e Obersteinberghauptstollen; our
guides only having candles, one in advance, the other in the rear.

We were sensible of a pleasant coldness in the air when we had gone a
little way into the sloping tunnel. The tunnel was lofty, wide, and dry.
Having walked downwards on a gentle decline for a distance of nearly
three thousand feet through the half gloom and among the echoes, we
arrived at the mouth of the first shaft, named Freudenberg. The method
of descent is called the "Rolle." It is both simple and efficacious.
Down the steep slope of the shaft, and at an angle, in this case, of
forty-one and a half degrees, runs a smooth railway consisting of two
pieces of timber, each of about the thickness of a scaffold pole; they
are twelve inches apart, and run together down the shaft like two sides
of a thick ladder without the intervening rounds. Following the
directions and example of the foremost guide, we sat astride, one behind
the other, on this wooden tramway, and slid very comfortably to the
bottom. The shaft itself was only of the width necessary to allow room
for our passage. In this way we descended to the next chamber in the
mountain, at a depth of a hundred and forty feet (perpendicular) from the
top of the long slide.

We then stood in a low-roofed chamber, small enough to be lighted
throughout by the dusky glare of our two candles. The walls and roof
sparkled with brown and purple colours, showing the unworked stratum of
rock-salt. We stood then at the head of the Untersteinberghauptstulm,
and after a glance back at the narrow slit in the solid limestone through
which we had just descended, we pursued our way along a narrow gallery of
irregular level for a further distance of six hundred and sixty feet. A
second shaft there opened us a passage into the deeper regions of the
mine. With a boyish pleasure we all seated ourselves again upon a
"Rolle"--this time upon the Johann-Jacob-berg-rolle, which is laid at an
angle of forty-five and a half degrees--and away we slipped to the next
level, which is at the perpendicular depth of another couple of hundred
feet.

We alighted in another chamber where our candles made the same half
gloom, with their ruddy glare into the darkness, and where there was the
same sombre glittering upon the walls and ceiling. We pursued our track
along a devious cutting, haunted by confused and giant shadows, suddenly
passing black cavernous sideways that startled us as we came