ENTOMBMENT OF MINERS.

Kumara Times, Issue 2995, 9 June 1886, Page 3

ENTOMBMENT OF MINERS.

♦ A terrible instunce of entombment of miners, and of the practice of cannibalism by those who survived the longest, is reported by a Boulogne correspondent of The Times as followa :—" Excavations in the Chancelade quarries, where a landslip occurred last October, burying a number of workmen, have been carried on ever since for the purpose of unearthing the bodies. For many days after the slip was believed to have smothered the workers smoke was seen to issue from the ruins. Soldiers and quatryraen, directed by a party of engineers, worked day and night in the hope of taking the men out alive. Ever since the work has proceeded, but of late the endeavours were Dot so vigorously plied. The diggers have now reached the actual spot where the men were engaged at the time of the accident, and on penetrating into a gallery cut in the stone the explorers discovered the body of a young man lying on the ground. Photographs taken of the position show that a dreadful state of affairs must have come about when the men uncrushed found themselves en. tombed. It appears undoubted that Borne of the men tried to prolong their lives by killing and eating their companions in misfortune, A. few solitary arms and limbs have been picked up in their prison, and everything points to the fact that cannibalism was resorted to. The young man, whose body was unmutilated, seems to have survived the others and to have died of hunger."