If you are determined to descend the shaft, it must be by a series of ladders, with wooden sides and iron steps, and you come upon a platform, or “landing,” at every few fathoms. Diverging occasionally from, but generally following the line of the shaft, you pass several old “bunnins”—I am not sure about the orthography, but the derivation is, I fancy, from _bound in_—which are short logs of wood jammed between the opposite walls of rock for the miners to stand upon when working in such situations. As you proceed on your perilous journey, you must not allow the thundering echoes of the distant blast, or the astounding rattle of the rapidly descending kibble and its chain, to deprive you of your presence of mind, else you are “but a dead” tourist. But supposing that you carry your senses along with you, and are resolved to stop at nothing short of the deep workings, you continue, sometimes crawling down the ladders, and sometimes stepping cautiously across the landings, and pass several levels in your descent—viz., one twenty fathoms down, one thirty-five, one fifty, and at length you arrive at the seventy fathom, when you are some where about the level of the village, or about 420 feet below the place where you commenced your underground knight errantry—or, again, about 640 feet below the top of the shaft. There is, “at the lowest depth a lower still,” some twenty fathoms below this another working called “the ninety;” but you are already deep enough for any useful purpose. Moving a short way onwards, you come in sight of two men working upon a “bunnin,” and looking, according to your notion, very much like inhabitants of a still lower region, the darkness being made barely visible by a couple of twinkling candles plastered against the rock with clay. Their attitudes are somewhat picturesque, as they hold up and turn the jumper with the left hand, whilst they keep driving it into the flinty rock by an incessant rapping with a hammer held in [Sidenote: BORING AND BLASTING.] the right. Having bored their holes to a sufficient depth, they proceed to clear them out with an iron instrument something like a yard-long needle, with its point bent and flattened—first scraping out the borings or fragments of stone, with the point, and then drying the hole with a small wisp of straw, or dried grass, drawn through the eye, and worked up and down in the hole until all moisture is completely mopped up. They then fill a tin tube with gunpowder, and conveying it into the hole, withdraw the tube and leave the hole filled to one-third, or one-half its depth with the powder. Having corked down, by way of wadding, the wisp used in drying, and carefully cleaned away any stray grains of powder which may possibly adhere to the sides, they next thrust a long sharpened rod of copper, called a “pricker,” down one side into the powder, and pass an iron “stemmer,” or ramrod, grooved on one side to fit the pricker, to feel whether it work easily, which it will not do, if the pricker be improperly inserted. They then beat in with the stemmer a quantity of soft rotten stone, called “stemming,” sufficient to fill up the hole, finishing off with a little clay, and commence the withdrawal of the pricker, an operation of some nicety. Having got it out, they pass down the hole it leaves a long straw filled with powder, having a piece of match-paper attached to its outer extremity; and having secured their tools, and uttered two or three indescribable warning shouts, the precise sound of which it is difficult to realize, but which consist of the monosyllable “fire,” they ignite the touch-paper and immediately retire to a respectful distance, and you had better retire with them, to await the report, which, when it does occur, will be pretty likely to make you jump an inch or two out of your skin. Returning to their working, they note carefully the effects of the blast, and breaking up the larger fragments, and beating down any loose pieces that may hang about the sides, they select a suitable “lofe,” and recommence boring. About three blasts in this hard rock is considered a fair day's work, the men working eight hours a day in shifts—which does not mean that they array themselves in chemises to work in, but that they are relieved, or shifted, at the end of eight hours, by other workmen taking their places.