ake me back, in a more personal manner, to the past? It
pleases me, besides, to fancy that Stanley or Chapman, or one of their
companions, may light upon this chronicle, and be struck by the name,
and read some news of their anterior home, coming, as it were, out of a
subsequent epoch of history in that quarter of the world.

As we were tumbling the mingled rubbish on the floor, kicking it with
our feet, and groping for these written evidences of the past, Lloyd,
with a somewhat whitened face, produced a paper bag. "What's this?" said
he. It contained a granulated powder, something the colour of Gregory's
Mixture, but rosier; and as there were several of the bags, and each
more or less broken, the powder was spread widely on the floor. Had any
of us ever seen giant powder? No, nobody had; and instantly there grew
up in my mind a shadowy belief, verging with every moment nearer to
certitude, that I had somewhere heard somebody describe it as just such
a powder as the one around us. I have learnt since that it is a
substance not unlike tallow, and is made up in rolls for all the world
like tallow candles.

Fanny, to add to our happiness, told us a story of a gentleman who had
camped one night, like ourselves, by a deserted mine. He was a handy,
thrifty fellow, and looked right and left for plunder, but all he could
lay his hands on was a can of oil. After dark he had to see to the
horses with a lantern; and not to miss an opportunity, filled up his
lamp from the oil can. Thus equipped, he set forth into the forest. A
little while after, his friends heard a loud explosion; the mountain
echoes bellowed, and then all was still. On examination, the can proved
to contain oil, with the trifling addition of nitro-glycerine; but no
research disclosed a trace of either man or lantern.

It was a pretty sight, after this anecdote, to see us sweeping out the
giant powder. It seemed never to be far enough away. And, after all, it
was only some rock pounded for assay.

So much for the lower room. We scraped some of the rougher dirt off the
floor, and left it. That was our sitting-room and kitchen, though there
was nothing to sit upon but the table, and no provision for a fire
except a hole in the roof of the room above, which had once contained
the chimney of a stove.

To that upper room we now proceeded. There were the eighteen bunks in a
double tier, nine on either hand, where from eighteen to thirty-six
miners had once snored t