The miner left the house gloomily but returned in half an hour with the fingers working.
As a result, many miners and their families left to find work.
By 1870 most miners had left, leaving as few as 460 residents.
Several miners from the Potosi mine left to proceed to the find.
In the first 6 months of 1875 over 10,000 miners left Cornwall to find work overseas.
Meanwhile, those miners who see the writing on the wall will be leaving soon in droves.
At one point, the miners "estimated they had about an hour left based on the rate the water was rising," the report said.
The old miners were very thorough in their working and rarely left much ore for later generations.
Now the rule was that a miner could not leave the mine until he paid his debts.
The company initially said all 3,900 departing miners left voluntarily.