are supported by timbers six inches through, which leaves a shaft three
feet square. The miner digs the well or shaft just as we dig our water
wells, and the dirt and rock are hoisted up in a bucket by a rope and
windlass. But one man can work in the shaft at a time. For many years
no water was found; but, as there is a deposit of petroleum under the
ozokerite, at a depth of six hundred feet from the surface, the miners
were troubled with gas. This is got rid of by blowing a current of fresh
air from a rotary fan through a pipe extending down the shaft as fast as
the curbing of timber is put in place. The ozokerite is embedded in a
very stiff blue clay for a depth of several hundred feet; below, it is
interlaid with rock. [Specimens of crude and manufactured ozokerite were
on exhibition, through the kindness of Dr. J. S. Newberry.]

That part of the earth's surface has more miners' shafts to the acre
than any other part of the globe. As wages are very low in Poland,
averaging not more than forty cents a day for men and ten cents for
children, a very small quantity of ozokerite pays for the working. If
thirty or forty pounds a day is obtained, it remunerates the two men
and one or two children required to work each lease. When the bucket,
containing the earth, rock, and wax, is dumped in the little shed
covering the shaft, it is picked over by the children, who detach the
wax from the clay or rock with knives. The miners use galvanized wire
ropes and wooden buckets. When preparing to descend, they invariably
cross themselves and utter a short prayer. The business is not free from
danger, carelessness on the part of the boy supplying the fresh air, or
the caving in of the unsupported roof, causing a large number of deaths.
One of the government inspectors of the mines informed me that in one
week there had been eight deaths from accidents.

The ozokerite is taken to a crude furnace, and put into a common cast