is in deep shadow, you cannot see it. Bare, brawny arms become visible and are withdrawn, men’s voices sound strange, there is a constant rumbling of cars, a regular clicking sound as the carriage stops and starts, incessant shouting by the boys; somewhere the sound of falling water. Such are the sights and sounds at the shaft’s foot. If now you pass in along the gangway, you will be apt to throw the light of your lamp to your feet to see where you are stepping. You will experience a sense of confinement in the narrow passage with its low roof and close, black walls. Occasionally you will have to crowd against the rib to let a trip of mine cars, drawn by a smoking mule, in charge of a boy with soiled face and greasy clothes, pass by. Perhaps you walk up one of the inclined planes to a counter gangway. You are lucky if you are in a mine where the roof is so high that you need not bend over as you walk. The men whom you meet have little lamps on their caps, smoking and flaring in the strong air current. You can see little of these persons except their soiled faces. Everything here is black and dingy; there is no color relief to outline the form of any object. Now you come to a door on the upper side of the gangway. A small boy jumps up from a bench and pulls the door open for the party to pass through. As it closes behind you the strong current of air nearly extinguishes your lamp. You walk along the airway for a little distance, and then you come to the foot of a chamber. Up somewhere in the darkness, apparently far away, you see lights twinkling, four of them. They appear and disappear, they bob up and down, they waver from side to side, till you wonder what strange contortions the people who carry them must be going through to give them such erratic movements. By and by there is a cry of “Fire!” the cry is repeated several times, three lights move down the chamber toward you and suddenly disappear, then the fourth one approaches apparently with more action, and disappears also. The men who carry them have hidden behind pillars. You wait one, two, three minutes, looking into darkness. Then there is a sudden wave-like movement in the air; it strikes your face, you feel it in your ears; the flame of your lamp is blown aside. Immediately there is the sound of an explosion and the crash of falling blocks of coal. The waves of disturbed air still touch your face gently. Soon the lights reappear, all four of them, and advance toward the face. In a minute they are swallowed up in the powder smoke that has rolled out from the blast; you see only a faint blur, and their movements are indistinct. But when the smoke has reached and passed you the air is clearer again, and the lights twinkle and dance as merrily as they did before the blast was fired. Now you go up the chamber, taking care not to stumble over the high caps, into the notches of which the wooden rails of the track are laid. On one side of you is a wall, built up with pieces of slate and