“I remained three-quarters of an hour in these frightful and gloomy caverns, which find employment for not less than thirteen hundred workmen, and traversed every part of them which was accessible, conducted by my guides. The weather above was very warm, but here the ice covered the whole surface of the ground, and I found myself surrounded with the colds of the most rigorous winter, amid darkness and caves of iron. In one of these, which ran a considerable way beneath the rock, were eight wretched beings warming themselves round a charcoal fire, and eating the little scanty subsistence arising from their miserable occupation. They rose with surprise at seeing so unexpected a guest among them, and I was not a little pleased to dry my feet, which were wet with treading on the melted ice, at their fire. “Having gratified my curiosity with a view of these subterraneous apartments, I made the signal for being drawn up, and felt so little terror while reascending, compared with that of being let down, that I am convinced, after five or six repetitions, I should have been perfectly indifferent to the undertaking. So strong is the effect of custom on the human mind, and so contemptible does danger or horror become when familiarized by repeated trials!” Throughout the whole extent of Sweden, the iron mines at present wrought, employ thousands of persons, and yield annually upward of one hundred thousand tuns of metal. There are said to be between five and six hundred mines in the entire country, nearly half of which are situated in the central provinces: this, however, includes mines of all descriptions, though by far the most are of iron. The products of all these mines would be vastly greater than they are, were it not for the multiplied and unreasonable restrictions of the government.