CoLENSO. — Memorabilia, Ancient and Modern. 313 



fathoms under the sea, and for long distances inland, while 

 the greatest depth to which it had been sunk was about 

 2,000 ft. It was this persevering search after ore which gave 

 Botallack its celebrity, and that brought it streams of more 

 or less distinguished visitors. 



The Queen, with Prince Albert, visited this mine in 1846, 

 to see what her Cornish subjects could accomplish, and Her 

 Majesty also bravely descended a considerable distance into 

 the mine by the common miner's way through the diagonal 

 shaft, a kind of narrow subterranean gully or tunnel. And 

 again, in 1865, the Botallack miners kept holiday in honour 

 of a visit from their Duke and Duchess, whom we know 

 more commonly as the Prince and Princess of Wales. The 

 Duchy of Cornwall was created in 1337 for Edward the Black 

 Prince, who became entitled to the revenues from the manors, 

 and also the tin dues. 



I may here quote, for your information, a portion of a 

 graphic description of a visit to one of the submarine mines 

 in St. Just during a storm : " K\i the extremity of the level 

 seaward, about 100 fathoms from the shore, little could be 

 heard of its effects, except at intervals, when the reflux of 

 some unusually large wave projected a large pebble or boulder 

 outward, bounding and rolling over the rocky bottom. But 

 when standing beneath the base of the cliff, and in that part 

 of the mine where but 9 ft. of rock stood overhead between us 

 and the ocean, the heavy roll of the larger boulders, the 

 ceaseless grinding of the pebbles, the fierce thundering of the 

 billows, with the crackling and boiling as they rebounded, 

 placed a tempest in its most appalling form too vividly before 

 me to be ever forgotten. More than once, doubting the pro- 

 tection of our rocky shield, we retreated in affiright ; and it 

 was only after repeated trials that we had confidence to 

 pursue our investigations." 



The deeper workings, having a natural temperature of 

 70° to 80°Fahr., in some places rising to 85° or 90°, tax the 

 ingenuity of the mine captains to introduce a sufficient 

 ventilation ; but the arrangement of numerous shafts with 

 abundance of communication by winzes between the levels 

 have enabled them so far to triumph over difficulties that, in 

 several examples, we may point to a great complication of 

 workings satisfactorily ventilated without furnaces or me- 

 chanical appliances, and yet carried out through hundreds of 

 fathoms of excavation. 



Mining is so ancient an art in Cornwall that it is often 

 difficult to trace the beginning of any particular working in 

 that county. It must, indeed, have often happened that 

 openings now excavated deep in the earth, or, like Botallack 

 and Levant, far under the sea, had their beginnings in the 



