While we were talking, a number of shots were heard going off in various directions. This was explained by Captain Jan. All the forenoon the miners employ their time in boring and charging the blast-holes. About mid-day they fire them and then hasten to a clear part of the mine to eat luncheon and smoke their pipes while the gunpowder smoke clears away. This it does very slowly, taking sometimes more than an hour to clear sufficiently so as to let the men resume work. Immediately after the shots were heard, the men began to assemble. They emerged from the gloom on all sides like red hobgoblins--wet and perspiring. Some walked out of darkness from either end of the level; some stalked out from diverging levels; others slid, feet first, from holes in the roof and sides, and some rose, head-foremost, from yawning gulfs in the floor. They all saluted Captain Jan as they came up, and each stuck his candle against the wall and sat down on a heap of wet rubbish, to lunch. Some had Cornish pasty, and others a species of heavy cake--so heavy that the fact of their being able to carry it at all said much for their digestive organs--but most of them ate plain bread, and all of them drank water which had been carried down from the realms of light in little canteens. Frugal though the fare was, it sufficed to brace them for the rest of the day's work. After a short talk with these men Captain Jan and I continued our descent of the ladders--down we went, ever downwards, until at last we reached the very bottom of that part of the mine--1230 feet below the surface. Here we found only two men at work, with whom Captain Jan conversed for a time while we rested, and then proceeded to ascend "to grass" by the same ladder-ways. If I felt that the descent was like never getting to the bottom, much more did the ascent seem like never getting to the top! I may remark here that the bottom which we had reached was not the bottom under the sea. At another time Captain Jan took me to that submarine cavern where, as I have said, no sound ever reaches the ear from the world above. There is, however, a level close under the sea where the roar of Ocean is distinctly heard. It is in a part of Botallack Mine named Wheal Cock. It was very rich in copper ore, and the miners worked at the roof of it so vigorously, that they began to fear it would give way. One of them, therefore, in order to ascertain what thickness of solid rock still lay between them and the sea, bored a small hole upwards, and advanced about three feet or so before the water rushed in. Of course they had a wooden plug ready and stopped up the hole. But, as it was dangerous to cut away any more of the roof, they were finally obliged unwillingly to forsake that part of the mine.