, or clay. From this shaft there proceed off, and, of course, you understand, down below, cuttings into the rocky strata, which we may be allowed to describe as lanes, if we are allowed to call the shaft a street. These lanes, or horizontal excavations, are just the vacant spaces left whence the minerals, now conveyed to the top, were dug.

In the bowels of mother earth, neither you nor I, gentle reader, would have the peace of mind or the power of vision to examine the different minerals, but as laid down at the mouth of the mine previous to their transit to other regions, we may have both. We are all familiar with coals, being all more or less judges and consumers. These at our feet, we do not even require to remember our location, are Scotch. There are several kinds, parrot, cannel, common, but coals they are, and that without mistake. See here in some of the blocks you can observe with the naked eye the vegetable structure; and there, on the faces of the larger pieces, arethe marks of sigittaria and stigmaria. Laid down in the same heap, side by side, and associated in the strata below with the coals, are the shales, and, clearing them, vegetable impressions of reeds and ferns are observed to abound, If in the north you had some doubt about the vegetable origin of coal, so far at least as all the common kinds are concerned, you can have none here. The ironstone - you do not at once pronounce upon it. There it is, however, in great quantity, and, for an ore, we are told, in good quality. It is not unlike some of the coals, but heavier, more massive in its structure, and more varied in its colour—now streaked with lines of deepest black, and again with stripes of light brown. What may be the percentage of metallic iron, it is difficult to say. It must vary much in specimens, not only from the district, but from the same mine. The ironstone, however, is largely charged with vegetable matter, for where the heaps are kindled in the open air, they are burning without fuel. The ore is thus reduced to half its bulk, and then sent off in this calcined state to the smelting furnaces in other parts. The cement is just a layer found in some of the pits, which is or can be ground down into valuable or useful mortar. The fireclay is just another, and is first of all dealt with in the same way as the cement, and then converted, as may be seen in the process of making ordinary bricks, into the fire-bricks used in furnaces and stoves.

But to the geologist the most perplexing, and, in the meantime, to the trader the most valuable, although by no means the most abundant, mineral is peculiar stratum found on the estate of Torbanehill, but not confined to it. It would be a long history, and, unless to parties directly concerned, a wearisome, to relate all heard of this mineral above and below ground. Once on a time, the borer, when he found it in his tool, not only expressed his dislike of the brown dust into which it had crumbled, but also augured poverty of anything else. Yet, in spite of his prejudices, it began to be looked at, and all of a sudden it appeared in the market as coal from Boghead, and as an excellent fuel for the gas retort. Then it was accidentally discovered on the Torbanehill; and now began the grave plea - was it coal? or, was it not? We shall give you some of the particulars, and leave you to judge. As have stated, it was first of all sold in the market as the Boghead coal; it was known among miners as the gas coal scientific men - though doctors differed, as we shall see - pronounced it under oath to be coal ; and judge and jury unanimously found in their verdict that it was coal. But much remains to be said on the other side. Other scientific men, in as solemn a way, declared it to be coal; it has some, but it wants some, of the properties of coal; it is light as wood, and cuts like wood, and burns with an intense smoke and odour, and leaves in the grate not a cinder, but a stone. And they manufacture from paraffin, and benzoin, and tar, and something else - a secret. If the coal, so excellent for our fireplaces, be mineralised vegetable matter, this product of the mine, so admirable for our gas retorts, is mineralised oily matter. At this present time, the naphtha springs of volcanic districts are depositing material not unlike. Despite the decision of judge and jury, we much doubt if the term coal should be applied to it. But leaving the quarrel to others, may just mention in a sentence the value of the mineral. Not only is sent to many cities and towns in our own land, but it is largely exported to the Continent; and, strange to tell, the capitals of Europe are lighted with the refuse of a Scotch moss.

The ironstone found in the district in that peculiar variety of it called the blackband, but in this form it is curious that it does not appear along with the Torbanehill mineral; at least, if both are found in the same pit, they are thinning out, and are of inferior quality. But in the same mine, along with the purest and best Torbanehill mineral, is found the ball iron. Varying from the weight of a few ounces upwards to that of cwt., these balls are found, and appear to have once been in a visced or molten state. Every traveller on the old coach-road between Edinburgh and Glasgow will remember the inn at Armadale Toll. Cold and bleak the district now is; but ill the times of geological antiquity it must have presented very different appearance. Then it was a tropical clime, in which flourished those gigantic tree ferns which are abundant as fossils in the coal measures. Thermal and naphtha springs distilled their oily streams into the valley. And these balls of ironstone were discharged the play of its grand artillery from yon neighbouring volcano, now the Knock Hill behind Bathgate, and whose towering eminence is such a striking feature the modern landscape.

Montrose Review, 30th October 1857

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VISIT TO TORBANEHILL. - ITS MEN.

SECOND ARTICLE.

We arrived in Bathgate by the afternoon train from Edinburgh. As we emerged from the Railway Station, we immediately met with the men of Torbanehill. Such of them as lived in the town of Bathgate were returning to their homes, and at a glance you could pronounce on their calling and their trade. Though you had never seen a miner before, you would have at once exclaimed, these are “the men." They had such a peculiar development of the bodily frame, powerful muscular arms- as if accustomed to toil, but weak and attenuated lower extremities, as if often in a confined position, and accustomed to crawl. They were dressed in clothes not certainly old, but of the fashion of the day, as if often renewed, but very much torn and dirty wherewithal. Their persons were freely bespattered- face, hands, and clothes - with a blackish sort of mud, and over the face, attached to the cap or dilapidated wide-awake, there hung dangling a small lamp. There could not be chosen a more appropriate emblem of their occupation - away underground from the light and sun of day - than this same lamp; and it at once impressed me with their great and immediate need, as moral and spiritual beings, of enlightenment. It would be wrong to judge any man, or any class of men, from first appearances ; but though for that evening we had to find our way to our lodgings, which lay for the time some miles off, yet we had farther opportunities in due course of entering many of their homes, and of having intercourse with their minds, and of forming for ourselves some opinion of their mental and moral condition.

