Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/242

226 Many were the doors we passed before we arrived at the termination of the tram-road. After travelling about a mile and a half, our carriage stopped and we alighted. We now proceeded on foot, each carrying his own candle, until we reached a kind of chamber where one of our attendants was left with the candles.

We, each holding a Davy-lamp in our hand, advanced towards a small opening in the side of this chamber, which was so low that we were compelled to crawl, one after another, on our hands and knees. A powerful current of air rushed through this small passage. On reaching the end of it, we found ourselves in a much larger chamber from which the coal had been excavated. At a little distance opposite to the path by which we entered was a continuation of the same narrow hole which had led us to the waste in which we now stood. From this opening issued the powerful stream of air which seemed to pass in a direct course from one opening to the other.

On our right hand the large chamber we had entered appeared to spread to a very considerable distance, its termination being lost in darkness. The floor was covered with fragments which had fallen from the roof; so that, besides the risk from explosion, there was also a minor one arising from the possible fall of some huge mass of slate from the roof of the excavation beneath which we stood: an accident which I had already witnessed in the waste of another coal-mine. As we advanced over this flaky flooring it was evident that we were making a considerable ascent. We, in fact, now occupied a vast cavern, which had been originally formed by the extraction of the coal, and then partially filled up by the falling in from time to time of portions of the slaty roof.

As we advanced cautiously with our Davy-lamps beyond