About ten o'clock Sunday forenoon we got up, somewhat rested and refreshed, and after a hasty and rather unsatisfactory breakfast of bread and tea went out into the broad, snowy, and deserted street of the village — Mr. Frost to make a sketch, and I to find the ustávshchik, or officer in charge of the mine.
The Kadaínski mine, which is one of the oldest and most extensive silver mines in the Nérchinsk district, is situated on the side of a bold, steep, round-topped mountain about 300 yards from the village and 200 or 300 feet above it. It has been worked for more than a century, and was at one time very productive; but the richest veins of ore in it have been exhausted, and it does not now yield nearly as much silver as the Pokrófski mine or the mine of Algachí.
The ustávshchik, whom I found at work in a log house near the mine, and who seemed to be an intelligent and well-educated Siberian peasant, received me pleasantly but with some surprise, read my letters of introduction, expressed his willingness to show me everything that I desired to see, and in ten minutes we were on our way to the mine. In the tool-house, which stood over the mouth of the main shaft, I put on the outer dress of one of the convicts, — which I soon found to be full of vermin, — the ustávshchik donned a long, mud-stained khalát, a battered uniform cap, and a pair of heavy leather mittens, and providing ourselves with tallow candles we lowered ourselves into the black mouth of the Voskresénski or Ascension shaft. After descending ten or twelve ladders, we reached, at a depth of about 120 feet, a spacious chamber from which radiated three or four horizontal galleries much wider and higher than any that I had seen in the mines of Pokrófski and Algachí. The floor of the chamber was covered with water to a depth of three or four inches and moisture was dripping everywhere from the walls. At a depth of 200 feet we reached another landing and entered the mouth of a very wide and high gallery leading away into the heart of the mountain. There had just been a blast somewhere in this