We must premise that in this district, away to the west and south of Bathgate, in which the ironstone and other minerals are being so extensively wrought, have not a fair specimen of the Scotch miner. As we mentioned in our previous article, the peculiar and valuable minerals in this field have begun only to be raised extensively within the last few years, and we have, as a consequence, importations of labourers from England and Ireland - good and bad from many a mining district; and along with those who have been born and bred to the trade, we have immigrants from the Green Isle, who have just emerged from the phase of the “railway navvie.” Amongst a population thus collected from all lands, we found that every heresy had its adherents, and every delusion its dupes. The older creeds were there, of course, represented by the Irish brogue, and, if need were, might have battle done for them by a strong arm and with stout cudgel. Clubs also of a political cast, which in our ignorance we had supposed to be extinct, have, if not their organisation, at least their watchwords and their faction fights, feuds, often steeped in blood, as was proved a recent execution for murder at Linlithgow; and among the nominally Protestant population, though never among the Papist, Mormonism has its apostles, and has made and is making converts. Throughout the district, as the mineral wealth and operations are being developed, the mining companies are erecting for their workmen house accommodation, outwardly least, a very respectable, if not superior style. Would that over all the country the dwelling-places of our working classes were of the same type! These new erections are set down in convenient spots, clustered together in rows, which are indeed so many villages. Sweetly sounding are the names of several of these villages -Armadale, Bathvale, Woodend, and Mount Pleasant. To a great extent, alas! they are, however, moral wastes ; and great endeavours must be made for the population, and a great change wrought on it, before such pleasant words as these and their moral condition do at all correspond. Not, however, but what in every row or village there are families and individuals superior to the mass. The newspaper seemed to be thoughtfully read by all who could read. They were familiar with the startling events of the time in India and other lands. We never so much felt before the power of the newspaper press among certain classes of our community, and henceforth we shall be more alive to the advantages of its purity and the dangers of its licentiousness. As yet, the Churches hare built for this rapidly increasing population no chapels, and the State no schools; but matters surely will not be suffered to continue thus? It is sad to think that, all owing to the jealousies and rivalries of parties in Church and State, our country should be fast losing its prestige and position as regards the education of her people. Once Scotland stood in the van of educated nations; but if efforts are not put forth commensurate with the wants and numbers of our population, and especially in such districts those to which in this article particularly refer, we shall soon have our position in the rear. In the delay, and perhaps in the final defeat a national scheme, our mining districts present wide and unoccupied fields for Christian benevolence and philanthropy. May they soon be occupied. With these sons of arduous toil, we should have the deepest sympathy. Long regarded as mere serfs, bought and sold with the lands on which they lived, or with the minerals which they dug from the ground, must expect to find amongst them the results of past oppressions and neglect. And still, to provide for for wants and to minister to our comforts, they are engaged in a hazardous and trying occupation. Have you ever remembered, when the gas light burns brightly on our Christian assemblies on the evening of a Sabbath, or on the happy family circle and hearth on the evening of other days, that for you, in the damp and dark mine, has the miner toiled, shut out from every material and human influence that ameliorates the evils of our condition, or refines and ennobles the faculties of our natures.

We are not qualified, perhaps, and it is not our province to speak of the truck system, as it is called. In the massive blue books of our Legislature, we believe there is to be found extensive evidence on the subject, and we should like to examine these more carefully ere we condemned the system out-and-out. mus:, confess, however, that, whilst we do allow there are advantages to the masters or the proprietors, we could not see any that accrued to the workmen. If we were to believe the statements of some who groaned under the yoke, although free trade be the theory, it is not always the practice. We shall not enter into details; but, caught in the meshes of the system, many of the miners were of opinion that they had not the same liberty as their master - to sell in the dearest market and buy in the cheapest. It must be confessed, however, that the monstrous evil among the miners is intemperance. Among some classes of our population, intemperance may safely be said to be the parent of every vice, and amongst this population it was strikingly so. Outwardly, as we have said, their new dwellings looked respectable and comfortable, if not elegant; one way or other they earn a large wage ; many of the mining companies have nothing to do with the truck or barter system and yet, alas! all through drunkenness, or chiefly so, many of the houses internally were pictures of wretchedness and want. We once asked a miner what could be the reason of so much drinking His reply - just as you view it was either a very simple or a very shrewd one; and it amounted to this;—“ You have seen,” he said, the secret Chemical Works, and you know the Torbanehill mineral. Well, I am persuaded,” he continued, they manufacture alcohol from it, —and there’s the secret of our drink.” to the chemical probability or possibility of the thing we have no information; but certainly when on a Monday forenoon, at twelve on the clock, we met women with their children clinging to their arms, and reeling on the public highway, did begin think that our friend might not be far wrong. We may differ as to the remedy for this gigantic evil and sin of our times, but, for our individual part, we are prepared to welcome every means which poses in any way to counteract the drinking habits of society. Let efforts by all means be made to reform our criminals; but if intemperance be the parent of so much crime, is inot prevention better than cure?

Montrose Review, 13th November 1857