American telegraph. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1851-1851, 1851-05-21

A MINE UNDER THE SEA.-The following de-
scripton of visit to Botallack Copper Mine,
in England, is from work recently published,
entitled g Rambles beyond Railroads" In COM
plete mining equipment, with candles stuck by
Jumps of clay to their felt hats, the travellers
have painfully descended, by perpendicular
ladders and along dripping-wet rock passages,
who guides them calls a hail. and their exact
position with reference to the surface of the
I" "terraqueous globe" is thus described:
We are now four hundred yards out, under
the bottom Of the sea! and twenty fathoms, or
hundred and twenty feet, below the sea level.
COast-trade vessels are sailing over our heads.
Two hundred and forty feet beneath us men are
at work, and there are galleries deeper yet,
even below that. The extraordinary position
down the face of the cliff, of the engines and
other works on the surface at Botallack, is now
explained. The mine is not excavated like other
mines under land, but under the sea
Having communicated these particulars, the
miner next tells us to keep strict silence and
listen. We obey him, sitting speechless and
motionless. If the reader could only have be-
held us how, dressed in our copper colored gar
ments, huddled close together in q mere cleft of
subterranean rock, with flame burning on our
heads and darkness enveloping our limbs-he
must certainly have imagined, without any vio-
lent stretch of fancy, that he was looking down
upon q concave of gnomes.
After listening for few moments, distant,
unearthly noise becomes family audible-a
long, low, mysterious moaning, that never
changes-that is felt on the ear as well as heard
by ia sound that might proceed from some
incalculable distance-from some far invisible
height-a sound unlike any thing that is heard
on the upper ground, in the free air of heaven
q sound so sublimely mournful and still, so
ghostly and impressive, when listened to in the
subterranean recesses of the earth, that we con-
tinue instinctively to hold our peace, as if en-
chanted by it, and think not of communicating
to each other the strange feeling and astonish
ment which it has inspired in us both from the
first.
At last the miner speaks again, and tells us
that what we hear is the sound of the surflash-
ing the rocks hundred and twenty feet above
US, and Of the waves that are breaking on the
beach beyond. The tide is now at the flow,
and the sea is in no extraordinary state Of agi-
tation so the sound is low and distant Just at
this period. But when storms are at their
height, when the ocean hurls mountain after
mountain Of water on the cliffs, then the noise
is terrific the roaring heard down here in the
mine is so expressibly fierce and awful, that
the boldest men at work are afraid to continue
tneT lhDOr-au aScenu 10 inc surface 10 breathe
upper air and stand on the firm earth dread
ing, though no catastrophe has ever happened
yet, that the sea will break in on them if they
remain in the cavern below.
Hearing this we get up to look at the rock
above us. We are able to stand upright in
the position we now occupy-and, fsing our
candles hither and thither in the darkness, can
see the bright pure copper streaking the gal
lery in every direction. Lumps Of ooze, of the
most lustrous green color, traversed by a natu
raj network of thin red veins of iron, appear
here and there in large, irregular patches, over
which water drips slowly and necessarily in
certain places. This is the salt water percola
ting through invisible crannies in thin continu-
Gus streams Just over our heads we observe
wooden plug of the thickness of a mans leg
there is a hole here, and the plug is all that we
have to keep out the sea!
Immense wealth of metal is contained in the
roof of this gallery, throughout its whole
length; but it remains, and it will always re-
main untouched the miners dare not take it.
for it is great part Of the rock which forms
the only protection against the sea, and which
hns been so far worked away here, and its
thickness is limited to an average of three feet
only between the water and the gallery in which
we now stand No one knows what might be
the consequence of another days labor with the
pickaxe on any part of it,