These engineers work eight hour shifts, and sometimes twelve. Of the nature of their work an idea can be formed by the statement that during the two or three years when the great Bonanza in the California and Con. Virginia mines was giving up its treasure, through two double-compartment shafts, all the work of those two mines was carried on. The main ore body was between the 1,300-foot and 1,700-foot levels. Every day from six hundred to eight hundred men were lowered into and hoisted out of the mine. One hundred thousand feet (square measure) of timbers were lowered daily (three million feet per month); nearly or quite one thousand tons of ore was hoisted daily; the picks, drills and gads were sent up to be sharpened and returned; the powder used and five tons of ice daily were lowered, and besides this work, there was machinery to lower and hoist; the waste rock to be handled and visitors and officers of the mine to be lowered and hoisted. The cages are about four feet six inches in length and three feet in width, and are simply iron frames with a wooden floor and iron bonnet over the top and made to exactly fit the size of the shaft. Three of these compartments had double cages--one above the other, and one had three cages. A three-decker carries three tons of ore or twenty-seven men at a time. Of course when such work is being driven, the eyes of an engineer have to be every moment on their work. Men follow the occupation for months and years without an accident or mistake, but now and then, through the ceaseless strain, their nerves break down; something like an aberration of the mind comes over them and they watch, dazed like sleep-walkers, as the cage shoots out of the shaft and mounts up into the sheaves and cannot command themselves enough to move the lever of the engine which is in their hand. Such an accident as this overtook Wright and his companion. Poor Wright was carried home by brother miners. The accident happened only about an hour before the time for changing shifts and hardly was Wright laid in his bed before the other members of the Club met at their home. The best surgical talent of the city was called; the members of the Club took turns in watching; there was not a moment that one or the other was not bending over their friend. At first, when he rallied from the shock of the injury, Wright told all about the accident. He further told his friends that he had no near relatives, instructed the Club, in the event of his death, to open his trunk, burn the papers and divide the little money there among themselves, designated little presents for each one and said: "Miller will be grieved if I die, and may think my heart was not altogether warm toward him, so give him my watch; it is the most valuable trinket that I have."