Another method much adopted, and preferred by the pitmen in our collieries, was passing down and up in the loop. The pitman inserted one leg into a loop formed by curving the terminal chain and hooking it back upon an upper link, and then twined his arm tightly round the rope above. In this way he descended through any depth, and, as he alleged, with greater safety than in a bucket, out of which he might be ejected, while nothing except the breaking of the rope could harm him in loop. At present the safety-cage is generally used. This is simply a vertical railway carriage running down and up upon guides, and thereby introducing into the shaft the improvements of the iron road. Into one of its square narrow compartments two or three men crouch together, others get into an upper compartment, and down the cage moves easily and safely, the men needing only to take care that hands or fingers do not hang beyond the edge, while four or five minutes of easy motion carry them down a thousand or fifteen hundred feet below the surface of the earth. [Illustration: MINERS DESCENDING SHAFT IN OWEN’S SAFETY CAGE.] In many mines the workmen climb up and down the shafts on fixed ladders, with landing-stages for resting; and it may easily be imagined how severely their strength must be taxed when, after their hard day’s labour, they have still to ascend step by step a thousand or even two thousand feet, before they can return to their families. Some of the Cornish mines require a full hour to rise from the lowest depths to ‘grass,’ and besides this considerable loss of time, diseases of the lungs and heart, which often terminate fatally, or prematurely make the miner an invalid, are the consequence of these fatiguing journeys. ‘O thou grumbling clerk in London city,’ exclaims the author of ‘Cornwall and its Mines,’[37] ‘whose daily fatigues only extend to the ascent into and descent from the trim omnibus that takes you to or from Peckham or Kennington! Only think for a moment of travelling some four or five times the height of St. Paul’s daily—before and after work! O thou querulous socialist, demagogue, or artisan, who canst sit in a comfortable coffee-house, under a flaming gas-light, immediately before and after work—or in your own snug parlour, by your own fireside or murmuring kettle—do but think for a moment of the Cornish miner, and what he must do before he can reach home or house! I fully believe that the best cure for discontent and gloom in fortunate workmen would be to put them upon the treadmill of a deep Cornish mine—for a temporary treadmill it is.’ Footnote 37: London: Longmans, 1857.