Three hundred and sixty feet! Think of being suspended by a thread, from a height twice that of Trinity's spire, and whirled into such a depth by steam! We crawled into the little iron box, just large enough to allow us to sit up with our heads against the top, both ends of our parachute being open; the operator presses down a bar, and instantly the earth and sky disappear, and we are wrapt in utter darkness. Oh? how sickening is this sinking feeling! Down--down--down! What a gigantic dumb-waiter! Down, down, a hot gust of vapor--a stifling sensation--a concussion upon the iron floor at the foot of the shaft; a multitude of twinkling lamps, of fiends, of grimy faces, and no bodies--and we are in a coal-mine. There was a black, bituminous seat for visitors, sculptured out of the coal, just beyond the shaft, and to this we were led by the carboniferous fiends. My heart beat violently. I do not know how it went with Picton, but we were both silent. Oh! for a glimpse of the blue sky and waving trees above us, and a long breath of fresh air! As soon as the stifling sensation passed away, we breathed more freely, and the lungs became accustomed to the subterranean atmosphere. In the gloom, we could see the smutted features only, of miners moving about, and to heighten the Dantesque reality, new and strange sounds, from different parts of the enormous cavern, came pouring towards the common centre--the shaft of the coal-pit. These were the laden cars on the tram-ways, drawn by invisible horses, from the distant works in the mine, rolling and reverberating through the infernal aisles of this devil's cathedral. One could scarcely help recalling the old grandfather of Maud's Lord-lover: ----"lately died, Gone to a _blacker pit_, for whom Grimy nakedness, dragging his trucks And laying his trams, _in a poisoned gloom_ Wrought, till he crept from a gutted mine Master of half a servile shire, And left his coal all turned into gold To a grandson, first of his noble line." Intermingled with these sounds were others, the jar and clash of gateways, the dripping and splashing of water, the rolling thunder of the ascending and descending iron parachutes in the shaft, the trampling of horses, the distant report of powder-blasts, and the shrill jargon of human speakers, near, yet only partially visible. "Is it a clear day overhead?" said the black bust of one of the miners, with a lamp in its _hat_! Just think of it! We had only been divorced from the aerial blue of a June sky a minute before. Our very horse was so high above us that we could have distinguished him only by the aid of a telescope--that is, if the solid ribs of the globe were not between us and him.