where modern operations
have obliterated them, such they continue to the present time. Beyond
the inference of remote antiquity, which we naturally draw from the fact
of their presenting no trace of the use of any kind of machinery, or of
gunpowder, or the display of any mining skill, we may cite the unanimous
opinion of the neighbourhood, that they owe their origin to the
predecessors of that peculiar order of operatives known as "the free
miners of the Forest of Dean;" a view which is confirmed by the authentic
history of the district. But the numerous Roman relics found deeply
buried in the prodigious accumulations of iron cinders, once so abundant
here as to have formed an important part of the materials supplied to the
furnaces of the Forest, afford proof that the iron-mines were in
existence as early as the commencement of the Christian era; so that the
openings we now see are the results of many centuries of mining
operations, with which their extent, number, and size perfectly accord.

[Picture: The Devil's Chapel]

These mines present the appearance either of spacious caves, as on the
Doward Hill, or at the Scowles near Bream, or they consist of precipitous
and irregularly shaped passages, left by the removal of the ore or
mineral earth wherever it was found, and which was followed in some
instances for many hundreds of yards, openings being made to the surface
wherever the course of the mine permitted, thus securing an efficient
ventilation, so that although they have been so long deserted the air in
them is perfectly good. They are also quite dry, owing probably to their
being drained by the new workings adjacent to them, and descending to a
far greater depth. In the first instance they were no doubt excavated as
deep as the water permitted, that is, to about 100 feet, or in dry
seasons even lower, as is in fact proved by the water-marks left in some
of them. Occasionally they are found adorned with beautiful
incrustations of the purest white, formed by springs of carbonate of
lime, originating in the rocky walls of limestone around. Sometimes,
after proceeding a considerable distance, they suddenly open out into
spacious vaults fifteen feet in width, the site probably of some valuable
"pocket" or "churn" of ore; and then again, where the supply was less
abundant, narrowing into a width hardly sufficient to admit the human
body. Occasionally the passage divides and unites again, o