312 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



wealth, and his skill in securing it. Gloomy precipices of 

 slate which unnumbered ages of sea-storms have been unable 

 to displace are here cut in twain by the miner, whose compli- 

 cated machinery clings to the cliifs at places where it would 

 seem almost impossible for an engine to be fixed. The spec- 

 tator here finds himself at once in the midst of a busy 

 community. Powerful steam-engines, a stamping-mill, and 

 all the heavy machinery required in modern mining are 

 perched on what at first sight seem inaccessible situations, 

 so that from a distance they look as if growing out of 

 the crags. All is noise and bustle, which contrast strangely 

 with the placidity of the seaward view in calm weather. 

 " Kibbles "" descend fathoms beneath the sea through the 

 shafts, and ascend again laden with tin- or copper-ore, which 

 is wheeled away to larger heaps, where women, boys, and 

 girls pick and separate the various qualities with the sys- 

 tematic industry of workers in a factory. Everybody and 

 everything — rocks, platforms, and paths — are smeared with 

 the prevailing red hue, derived from a slight mixture of iron 

 with the ore ; and the muddy stream flowing from the stamp- 

 ing-mill to the sea has imparted to the beach, the breakers, 

 and the foam the same ruddy tinge. If ore is coming up 

 plentifully and of good quality everybody is pleased, and far 

 down in the gloomy depths of the mine, which Cornish 

 legends people with sprites and gnomes, the news that a new 

 "bunch" (vein or mass) of copper has been struck, or that 

 the old lode is growing richer, fills the workers with profes- 

 sional joy. As the visitor creeps along the underground pas- 

 sages, into which the light of day has never entered, he hears 

 comparatively little. Having become accustomed to the dark- 

 ness, barely illumined by the flicker of lamps, he dimly dis- 

 tinguishes the stalwart miners at work. Coming down from 

 the upper world amid the incessant din of heavy stamps, the 

 measured gush of pumps, the clang of machinery above and 

 the surge of the sea below, the rattle of wagons on tram- 

 ways, and the crowds of men and boys climbing up and down 

 paths which seem too steep for a goat, the modified silence 

 of the deep underground levels strikes one as unnatui-al. In 

 places, however, the guides may ask the visitor to listen to 

 a curious sound. It is the booming of the waves overhead, 

 and the grating of the stones on the sea-bottom. Then he 

 is told, to give him courage, that in some of the recesses 

 of the first level the ore has been cut away until a roof 

 not more than 6 ft. or 8 ft. thick has been left. First worked 

 on the face of the cliff only, the mines descended level by 

 level until the excavations extended for more than 600 



* Large buckets. 



