d themselves in their best to do fitting honour to the Princess;
the balmaidens donned their holiday-attire, and Johnny Fortnight [see
note 1] took care, by supplying the poor mine-girls with the latest
fashions, that their appearance should be, if we may be allowed the
word, _splendiferous_! The volunteers, too, turned out in force, and no
one, looking at their trim, soldierly aspect, could have believed them
to be the same miners who were wont to emerge each evening through a
hole in the earth, red as lobsters, wet, ragged, and befouled--in a
word, surrounded by a halo of dishevelment, indicative of their rugged
toils in the regions below.

Everywhere the people turned out to line the roads, and worthily receive
the expected visitors, and great was the cheering when they arrived,
accompanied by the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, the Earl of Mount
Edgecumbe, Lady de Grey, Lord and Lady Vivian, General Knollys, and
others, but louder still was the cheer when the Princess rode down the
steep descent to the cliffs in a donkey-carriage.

The Botallack cliffs themselves, however, were the central point, not
only of the interest, but of the grandeur of the scene, for here were
presented such a view and combination as are not often witnessed--nature
in one of her wildest aspects, combined with innumerable multitudes of
human beings swayed by one feeling of enthusiastic loyalty. Above, on
every attainable point, projection, and eminence, men and women
clustered like gay flies on the giant cliffs, leaving immense gaps here
and there, where no foot might venture save that of a bird. Midway, on
the face of the precipice, clung the great beams and supports of the
Boscawen Diagonal Shaft, with the little gig perched on them and the
royal party seated therein, facing the entrance to the black abyss--the
Princess arrayed in a white flannel cloak trimmed with blue, and a straw
hat with a blue ribbon round it, and the Prince clad in miner's costume.
Underneath, a dizzy depth to gaze down, lay the rugged boulders of the
shore, with the spray of the Atlantic springing over them.

Deafening was the cheer when the gig at last entered the shaft and
disappeared, and intense the anxiety of the vast multitude as they
watched the descent--in imagination, of course, for nothing could be
seen but the tight wire-rope uncoiling its endless length, and
disappearing like a thin snake down the jaws of some awful sea-monster
that had climbed so f