A worthy gentleman named Master John Fenton, did bring me on my way six miles to Dunfermline, where I was well entertained, and lodged at Master John Gibb his house, one of the Grooms of his Majesty's Bed-chamber, and I think the oldest servant the King hath: withal, I was well entertained there by Master Crighton at his own house, who went with me, and shewed me the Queens Palace; (a delicate and Princely Mansion) withal I saw the ruins of an ancient and stately built Abbey, with fair gardens, orchards, meadows belonging to the Palace: all which with fair and goodly revenues by the suppression of the Abbey, were annexed to the crown. There also I saw a very fair church, which though it be now very large and spacious, yet it hath in former times been much larger. But I taking my leave of Dunfermline, would needs go and see the truly noble Knight Sir George Bruce, at a town called the Culross: there he made me right welcome, both with variety of fare, and after all, he commanded three of his men to direct me to see his most admirable coal mines; which (if man can or could work wonders) is a wonder; for myself neither in any travels that I have been in, nor any history that I have read, or any discourse that I have heard, did never see, read, or hear of any work of man that might parallel or be equivalent with this unfellowed and unmatchable work: and though all I can say of it, cannot describe it according to the worthiness of his vigilant industry, that was both the occasion, inventor, and maintainer of it: yet rather than the memory of so rare an enterprise, and so accomplished a profit to the commonwealth shall be raked and smothered in the dust of oblivion, I will give a little touch at the description of it, although I amongst writers, am like he that worse may hold the candle.
The mine hath two ways into it, the one by sea and the other by land; but a man may go into it by land, and return the same way if he please, and so he may enter into it by sea, and by sea he may come forth of it: but I for variety's sake went in by sea, and out by land. Now men may object, how can a man go into a mine, the entrance of it being into the sea, but that the sea will follow him, and so drown the mine? To which objection thus I answer, that at low water mark, the sea being ebbed away, and a great part of the sand bare; upon this
same sand (being mixed with rocks and crags) did the master of this great work build a round circular frame of stone, very thick, strong, and joined together with glutinous or bituminous matter, so high withal that the sea at the highest flood, or the greatest rage of storm or tempest, can neither dissolve the stones so well compacted in the building or yet overflow the height of it. Within this round frame, (at all adventures) he did set workmen to dig with mattocks, pickaxes, and other instruments fit for such purposes. They did dig forty feet down right into and through a rock. At last they found that which they expected, which was sea coal, they following the vein of the mine, did dig forward still: so that in the space of eight and twenty, or nine and twenty years, they have digged more than an English mile under the sea, so that when men are at work below, an hundred of the greatest ships in
Britain
man sail over their heads. Besides, the mine is most artificially cut like an arch or a vault, all that great length, with many nooks and bye-ways: and it is so made, that a man may walk upright in the most places, both in and out. Many poor people are there set on work, which otherwise through the want of employment would perish. But when I had seen the mine, and was come forth of it again; after my thanks given to Sir
George Bruce
, I told him, that if the plotters of the
Powder Treason in England had seen this mine, that they (perhaps) would have attempted to have left the Parliament House, and have undermined the Thames, and so to have blown up the barges and wherries, wherein the King, and all the estates of our kingdom were. Moreover, I said, that I couldafford to turn tapster at
London