Life is easy in all this leafy splendor and so is
death, but no eye of man is there to look upon it, no birds brighten the
dense green of the trees, and the ferns and shrubs have no flowers as
we know them. The air is heavy with carbon."
"Where was the coal?"
"The coal wasn't made yet. You know how the soil of the West Woods at
home is deep with decayed leaves? Just imagine what soil would be if it
were made by the decay of these huge trees and ferns! It became yards
and yards deep and silt and water pressed it down and crushed from it
almost all the elements except the carbon, and it was transformed into a
mineral, and that mineral is coal."
"Coal? Our coal?"
"Our coal. See the point of a fern leaf on this bit?" and he held out
the piece of coal he had been holding. "That fern grew millions of years
ago."
"Isn't it delicate and pretty!" exclaimed Ethel Blue, as it reached her
in passing from hand to hand, "and also not as clean as it once was!"
she added ruefully, looking at her fingers.
By way of preparation for their descent into the mine each member of the
party was given a cap on which was fastened a small open wick oil lamp.
They did not light them, however, until they had all been carried a
hundred feet down into the earth in a huge elevator. Here they needed
the illumination of the tiny lamps whose flicker made dancing shadows on
the walls.
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