coffee--plenty of
each--and we went off with dinner pails over the hill to the valley,
where five tall, smoking chimneys marked the entrances to as many
mines.

Each mine has a complete outfit of men and machinery, and a certain
number of chambers or pockets in which, with blast and hammer and
hand, the red hills are made to disgorge their treasures of iron ore.

Three of us perched ourselves on the rear end of the "skip"--a big
iron-ore disgorger--and began the half-mile descent. It was a 45 per
cent. grade, and the skip, at the end of a powerful wire cable, went
down by jerks. One of my companions was Franz, the Hungarian, the
other was a German. The big square mouth of the mine became smaller
and smaller as we bumped into the bowels of the earth. In a few
minutes it looked like a small window-pane, and then disappeared
altogether and we were left in the darkness.

Each mine is like a little town. It has a main street and side
alleys--"pockets," they are called. There are "live" and "dead"
pockets--the dead are the worked out.

At the first of the live pockets the skip was stopped by some
invisible hand and we clambered over the side to a platform where a
foreman met and conducted us to the task of the day.

The mine was filled with red dust. We could see but a few feet ahead
of us. The lamps on men's brows looked like fire-flies dancing in the
red mist. There was a sound of rushing water and the _chug, chug_ of
the pumps. As we waded ankle-deep through a water alley, we heard the
warning yells of a foreman. A charge of dynamite was about to burst
and the men were flying out of danger. We were whisked into a cleft
for safety. Half a dozen old miners were squeezed in beside us. Our
scarcely soiled caps told the story of our newness and the old hands
watched us closely.

Boom! The hills shivered like the deck of a warship as she discharges
a broadside. Franz shivered too. His eyes bulged and he stared,
loose-jawed, at the men around us, who laughed at his fright.

The explosion was in our alley; it had torn up the car-tracks like
strips of macaroni; it was the salute of dynamite to our soft, flabby
muscles, to our white caps and new overalls; it was a stick of
concentrated power throwing down the gauntlet to men in the raw.

We had a foreman who superintended our compartment, "a driller," who
with a steam drill sat all day boring holes for dynamite, and we were
the "muckers"--miner's helpers--who carried away