Pains and Perils of Mining

This chapter from the 1883 publication Comstock Mining and Miners reveals many details of how Comstock miners dealt with the extreme heat in the mines: "Tons of ice were sent down daily into the mines; the half-fainting men chewed fragments greedily to cool their parched throats, and carried lumps in their clinched hands through the drifts; iced water from the tanks was drank in extraordinary quantities. In the hotter levels three gallons was a moderate allowance for one man during a shift of 8 hours;²¹ and 95 pounds of ice was the average daily consumption of every miner employed in the hottest workings of the California and Consolidated Virginia mines during the summer of 1878."
(1883 Comstock Mining and Miners)

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