The tun touched the ground, or rather the snow--the dirty trodden, eternal snow, down to which no sunbeam reaches, which no summer warmth from above ever melts. A hollow sound was heard from within the dark, yawning cavern, and a thick vapour rolled out into the cold air. The stranger entered the dark halls; there seemed to be a crashing above him: the fire burned; the furnaces roared; the beating of hammers sounded; the watery damps dripped down--and he again entered the tun, which was hoven up in the air. He sat with closed eyes, but giddiness breathed on his head, and on his breast; his inwardly-turned eye measured the giddy depth through the tun: "It is appalling," said he.
"Appalling!" echoed the brave and estimable stranger, whom we met at Danemora's great gulf. He was a man from Scania, consequently from the same street as the Sealander--if the Sound be called a street (strait). "But, however, one can say one has been down there," said he, and he pointed to the gulf; "right down, and up again; but it is no pleasure at all."
"But why descend at all?" said I. "Why will men do these things?"
"One must, you know, when one comes here," said he. "The plague of travelling is, that one must see everything: one would not have it supposed otherwise. It is a shame to a man, when he gets home again, not to have seen everything, that others ask him about."
"If you have no desire, then let it alone. See what pleases you on your travels. Go two paces nearer than where you stand, and become quite giddy: you will then have formed some conception of the passage downward. I will hold you fast, and describe the rest of it for you." And I did so, and the perspiration sprang from his forehead.
"Yes, so it is: I apprehend it all," said he: "I am clearly sensible of it."
I described the dirty grey snow covering, which the sun's warmth never thaws; the cold down there, and the caverns, and the fire, and the workmen, &c.
"Yes; one should be able to tell all about it," said he. "That _you_ can, for you have seen it."
"No more than you," said I. "I came to the gulf; I saw the depth, the snow below, the smoke that rolled out of the caverns; but when it was time I should get into the tun--no, thank you. Giddiness tickled me with her long, awl-like legs, and so I stayed where I was I have felt the descent, through the spine and the soles of the feet, and that as well as any one: the descent is the pinch. I have been in the Hartz, under Rammelsberg; glided, as on Russian mountains, at Hallein, through the mountain, from the top down to the salt-works; wandered about in the catacombs of Rome and Malta: and what does one see in the deep passages? Gloom--darkness! What does one feel? Cold, and a sense of oppression--a longing for air and light, which is by far the best; and that we have now."