Our destination was reached in due course, and the cage came to a standstill at the entrance to the main level, which here resembles a large arch-shaped room, about eighteen feet high and twenty-five feet wide, with sides and roof of solid rock. On the one side is the main vertical shaft, leading to the headgear on the surface above and to the further levels below, while directly opposite, and extending in a straight, horizontal line for nearly half a mile into the bowels of the earth, is the main tunnel to the mine, suggestive of some great corridor, with many side galleries and minor branch tunnels on either side, leading in contrary directions. There is a double track of rails, one for empties returning from the tips and the other for the loaded trucks, which are detached from the electric locomotives at an apex some thirty yards from the loading chute, and from which they run by gravitation, in sets of eight, along the “full-way,” round the left side of the shaft, to the automatic tips, which are situated immediately behind the shaft and on the opposite side of the main tunnel. Here the trucks are mechanically overturned and the contents discharged into the loading chute, a large steel receptacle some twenty feet deep, fifteen feet long, and four feet wide. From this point the trucks run along the “empty-way,” or right side of the shaft, in a semicircle towards the main tunnel, to be finally coupled to the locomotive, and drawn, in trains of sixteen, to the different passes to be reloaded. In the mine I am known as the “tipman,” and my duties--directing the discharge of the diamond-laden “ground” into the chutes--commence when the trucks, laden with the “ground,” reach the automatic tips. I was soon at my accustomed post, and before many minutes had elapsed the distant rumbling of the moving trucks in the tunnels became audible. The day’s operations had begun. I am constantly engaged in superintending the working of the tipping arrangements, and in watching the running of trucks on the proper tracks, which here almost entirely encircle the main shaft, through which the “ground” is eventually raised to the surface in the giant hoisting skips. On this particular morning I worked without the shortest break, and nothing interrupted the monotonous rolling of the trucks as they went backwards and forwards again and again to be refilled at the loading passes and emptied at the loading chutes, until nearly one o’clock, when, through a slight but unfortunate mishap, I became the victim of a catastrophe which now seems to me like some horrible nightmare, or the effect of temporary delirium, rather than an actual occurrence. [Illustration: THE FIVE HUNDRED FEET LEVEL OF THE WESSELTON MINE, SHOWING AUTOMATIC TIPS AND TRUCK TIPPING INTO THE CHUTE INTO WHICH WOOD WAS THROWN. _From a Photo by J. A. Glennie, Kimberley._]