we hear is the
sound of the surf, lashing the rocks a hundred and twenty feet above us,
and of the waves that are breaking on the beach beyond. The tide is now
at the flow, and the sea is in no extraordinary state of agitation: so
the sound is low and distant just at this period. But, when storms are
at their height, when the ocean hurls mountain after mountain of water
on the cliffs, then the noise is terrific; the roaring heard down here
in the mine is so inexpressibly fierce and awful, that the boldest men
at work are afraid to continue their labour. All ascend to the surface,
to breathe the upper air and stand on the firm earth: dreading, though
no such catastrophe has ever happened yet, that the sea will break in on
them if they remain in the caverns below.

Hearing this, we get up to look at the rock above us. We are able to
stand upright in the position we now occupy; and flaring our candles
hither and thither in the darkness, can see the bright pure copper
streaking the dark ceiling of the gallery in every direction. Lumps of
ooze, of the most lustrous green colour, traversed by a natural network
of thin red veins of iron, appear here and there in large irregular
patches, over which water is dripping slowly and incessantly in certain
places. This is the salt water percolating through invisible crannies in
the rock. On stormy days it spirts out furiously in thin, continuous
streams. Just over our heads we observe a wooden plug of the thickness
of a man's leg; there is a hole here, and the plug is all that we have
to keep out the sea.

Immense wealth of metal is contained in the roof of this gallery,
throughout its whole length; but it remains, and will always remain,
untouched. The miners dare not take it, for it is part, and a great
part, of the rock which forms their only protection against the sea; and
which has been so far worked away here, that its thickness is limited to
an average of three feet only between the water and the gallery in which
we now stand. No one knows what might be the consequence of another
day's labour with the pickaxe on any part of it.

This information is rather startling when communicated at a depth of
four hundred and twenty feet under ground. We should decidedly have
preferred to receive it in the counting-house! It makes us pause for an
instant, to the miner's infinite amusement, in the very act of knocking
away a tiny morsel of ore from the rock, as a memento of Botallack.
Ha