My first journey down the shaft of a mine had of course a novelty about it, and also partook of the sensational.
It was not a coal mine into which I descended, but a copper mine. We stepped into a basket suspended by a hempen rope, and our conductor gave the signal to start. The engineer slacked away the rope somehow, and we descended rapidly. It seemed to me very much like falling out of a balloon.
I never have fallen out of a balloon, and therefore cannot say positively whether the sensation was like it or not. I have been up in a balloon, and the sensation of going rapidly upward through the air is very much like that of going rapidly downward into the earth.
Down, down, down we went; and though the time was short, it seemed to me pretty long. I had heard that there was generally at the bottom of the shaft of a mine a pool of water, which is called, in technical language, a “sump.”
I had a suspicion that we might be plunged into it, and asked our conductor if there was any danger.
“O, no danger at all!” he replied. “All that can happen to you is, that if you get into the sump you will get drenched; and then, if you do not like it, you can be drawn to the surface so rapidly, that every thread on you will be dried out again.”
This proposed process of wetting and drying did not please me, and I intimated an emphatic hope that the engineer knew his business, and would stop at the proper time.
The descent was not quite eight hundred feet, but it seemed to me at least eight thousand. Every little while we passed a hole, through which the light glimmered, and we could see, though only for the instant, into the various portions of the mine. In one place, a miner was standing at the end of a level, and standing, too, very carelessly on the edge, and we narrowly escaped brushing him off. Had we brushed against him, and thrown him from his perch to the bottom, he would not have been worth three cents a pound after being picked up.
When we reached the bottom, the basket was in a sort of basin, with a flooring of plank just even with its edge. Miners were standing there with lanterns in their hands, or with candles stuck into their hats, and they assisted us to scramble off.
HOISTED BY A LEG.