Year: 1863




Wilkie Collins, in his Sketches Atoot,
gives the following account of visit paid
by him to the great Botaock copper mine.
which extends under the sea on the coast Of
Cornwall England


The miner tells us to keep strict silence
and listen. We obey him sitting speechess
and moionless. If the reader could only
have beheld us now, dressed in our copper
colored garments. huddled close together in
a mere cleft of subterranean rock, with flame
burning on our heads enveoping our limbs
he must certainly have imagined, without
any violent stretch of fancy, that he was
looking down upon conclave of gnomes.


After listening for few moments, dist.
ant, unearthly noise becomes family audible
"a long, low mysterious moaning, that new.
er changes that is felt on the ear as well as
heard by it-a sound that might proceed
from some incaculable distance, from some
far invisible height-a sound unlike any.
thing that is heard on the ground,
in the free air of heaven--a sound
so sublimely mournful and still, so ghostly
and impressive when listened to in the sub
terranean recesses of the earth, that we con.
linue insinctively to hold our peace, as
enchanted by it, and think not of conmuni-
eating to each other the strange awe and as.
lonishment which it has inspired in US both
from the very first


At last, the miner speaks again, and tells
that what we hear is the sound Of the surf
!ashing the rocks 100 feet above US, and the
waves that are breaking on the beach be-
yond. the tide is now at its flow, and the
sea is in no extraordinary state of agitation;
SO the sound is low and distant Just at this
period. But when the 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 inexpressbly fierce and aw-
iul, that the boldest men at work are afraid
TO continue their labor-aIl ascend to the
surface to breathe the upper air and stand
on the firm earth; dreading, though no such
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 upi
right in the position we nov occupy; and
tlarng our candles hilher and thiher in the
darkness, can see the bright pure copper
streakng the dark ceiling of the gallery in
every direction. Lumps of ooze, of the
most luslrous green color, traversed by
natural netword of thin red veins of ron
appear here and there in large irregular
patches, over which water is dropping slowly
and necessarily in certain places. This is
the salt water percolating through invisible
crannies in the rock. On stormy days it
spurts out furiousy. in thin continuous
streams. Just now over our heads we OBJ,
serve wooden plug of the thickness Of
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 will al
take it, for it is part, and greater part, of
the rock which forms their only protection
against the sea, and which has been so far
worke! away here, that its thickness is limit
ed 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
consequences of an other days labor with
the pickaxe on any part of it. The informa-
ton is rather startling when communicated
at depth of 400 feet underground. We
should decidedly have preferred to receive it
in the counting house, 1t makes US pause
for an instant to the miners infinite amuse-
ment, in the very act of knocking away
about an inch OF ore from the rock, as a mo-
mento of Botallock.