Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/214

208 planet, the monster projectile came down from the dizzy height above us, and passing the mouth of the tunnel in which we stood, with a roar more deafening than the loudest thunder, went bounding and crashing into the depths below, illuminating everything for a moment with its blinding, lurid glare, followed by a darkness and silence more profound than before. As soon as the tremendous echoes which were awakened by the first had died away, a second was sent down, and others followed in quick succession.

Most of our party were unable to control their nerves sufficiently to enable them to approach the edge, and look up and down the tiro, holding by ropes to prevent them from becoming dizzy, and falling headlong into the depths; but those who could do so, beheld a scene, the awful sublimity and grandeur of which beggars all the powers of language.

The remainder of the party now left, and I, in company with the superintendent, clothing myself in a miner's suit to keep off the water and mud, descended to the bottom of the mine, one thousand feet and more from the surface. We went down ladder after ladder, along gallery after gallery, through chambers like great churches in size, and others in which we could not stand erect, down steps cut in the rock and so slippery, with dripping water and soft clay, as to compel us to use an iron-shod staff to support ourselves, and through many a winding turning, until we stood at the bottom of the tiro, wet through with perspiration, and trembling with exhaustion.

At the bottom of the tiro is a great pond of water, the reservoir into which all the drainings of the mine are gathered, and the buckets on the great cables