uld see little or nothing without
them), nobody, I think, will be astonished to hear that my companion
seized his sketch-book, and caricatured me on the spot; and that the
grave miner, polite as he was, shook with internal laughter, when I took
up my tallow-candles and reported myself ready for a descent into the
mine.

We left the counting-house, and ascended the face of the cliff--then,
walked a short distance along the edge, descended a little again, and
stopped at a wooden platform built across a deep gully. Here, the miner
pulled up a trap-door, and disclosed a perpendicular ladder leading down
to a black hole, like the opening of a chimney. "This is the shaft; I
will go down first, to catch you in case you tumble; follow me and hold
tight;" saying this, our friend squeezed himself through the trap-door,
and we went after him as we had been bidden.

The black hole, when we entered it, proved to be not quite so dark as it
had appeared from above. Rays of light occasionally penetrated it
through chinks in the outer rock. But by the time we had got some little
way farther down, these rays began to fade. Then, just as we seemed to
be lowering ourselves into total darkness, we were desired to stand on a
narrow landing-place opposite the ladder, and wait there while the miner
went below for a light. He soon reascended to us, bringing, not only the
light he had promised, but a large lump of damp clay with it. Having
lighted our candles he stuck them against the front of our hats with the
clay--in order, as he said, to leave both our hands free to us to use as
we liked. Thus strangely accoutred, like Solomon Eagles in the Great
Plague, with flame on our heads, we resumed the descent of the shaft;
and now at last began to penetrate beneath the surface of the earth in
good earnest.

The process of getting down the ladders was not very pleasant. They were
all quite perpendicular, the rounds were placed at irregular distances,
were many of them much worn away, and were slippery with water and
copper-ooze. Add to this, the narrowness of the shaft, the dripping wet
rock shutting you in, as it were, all round your back and sides against
the ladder--the fathomless darkness beneath--the light flaring
immediately above you, as if your head was on fire--the voice of the
miner below, rumbling away in dull echoes lower and lower into the
bowels of the earth--the consciousness that if the rounds of the ladder
broke, you might fall do