The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 19, 1899, Page 21

A Bl A Blazing Volcano That Has Companu Over &3 Cost the 000,000. fallen ave at the base of of the hill re of opening over a rift in the eart s | which it puffs in our faces. Arc erture the ground fs phurous odor es on a deeper g the steam There is gests the d t issues in a steady stream, | of locomotives far be- | t of into ap- ble warmth beneath your feet. C vou several inches of earth fal 1. seam. Beneath the railroad tr: red s c. We are sta house grill on mountain. The breath of a sirocco hangs c he sun Is s had “How | th place ey rise in quivering. is not safe to wander in this od. Under other conditions uld be a genial and comforting the fire which sends its rays There are no patches of give a cool aspect to the landscape here. The air along the edse of the cliff is hot and dry and harsh. The narrow track will be obliterats e of these d apd the ties will go up in W W to fascination about that glow- 1g grate on the mountain top. Almost before I realize it I take from my pocket a cigar and stoop over the red seam, sup- ) vself by holding to a railroad | blast of air strikes my face s a longer reach to the glowing coals than I thought. The heat almost blister I ventured. | the outstretched hand. It is only hal rm.” an inch more. The end of the Havana that the | strikes the bed of coals. end. Behind me the earth gives away. One almost slips toward the red coals Is and covers the furnace g Did ever a spadeful of earth more opportunely fall? -The cold perspiration is standing on my forehead as I scramble v from the grill set. The cigar is hted. We hurry away from the spot And vet it was only a few days ago that we wondered why the French actress went so closc to the crater that she singed her eyebro . 1- | But what of the fanitor? From around g- | the edge of a cliff of red rock he comes. he | His cap is drawn over hisgeyes and the te used as the backing of his miner’s \p shines in the sun. Here is the man s grown gray in the service y No. 2. show you through the mine?” “That I will; andyit's glad I > other o to feel npleas- is very warm to-day way s were at t caved in on the boi f coal wa The > for the m the surfac he asked. am to see you.” short shifts, Thes were | }e leads the Many of | the burning mine. The life of a mgle to be car- reed with Frank McGovern. Still ades. That first | it has not been so void of excitenrent that the any in all respects to be compared to the | existence of the creature which burrows Water | in the earth. There's a genial twinkle in coal | which shine from beneath the to burn | eyebro “It's glad T am to see you,” he sald, “for once in a while it's a bit lonely down v in the mine.” , the fire | We have reached a ragged, irregular it tries to | opening beneath the hill ¢ to the entrance of impossib] the eyes shaggy ¢ wall, and | As we walk toward the red rock a| nt drive | miserable, half starved dog follows at nd the | our heels. Man not been o friendly omething | to him. In the hope of getting into the to eat, perhaps, he goes with u | mouth of the opening. This entrance re is a | does not look much like that of the lroad track which crawls |fabled Inferno. Here is a broad entrance » hillside. It is a region of red | to the mine. The living rock makes a arth and disinteg k. | roof high over our heads. The floor of a ravine through whic the tunmel is strewn with rock and piled the washing of coal d up timbers. From the rock above us ippery banks. A bit of the |icicles hang—stalactites formed by the d rock drops occasionally from | cold winds which sweep in at the open- n overhanging bank. There |ing of the tunnel. The half light shines uttings in the mountain side which | upon them, giving the effect of a dimly )¢ men never made. On either side | lighted subterranean gallery such as are sressions which show that earth |found in Virginia and Kentucky. To the k slip from the foundations be- | right of us are solid pillars of coal, thirty feet wide—the supports of the hill above. | Now the light fades at our backs. Me- Govern stoops dver a pile of debris, turns stone of two and draws out two volcano. nd a p the al cars gh road to g among « h ebon breaker. Ther it's a| ind of ar tr the ck curve is the re undulating pumping station, v means of a siphon the water 18 | over drawn off from a pond into the brook | miner's lamps. He has stored them away the right is a sheer well of red | from the sight)of graceless youth to whom “findings i keepings.” We have two diminutive torches a moment later, and, like a campsign procession of two, we begin our marth through the lane which leads around) the acres of fire. re dead. v have the appear- | Cool air blows thriugh the long gallery e petrified trees in