On the occasion under notice we drove about a mile or a mile and a half from Grays to the nearest corner of this wood, where the road forks to Orsett and to Chadwell. From an article written when the scene was fresh in memory it appears that this wood left the impression on me that it was not a recent and artificial plantation, that it might even be primeval. In this wood are some fifty shafts, some of which had been opened at the time of my visit, while others remained overgrown with brushwood but easily traceable. Attention had, indeed, been directed towards these shafts not long before by the horrid discovery of the decaying body of a man at the bottom of one of them. It was, indeed, a singular thing that traces of more such catastrophes were not discovered when examination was made of the holes. It was a consequence, perhaps, of the very unpleasant way upon which the holes had forced themselves upon public attention that a windlass and cage had been rigged up over the mouth of one of them--the apparatus was clearly meant to be permanent--for the purposes of descent and ascent. The cage was but small--big enough to accommodate one passenger only--for though the mouths of the shafts are funnel-shaped, because if they were not the gravel sides would fall in, the shafts become cylindrical so soon as they enter the coherent Thanet sand, and are of such a width that a man of middle height may place his back against one side and ascend, or descend, without much difficulty by the aid of footholes cut on the other side. After the gravel the shaft passes through the Thanet sand for some twenty feet more and for a very short space, after the Thanet sand ends, through the chalk. Then at last the cage feels the bottom of the shaft. The passenger emerges, and can see dimly that he is in a vaulted chamber of chalk.