s for this descent or the manner in which
it was to be made. The miner placed himself astride the great beam,
keeping his position by holding on to a rope. He put Elise behind him,
and, drawing her arms around his waist, clasped her hands in front of
him. The curate was then requested to mount the wooden horse and embrace
Elise firmly. He hesitated but a moment, and in another I found myself
behind him, hanging for dear life on to the English shepherd, to be in
turn encircled by Samayana, and last of all came Cecilia, doing her best
to get her plump little arms around the Indian. The darkness below was a
trifle appalling. We were cautioned not to unclasp our hands, lest we
should lose them, and naturally we clung the closer to each other.

There was just a moment of suspense and suppressed excitement, when,
with a sharp cry, the miner loosened his hold, and by the impulse of our
own weight we shot, with a velocity not to be described, two hundred and
forty-feet into the earth. The miner acting as a brake brought us up
gently enough, so that we felt scarcely anything of a shock. Cecilia, to
be sure, left her breath about two-thirds of the way up, and suffered
some inconvenience till she accumulated more, and the curate forgot to
loosen his hold on Elise for an unpardonable length of time, while he
gathered his wits, and I could feel that he was blushing when he came to
his senses. It was in adjusting our attire that we discovered the
necessity and value of our leathern aprons. Had we been plunged into a
pool of water we should have sizzled. They were hot from the friction.
They speedily became our dearest of friends and possessions, for we had
three more of these shafts to slide down, and we grew faint at the bare
thought of losing them. Cecilia, after our second slide, suggested, in a
language the gentlemen did not understand, that she would like her turn
at being embraced, since she always lost her breath at the start and was
afraid. This remark met with no response, as neither Elise nor I wanted
to run the risk of being lost off behind, and felt a selfish sense of
security that made the shooting of the shafts delightful and somewhat
similar to the coasting and sliding down balusters of our childhood.

We traversed many long galleries on different levels. Through some of
these ran the aqueduct which brought the fresh water in, and another
which conveyed the salt water out, twenty miles away. We were in the
bosom of a m