Page:The Pennyles Pilgrimage.djvu/48

 same sand (being mixed with rocks and crags) did the master of this great work build a round circular frame of stone, very thick, strong, and joined together with glutinous or bituminous matter, so high withal that the sea at the highest flood, or the greatest rage of storm or tempest, can neither dissolve the stones so well compacted in the building or yet overflow the height of it. Within this round frame, (at all adventures) he did set workmen to dig with mattocks, pickaxes, and other instruments fit for such purposes. They did dig forty feet down right into and through a rock. At last they found that which they expected, which was sea coal, they following the vein of the mine, did dig forward still: so that in the space of eight and twenty, or nine and twenty years, they have digged more than an English mile under the sea, so that when men are at work below, an hundred of the greatest ships in Britain man sail over their heads. Besides, the mine is most artificially cut like an arch or a vault, all that great length, with many nooks and byeways: and it is so made, that a man may walk upright in the most places, both in and out. Many poor people are there set on work, which otherwise through the want of employment would perish. But when I had seen the mine, and was come forth of it again; after my thanks given to Sir George Bruce, I told him, that if the plotters of the