208 



THE SEA. 



THE LIZAKD LIGHT. 



in the sea, and down precipices in the land, as if they had been cautiously founded on the 

 tracts of the smooth solid ground above ! " 



The Botallack is principally a copper and tin mine, and has in days gone by yielded 



largely. Mr. Collins descended it to some depth, and 



found the salt water percolating from the ocean above, 

 through holes and crannies. In one place he noted a 

 great wooden plug the thickness of a man's leg driven 

 into a cranny of the rock. It was placed there to pre- 

 vent the sea from swamping the mine ! Fancy placing 

 a plug to literally keep out the Atlantic Ocean ! 



" We are now/' says Mr. Collins in his narrative, 

 " 400 yards out under the bottom of the sea, and twenty 

 fathoms, or 120 feet below the sea level. Coast trade 

 vessels are sailing over our heads. Two hundred and 

 forty feet beneath us men are at work, and there are 

 galleries deeper yet, even below that. . . . After 

 listening for a few moments, a distant, unearthly noise 

 becomes faintly audible a long, low, mysterious 

 moaning, that never changes, that is felt on the ear 

 as well as heard by it a sound that might proceed 

 from some incalculable distance from some far in- 

 visible height a sound unlike anything that is heard on the upper ground, in the free air of 

 heaven, a sound so sublimely mournful and still, so ghostly and impressive when listened 

 to in the subterranean recesses of the earth, that we continue instinctively to hold our 

 peace, as if enchanted by it, and think not of communicating to each other the strange 

 awe and astonishment which it has inspired in us both from the very first. 



"At last the miner speaks again, and tells us that what 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 in the mine is so inexpressibly fierce 

 and awful that the boldest men at woi'k are afraid to con- 

 tinue 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." 



One of the great sights of the Land's End is the famous Loggari Stone. After 

 climbing up some perilous-looking places you see a solid, irregular mass of granite, which 

 is computed to weigh eighty-five tons, resting by its centre only on another rock, the latter 

 itself supported by a number of others around. " You are told/' says Wilkie Collins, " by the 



THE LOGGAN STONE. 



