Ch. 20 - Fahlun - Page 2

motion.

We stood before an immense gulf, called "Stora Stöten," (the great
mine). It had formerly three entrances, but they fell in and now there
is but one. This immense sunken gulf now appears like a vast valley:
the many openings below, to the shafts of the mine, look, from above,
like the sand-martin's dark nest-holes in the declivities of the
shore: there were a few wooden huts down there. Some strangers in
miners' dresses, with their guide, each carrying a lighted fir-torch,
appeared at the bottom, and disappeared again in one of the dark
holes. From within the dark wooden houses, in which great water-wheels
turned, issued some of the workmen. They came from the dizzying
gulf--from narrow, deep wells: they stood in their wooden shoes two
and two, on the edge of the tun which, attached to heavy chains, is
hoisted up, singing and swinging the tun on all sides: they came up
merry enough. Habit makes one daring.

They told us that, during the passage upwards, it often happened that
one or another, from pure wantonness, stepped quite out of the tun,
and sat himself between the loose stones on the projecting piece of
rock, whilst they fired and blasted the rock below so that it shook
again, and the stones about him thundered down. Should one expostulate
with him on his fool-hardiness, he would answer with the usual
witticism here: "I have never before killed myself."

One descends into some of the shafts by a sort of machinery, which
looks as if they had placed two iron ladders against each other, each
having a rocking movement, so that by treading on the ascending-step
on the one side and then on the other, which goes upwards, one
gradually ascends, and by going on the downward sinking-step one gets
by degrees to the bottom. They said it was very easy, only one must
step boldly, so that the foot should not come between and get crushed;
and then one must remember that there is no railing or balustrade
here, and directly outside these stairs there is the deep abyss into
which one may fall headlong. The deepest shaft has a perpendicular
depth of more than a hundred and ninety fathoms, but for this there is
no danger, they say, only one must not be dizzy, nor get alarmed. One
of the workmen, who had come up, descended with a lighted pine-branch
as a torch: the flame illumined the dark rocky wall, and by degrees
became only a faint streak of light which soon vanished.

We were told that a few days before, five or six schoolboys had
unobserved stolen in here, and amused themselves by going from step to
step on these machine-like rocking stairs, in pitchy darkness, but at
last they knew not rightly which way to go, up or down, and had then
begun to shout and