some un-|for a while, and then a gentle warmth nd -forest. There are branches | takes away the chill| cre is a winding top of the hill. winter has placed a heavy hand veg it does not take more a. g e to w that the trees on path which | | fon, | | | The man whose hair has grown gray while watching the fire for a quarter of a century. “It's getting a little warmer,” remarks McGovern. : “When you get under the earth the mercury rises a little, you know.” Our footfalls make no sound. Beneath us is a floor which deadens the step. A swing of the lamp downward discloses a black and soggy layer of clay. On the ‘rlxhl side rises a coal blackened, pasty half pyramid—s mass of clay, packed and | pounded close against the restraining | with the hose until they be drowned out that way, they smother it out. So they packed the place with clay elght feet deep and plastered and pounded the walls all along the weak places to keep out the choke damp. In them days the choke damp was that aw- ful that it was a risky thing for a man to come down here. I can’t say that it PO Handkerchie MONG the various exhibits in fa- mous criminal cases that have held the civilized world spellbound with their frightful disclosures, it is in- saw it could not | when we thought that with clay tried to | (CXOXCICECIOROIOTOJOROXORORONO] ks That Have Cut a Figure in Crime. teresting to note how often an ac- | cused criminal's life has hung, not by a thread, but by threads, by that little rchief. “Apparel oft proclaims the man,’ ere are tndications that can trace it to its owner »r rather vice versa, by the perfumery or chet upon it in some instances: by its size, whether it be a man’s or a woman'. by initials in the corner; by its quality, and by the laundry marks upon it. as in the case of the notorious desperado and stage robber so well remembered by Cali- fornians—"Black Bart.” One of the cleverest pleces of detective work ever accomplished in this State was by J. B. Hume, special officer for Well 'argo. When news reached his office on No- vember 3, 1883, that a stage had been held up and robbed near Tuttleville 51d that a handkerchief and some other arti- cles had been found behind some clifts near the place of attack, Mr. Hume im- mediately telegraphed to have the things sent down to him. He carefully inspected the handkerchief —a plain hemstitched man’s handkerchief —and noticed a laundry mark in one cor- ner, F x 0 7. Upon this evidence, a hand- kerchief with that fatal laundry mark, was Black Bart arrested. Mr. Hume set to work to find out where the nandkerchief had been laundered, and after several days of careful inquiry and diligent search it was traced to a laundry down on Bush street, kept by a man named Ware. This laundry office was also a sort of lounging room, with a to- bacco stand on one side, and here Black Bart—known there as Charlle Bolton, a mining man and capitalist—spent a great deal of his time. When the handkerchief was brought to Ware and he was asked to whom it be- longed he said: ““Why, that is Charlie Bolton's handkerchief. He brought his laundry here just before he returned to the mines a short time ago.” That settled it. Detective Hume sent nstructions for the arrest of Black Bart. Black Bart, who after years of depreda- tions, during which time he had robbed twenty-eight stages and had kept the stage drivers in continual fear of. their lives, this clever felon was at last trapped by a handkerchief. The shrewd criminal, who had held the Sheriff as well as the Wells-Fargo detectives at 'bay for so long, d1d not see that there was enough differ- ence between one handkerchief and an- other to disclose a man's identity and con- vict him of crime. But then Black Bart lived before the days of Cordelia Botkin. On a handkerchief Shakespeare found- ed his tragedy of ‘‘Othello.” The plot is uare of linen, of lawn, of silk—a hand- | * and | about a handkerchief certain | ever bothered me very much, being tough like. Thousands and thousands of tons of the clay were brought into this place and rammed up close to the walls. It was along here that a boy named Flynn was killed. He was caught by one of the cars and the life was crushed out of him.” We were following the trend of the gal- lery. Between tightly rammed buttresses of clay are stretches of solid masonry, solid as a fortress. “That wall is from twe to four feet *“explains the guide, “and it heélps to keep In the fire dev The time was and the mason work the fire would be choked out. And it would, too, but for the breaking of it through the top of the hill, where you see the steam coming out from twen- ty chimn Around us are ever-where the evidences of the fut y of the effort of man against the element of rature, fire, when follow- ing its mission of destruction. The