Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/326

310 part of the mine, and as we proceeded through the gallery, which was filled with powder smoke, I could see absolutely nothing except the faint glimmer of the ustávshchik's candle in the mist ahead. Guided by that, I stumbled along the

uneven floor of the gallery, stepping now and then into a hole or splashing into a pool of water, and imagining for an instant that I had tumbled into an abandoned shaft. In one place we passed a very extensive excavation, out of which the ustávshchik said an immense body of ore had been taken as long ago as the middle of the last century.