Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume II.djvu/174

 [ 102 ]

at proper parts of the cavern; its whole area on reaching the bottom was at once thrown before our eyes, the sides, roof, and pillars .reflecting back the light of the tapers, and glittering with ten thousand diamonds. In one corner, a party was discovered, separating the mineral from the rock with pick- axes, the fragments illuminating the spot with their corruscations ; in another, we heard the thunder of a blast, where the hardness of the salt required the force of gunpowder to tear it to pieces. Inchant- ment and Genii naturally rushed on our fancy, and the almost forgotten intellectual delights of infancy, which had long lost their power over the mind, came back for a moment in the dear delusions of fairy palaces and wizards' wands. Here we could contemplate the labours of the miner with pleasure; who pursued his avocation soothed by the society of comrades, in wholsomeness and safety; in a room to boot, whose grandeur, ornament, and extent, no monarch's dwelling upon earth could equal. The number of men employed in this work are about fifteen, four above the surface of the earth, the rest below; they earn, if they work by the day, about 2S. each for eight hours labour. If two or three of them, which is very common, work by the batch or tut, they have 2S. per ton for all ihat is sent up. The price of the article at the

�� �