great walls have for years withstood the march summed up in tnis little dialogue between | Othello and the archvillain. Iago: Tago—*‘Tell me -t this— Have you not sometimes seen a handker- chief Spotted with strawberries in your wife's hand?"” Othello—"‘T gave her such a one; ‘twas my first gift.” Through that little embroldered fabric, jdentified as his gift to Desdemona, did Othello accuse her of unfaithfulness. Iago saw its possibilities, and by his secret cunning and Insinuation he led Othello to belleve that it was found in Cassio’s room, incriminating evidence of his wife's guilt! And with such guarantee of her dishonor the Moor strangled to death his innocent wife. Attorney Knight had done well to haye read the entire plot to the Botkin jury! Vasquez, the Spanish bandit, who was the terror of all Monterey County for so many years, always used a Spanish ban- dana, one of those big red affairs with white spots upon it. With this he gagged his helpless victims while he relieved them of their valuables. After all, he was a wise criminal in his selection, for a red bandana would not show so plainly stains of blood, and then, too, a handkerchief is a concealed weapon, ingocent in appear- ancé. A curious way in which a handkerchief was used in connection with crime is told by Mr. Amedee Joullin, the artist, just returned from a trip through New Mex- ico. At a lonely place, Mesa del Morro, lo- cated many miles from the railroad, he and his companion, General Sol Bibo, had just finished inscribing their names upon the famous rock. Turning around, they were confronted by four masked men, who were afterward found to be stage robbers from Utah. As soon as the rob- bers found that the two gringos had no money or whisky with them they rode off. Governor Bibo fumbled in his pockets for a scrap of paper to write a telegram to be sent to the Sheriff at the nearest telegraph office. Neither of the men hav- ing any about them, the Governor took out his pocket handkerchief and wrote the telegram out on it and sent it hurriedly by thelr guide to the nearest station—Fort ‘Wingate. Through this message, writter upon a handkerchief, the four desperate train robbers and murderers were cap- tured ard killed. Mrs. Whitten, a famous woman crim- inal In New York, was finally captured and imprisoned by the aid of a certain perfumed handkerchief. She resided in a large and fashionable boarding house, and at frequent intervals valuable pieces of jewelry had been stolen from the vari- ous guests. The woman, who was after- ward convicted of the crime, was never suspected, as she, too, claimed to be hav- ing her valuables stolen from her room. What the surface of the ground looks like over the burning coal mine. of the fire, the sealing with clay has kept out the noxious gases, but the fire still burns, and it will burn until hy thousands of dollars’ worth of coal are turned to ashes. “Those were likely da: Govern, “when we were fighting the crea- ture down here. Many a Sirong man was carried back, overcome with the heat and the choking gas, and many was the time that the gas came roaring out, caught fire and ran along the roof like a reptile made of flame. It was the water as it un- der control, though. We couldn’t put it out, so strong was the hold of the crea- ture on the good coal, but it was the ter as drove it back and it is water which to this day says to it, ‘So far and no farther.’ Along the gallery came a warm breath of alr, like, the blast of a subterranean sirocco. “It's getting a little warmer, if T may be ger‘mltred to remark,” says McGovern. There. is no doubt of it. The air as- dreds of remarks Me- | sumes the temperature of a Harlem flat | on a warm day—one of the days when the janitor turns on every pound of steam. We are in an open space. The dog, whic has followed us, scel the air and at- tempts to take to his heels. McGovern rabs him by the collar and draws him ack he says. ou'll get “It’s a bit uncanny 3 i sit down a used to it all righf. bit.” He lights the way to the side of the cav- ern, where there is a rude seat made of a board resting on two chunks of coal It this fellow had all the money in the world,” observes McGovern, oracuiar tone, “do you know what would give it for? something like this.”” 3 He reaches up and takes from his din- ner patl a big crust of bread. The hun- gry dog consumes the food in two or three Srunches, and licks the outside of the din- he ner pall. oy “Hpe will follow us all right now,” says McGovern. . “He'd go through hell fire with us, and that’s no mistake.” My back was growing unpleasantly warm. The wall against which had been leaning had more than the heat com- mon to subterranean regions where the mercury rises a little. We have reached the Giant's Cause- way. Here