First off, there's the nature of the Desnairian deposits, about which we know nothing substantive. If they turn out to be placer deposits, _lack_ of water could turn out to be a bigger issue than too much. I've seen a major placer operation, and you need a lot of water in the sluices even if you're not using hydraulic mining. Water that has to come from someplace uphill in the absence of powered pumps. And I shudder to think what it would be like to run a remotely industrial-scale mine in a place like the Klondike _without_ IC-powered pumps powering the hydraulic jets.
If they aren't placer mines, and the gold is still in situ in the original formation, those rocks tend [there are exceptions, of course] to be both really hard and relatively dry. Drainage may not be nearly the problem some are thinking and it can often be quite practical to cut your tunnels so that what drainage is needed is provided by gravity. In fact, it can be forced on you by the geology if you have to get at the veins from below.
And, of course, if you do need to actively drain your operation, windmills are not obviously the most likely option. There were Roman mines in Spain, for example, drained by multiple bucket chains run by treadwheels. Something like 5 to 8 levels of them in the biggest installations, IIRC. With honking big treadwheels, with people on them.
When you think about it any of the above, and I'd not be surprised if it was all three plus others I've not thought of, would go a long way towards explaining why slavery remains such a popular institution in Desnair.
Julia Minor wrote:lyonheart wrote:
OTOH, mining deeply brought the need for steam engines etc to pump them out, so I'm curious why that hasn't happened yet in Desnair.
Are the mine sited windmills that effective in pumping them out?
Not a geologist, but maybe some quirk of how the Desnairian mountains formed means their gold veins are easier to get to, so they don't need anything more than windmills.
Which could get fun if it turns out places like Sodar had gold deposits all along and just couldn't get to them without Lywysite mining charges and steam-powered pumps.