338 HILLS AND LAKES. 



fright, while my friend enjoyed a hearty laugh at my 

 amazement. It was a blast made in a remote part of 

 the mines. "We entered the hill by a tunnel of some 

 three hundred feet in length, by which teams enter 

 to draw out the ore that is raised from the deep foun- 

 dations of the mines. "We found several wagons in 

 this interior of the mountain, being loaded with ore. 

 Above us was a lofty arch sustained by gigantic stone 

 pillars, and supporting a roof of perhaps a hundred 

 feet of solid rock, through which, at intervals, the 

 light came down through great chimneys, as it were, 

 and through which we could look out upon the clear 

 sky. All around us were openings that stretched 

 away, hundreds and hundreds of feet down, through 

 the gloomy depths of which, the lamps of a hundred 

 miners twinkled like tiny little stars in the darkness. 

 We could hear their hammers, as they drilled into the 

 solid ore, and ever and anon would come the deafen- 

 ing roar of the blasting, shaking the arches by its de- 

 tonations, and dying away among the caverned depths. 

 A ladder was visible, down which I was invited to 

 descend to where the little lights twinkled. But I 

 declined. I prefer daylight and a firm footing, to a 

 possible tumble of hundreds of feet among broken 