the roof is sup] orted by square_timbers, uprights. witll cros feces laid across the notched ends. 3 gmnd as sentinels at the outposts of the fire. A few feet beyond there is the re- gion of perpetual glow. the field of fire Which has continued through a quarter of a century. The flames had eaten out the restraining bulkhead of coal in places, e T heli had fallen, revealing a trail of ashes and the flery furnace beyond. More pillars had been put in place and the-stability of the roof was insured. All through these years the company has spent its hundreds of thousands in_the effort to keep the mine from becoming a fenace to those who may walk above and to those who toil in adjacent mines. ‘There has been a fortune spent in timber sup- ports alone. 5}@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Detectives were put to work on the case and finally they traced the culprit by means of a-handkerchief, dropped in a hasty retreat from one of the rooms. The detective to whom the handkerchief was given noticed upon it a peculiar perfume, a subtle odor used at the boarding house only by Mrs. Whitten, and to her the handkerchief was traced and then the crime, in the sand-lot days of San Franclsco, when the garroters made_life miserable for lone pedestrians, handkerchiefs were used with which to gag the victims, and many of these handkerchiefs, are in the possession of pioneers, who relate to thelir grandchildren tales of the wild and woolly bygone days. Two handkerchiefs figured in the Dur- rant case. One, identified as belonging to Minnie Wililams, was found covered with blood behind the Emmanuel Church, where the murders were perpetrated. Only last month Mrs. Slinkey commit- ted suicide with the aid of a handker- chief. She hung a trunk strap to four nalls and, in order to keep the strap from slipping, she twisted her handkerchief tightly around the nails. Thus a hand- kerchief was indirectly the cause of her death; the strap otherwise might have slipped and the woman repented her rash act before too late. Highway robbers usually wear masks made of handkerchiefs, for they are a more complete disguise than a mask bought for the purpose. Persons who have committed suicide by jumping off ferry boats have, in many cases, destroyed every other means of identification except their hancserchiefs. These, thoughtlessly retained and bearing certain initials or marks, have led to the disclosure of the suicide’s name. The Botkin case will go down as one of the strongest cases in the criminal rec- ords of California of the conviction of a murderer based on circumstantial evi- dence. What the keystone is to the arch, so is the twenty-five cent handkerchief sent in that fatal box of candy to the chain of evidence in this famous case—a case where all the eloquence of Califor- nia’s most brilliant lawyers could not swing tne jury to the side of acquittal. The important part a handkerchief played in this case is apparent when one saw how hard the attorneys ior the de- fense worked for days on that one bit of evidence, trying in every way possible and impossible to break the testimony of the woman who sold the handkerchief to Mrs. Botkin. If that little cheap em- broidered handkerchief had not been supred Into that box of chocolates, Mrs. Botkin might be walking the streets of San Francisco to-day a free woman. A handkerchi~¢ convicted her—a little white square of linen will send her to a cell with a blackened character, where she will exist sans friends, sans hope, sans name, sans everything! “Trifies light as air are to the jealous confirmation strong as holy writ!” | assuming the | it He would give it for | | i1 | = Pickets watching the fire trying to break through the giant restraining wall. Woman otation Age of a Depot A erb height and queenly form, ul and graceful and as any man, Miss Elifabeth stands upon the station orm at Blake, San Bernardino , and gives instructions to the engineer of the huge Santa Fe loco- motive, which rolls heavily to a stand- still before her. e is in charge of the Blake station ard night. She occupies the place usually held by the masculine baggage-smasher, train- dispatcher and ticket-agent combined in one individual at small scations. She has | charge the fate of the overland trains | thin the jurisdiction of Blake, which | gularly appointed station on the Sa road. She handles the baggage trucks and the mail bags, and swings the different col- ored lanterns at night to inform the en- | gineers while vet afar off that the road | clear and the station is ready for the ain's reception. | She watches throughout the long, dark | nights at the little deserted station to see | that nothing goes amiss on her link in the | great chain of transcontinental transpor- | tation, in which