Besides these tribes a certain proportion of Tunisian Arabs are employed,
but they are too weak or timorous to relish underground work; a sprinkling
of negroes, as well as some of the hillfolk from the district surrounding
Metlaoui, who go by the quaint name of Boujaja.
"Good fellows," said Dufresnoy. "They will slit your throat for a you."
The surface phosphates having already become exhausted, the mineral is now
pursued into the dim recesses of the earth. Tunnels are excavated, whence
smaller ones radiate in definite directions--all of them sustained by
wooden beams; the amount of material to be extracted from a given spot is
scientifically fixed; it is shattered by minute blasts of dynamite and,
once the trolley cars have carried it away, the wooden supports are
removed and these cavities filled up by the collapse of the roof. By this
means accidents are forestalled such as that which took place some years
ago when, owing to an oversight of some subordinate left in charge, an
immense mass of mountain fell in, entombing about three hundred miners,
whose bodies are not yet recovered.
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