Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/118

 cross-cuts. A mine thus consists of a series of horizontal galleries generally one above the other, but sometimes running parallel, traversed at irregular intervals by vertical shafts, and all communicating together, either directly or indirectly.

A person unacquainted with the details of mining, on hearing of many hundreds of men employed in a single mine, might naturally imagine that a visit to its recesses would afford a picturesque and imposing spectacle of gregarious labour and bustle, tremendous noise, and much artificial brilliancy to cheer the gloom. Nothing, however, is farther from the truth, as far as regards the mines of Cornwall; for, like their fellow-labourers the moles, the miners are solitary in their operations. Seldom do we find more than three or four men in one gallery at a time, where they are seen pursuing the common operations of digging or boring the rock, in the inner extremity of the gallery, by the feeble glimmering of a small candle, with very little noise or bodily movement. Very seldom are they within the sound of each other's operations, except, occasionally, when they hear the dull report of the explosions.

In the vicinity of the main shaft of the mine, indeed, the incessant action of the huge chain of pumps, produces a constant but not very loud noise, while the occasional rattling of the metallic buckets for raising the ore, against the walls of the shaft, as they ascend and descend, relieves, in some degree, the monotony of the scene. Still every thing is dreary, dull, and cheerless; and one can be with difficulty persuaded, even when in the richest and most populous mines, that he is in the centre of such