thousands of sleeping lives are confidingly committed to the wariness and faithfulness with which she and the other agents along the line keep the rails cleared for the thundering trains’ blind flight through the dark. To say that her employment is respected by the men with whom she deals and her dress admired by the women passen- gers who gaze with' big eyes at her nt Who Has Charge M by Herself. controlled by a company which owns no other road. It is only thirty miles long and in that thirty miles it rises 4875 feet, such being the altitude of the mountaln town of Manvel, situated among what are known as the New York Mountains.. en years ago this thirty miles of rail s lald, and to-day the line is paying handsomely. It is called the California Eastern, because some of the sharehold- ers are Californians and some E: A Denver man is president, a man (R. S. Slebert) is general manager. The latter’'s headquarters are at Manvel. Another uncommon feature of this min- fature raflway is that its one train adapts itself obligingly to the wishes of its pas- sengers in the matter of the time at which it shall leave a station. The writer was told, when he got off the Santa Fe train at Blake one night at 9 o'clock, that he could depart thence for Manvel on the following morning at 8:30, such being the time scheduled for the little independent train to start on its 4875-foot climb—a per- formance which it undertakes three times a week. The traveler overslept next morning and got down to the station an hour late. In answer to his breathless inquiries as to the possibility of overtaking the train, he was informed by the “Queen of the Des- ert,” as Miss Young is called, that his intention to go on the Manvel train had been learned the night before and the train was still waiting for him. He found a funny mite of an engine and The first big battle to quench the fire. It cost the company $100,000 the first month and has been a constant expense ever since. through the car windows is to give an intelligent tdea of her remarkable per- sonality. She is one of the most notable of the several startling combinations of female sex and male occupation which this topsy-turvy end of the century has produced. Miss Young is a California girl. She was educated in Los Angeles, and for a while was a teacher in that county. She at- tended business college later and learned telegraphy and typewriting. Teaching did not satisfy the vigorous spirit of the girl nor give her sufficient opportunity for the physical exercise and outdoor life to which a long residence on a Southern California ranch had early accustomed her. She was strong and athletic and full of an adventurous impulse to which her extravagant healthiness constantly urged her. She sought and obtained the position of telegraph operator at Blake. Still, her restiess desire for active physical employment kept her flitting about on her feet away from the clicking keys as much as possible and en- gaging in duties about the station which did not belong to her. She learned the signals used in greeting the trains as they came rushing in from either direction on the regular continental line as well as on the little branch line which ran from Blake to Manvel. This little branch line, by the way, is probably the oddest rafl- road in the country. It is a complete and independent system by itself, owned and three cars standing sedately behind the depot, with a faint haze of steam lazily curling from the smokestack. Two of the cars were loaded with freight in shape of coal and grain, while the third, a passen- ger coach, was half filled with a litter of boxes and sacks and scraps of railroad iron lying in the aisle. The speed at which we finally started on our way left no doubt in the lone passenger’'s mind ° that he could have overtaken the outfit easily with a team of oxen. It stopped here and there along the leisurely journey to sell a sack of wheat or coal or to pick up a wayfarer who had grown tired of walking. The metropolis which holds forth as the terme inus of the road, and which we reached late in the afternoon, contains ten women, ninety-two men, two stores, a meatshop and a saloon. It wasn’t long before Miss Young’s abil- ity to handle every branch of work re- quired at the station of Blake was recog- nized by the railroad officials, and a chance to condense their working force .and cut down expenses possibly occurred to them as a good reason for putting the Queen of the Desert in charge of the whole business. In a short time the girl was established as arbiter of the desti- nies of all peoples who thereafter should come by way of Blake from either East or West. —_——————— Australla i{s the only country in the world where no native pipes and no na- tive smokers have been found.