The Black Hills Union

ALBUQUERQUE, N. M., March 1.-- White Ash coal mine, three miles from Cerrillos, was the scene of a terrible explosion a little before noon yesterday. Thirty-seven men were working in four levels when the disaster occurred. Up to 10 p. m. twenty-five bodies had been taken out horribly burned and mutilated and difficult of identification. One of the rescued, John Stupes, says that when he heard the explosion himself and five comrades started for the main slope, but could not get out and retreated back into the mine to a pool of water, where they immersed themselves, and by agitating the water managed to get air enough to live on for the four hours of their confinement, but when the rescuing party reached them they were in the last stages of asphyxiation.

Owing to the smoke, dust and noxious vapor that filled every approach to the workings two hours elapsed before any progress could be made toward effecting a rescue, and the efforts were cruelly rewarded, for up to 7 o'clock but one miner had been reached. His dead body was found near the entrance. Three hours later the rescuers succeeded in reaching the left fourth level and the dead bodies of several men were brought out. The sight about the mine was heart-rending in the extreme. Frantic wives, many of them carrying babies in their arms, having children clinging to their skirts or to them, stood at the entrance of the mine for hours, amid tears and prayers, watching and waiting, while hundreds of men vainly struggled to gain an entrance further into the mine.

It is thought the explosion was caused by the miners breaking through into some old abandoned work, thus liberating the gas that had accumulated. The mine was worked through a single incline shaft extending 3,000 feet in at an incline of thirty degrees, and seems to have been defective as respects ventilation. The mouth of the shaft is the sole means of egress. Nobody seems to know just how many men went into the shaft in the morning. Ordinarily 150 men are employed, but it is said scarcely half the usual quota of men were at work. Representative Leaden, lately employed there, says he is confident that not less than eighty-five men must have been in the workings at the time of the explosion.