walls like rock-salt or alabaster, nothing more is to be said.
Coming up the shaft we were on the top of the platform, and the water we had heard going down now splashed on to us, as if somebody with a primitive sense of humour was watering us from above with a large watering-can. Altogether, we were very grateful for the blue overalls and the hats. Apropos of these, when we had recovered our own clothes and were waiting to inspect the machinery above ground, a distraught gentleman was passionately inquiring for his hat. The lady who had exchanged hats observed innocently that there was quite a nice hat hanging up in her dressing-room. He hurried off to look, and emerged ruefully with the hat in which she had been down the mine. It had been well watered with muddy water, and was now almost indistinguishable from the hats provided for the purpose.
The machinery was to the uninitiated much like other machinery. There were enormous pumps, fascinating like all such powerful, ruthless looking things. We saw the slim-looking cable that draws the cage up the shaft—("Looks thin, don't it?" said the workman in charge of it)—and the stamper for breaking up the quartz, and the sifters, which sift the mineral when it is crushed.
But there was much more to see. We were
