Each person having fastened four or five candles to his button hole, while he carried another in his hand, they began to descend through a trap-like entrance, by a series of ladders, which although strong enough in reality had a very rickety feeling. On reaching the foot of one ladder, they were conducted to the top of another, on to which they had to step, and thus descending ladder after ladder and passing ledge after ledge, they at length reached the bottom of the pit, where the end of a pump was seen drawing up the water from all parts of the mine. They then commenced their progress along one of the numberless galleries, which was so narrow that two persons could scarcely pass each other. Now having to step over rough stones and often close to the edges of fearful pits, now to bend low under masses of overhanging rock, and sometimes to find themselves crossing unknown abysses by shaky bridges of planks, while the damp air felt hot and sickly, making the candles burn dimly. Here miners were at work with pickaxes getting out the ore. Having thus gone over, through, and under all impediments, they were informed that they were 120 feet below the level of the sea vertically, and horizontally 480 feet below low-water mark. Boats might even then be passing over their heads. Human beings were working still lower down. On the roof, the strips of pure copper could be distinguished among the crevices of the rocks through which the salt water was seen percolating in an unpleasant abundance. In their eagerness to obtain the rich ore, the miners had worked upwards until they had got within five or six feet of the bottom of the ocean. There the metal was still clearly visible, but even the most hardy miners would scarcely have ventured on an attempt to win another grain from the rock overhead, lest the water should rush in and overwhelm them, and inundate the mine. Passing into a gallery where no one was at work, the travellers listened in perfect silence, and could hear the low murmur of the ocean rolling above their heads. "Oh, that is nothing now," said their guide. "When a storm is raging, I have heard the sound of the pebbles, which some large wave has carried outwards, bounding and rolling over the rocky bottom. On standing beneath the base of the cliff, where not more than nine feet of rock intervened between the sea and my head, the heavy roll of the large boulders, the ceaseless grinding of the pebbles, the fierce thunder of the billows with the crackling and boiling as they rebounded, produced an uproar such as those who heard it can never forget."