ues of flame under a blue-green smoke; half-naked,
black-smeared fellows threw out large glowing masses of fire, so that
the sparks flew around and about:--one was reminded of Schiller's
"Fridolin."

The thick sulphureous smoke poured forth from the heaps of cleansed
ore, under which the fire was in full activity, and the wind drove it
across the road which we must pass. In smoke, and impregnated with
smoke, stood building after building: three buildings had been
strangely thrown, as it were, by one another: earth and stone-heaps,
as if they were unfinished works of defence, extended around.
Scaffolding, and long wooden bridges, had been erected there; large
wheels turned round; long and heavy iron chains were in continual
motion.

We stood before an immense gulf, called "Stora Stoeten," (the great
mine). It had formerly three entrances, but they fell in and now there
is but one. This immense sunken gulf now appears like a vast valley:
the many openings below, to the shafts of the mine, look, from above,
like the sand-martin's dark nest-holes in the declivities of the
shore: there were a few wooden huts down there. Some strangers in
miners' dresses, with their guide, each carrying a lighted fir-torch,
appeared at the bottom, and disappeared again in one of the dark
holes. From within the dark wooden houses, in which great water-wheels
turned, issued some of the workmen. They came from the dizzying
gulf--from narrow, deep wells: they stood in their wooden shoes two
and two, on the edge of the tun which, attached to heavy chains, is
hoisted up, singing and swinging the tun on all sides: they came up
merry enough. Habit makes one daring.

They told us that, during the passage upwards, it often happened that
one or another, from pure wantonness, stepped quite out of the tun,
and sat himself between the loose stones on the projecting piece of
rock, whilst they fired and blasted the rock below so that it shook
again, and the stones about him thundered down. Should one expostulate
with him on his fool-hardiness, he would answer with the usual
witticism here: "I have never before killed myself."

One descends into some of the shafts by a sort of machinery, which
looks as if they had placed two iron ladders against each other, each
having a rocking movement, so that by treading on the ascending-step
on the one side and then on the other, which goes upwards, one
gradually ascends, and by going on the downward sinking-step on