![]() ![]() One hundred and forty feet beneath us men are at work, and there are galleries deeper yet, even below that! The extraordinary position down the face of the cliff, of the engines and other works on the surface, at Botallack, is now explained. Certain parts of the gallery dipped into black, ugly-looking pits, crossed by thin planks, over which we walked dizzily, a little bewildered by the violent contrast between the flaring light that we carried above us, and the pitch darkness beneath and before us. Occasionally, greater difficulties than these presented themselves. Sometimes, we could walk on in a stooping position-sometimes, we were obliged to crawl on our hands and knees. Rough stones of all sizes, holes here, and eminences there, impeded us at every yard. ![]() Our path was a strange one, as we advanced through the rift. Here, the miner, pointing to an opening yawning horizontally in the rock at one side of us, said that this was the first gallery from the surface that we had done with the ladders for the present and that a little climbing and crawling were now to begin. By the time we had got down seventy fathoms, or four hundred and twenty feet of perpendicular ladders, we stopped at another landing-place, just broad enough to afford standing room for us three. ![]()
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