that had formerly lived. A few wretched trees bordered a plain
where the ground was hidden under the black dust of the mineral fuel,
but no cinders nor even fragments of coal were to be seen.
All had been carried away and consumed long ago.

They walked into the shed which covered the opening of the Yarrow shaft,
whence ladders still gave access to the lower galleries of the pit.
The engineer bent over the opening. Formerly from this place could
be heard the powerful whistle of the air inhaled by the ventilators.
It was now a silent abyss. It was like being at the mouth of
some extinct volcano.

When the mine was being worked, ingenious machines were used in certain
shafts of the Aberfoyle colliery, which in this respect was very well off;
frames furnished with automatic lifts, working in wooden slides,
oscillating ladders, called "man-engines," which, by a simple movement,
permitted the miners to descend without danger.

But all these appliances had been carried away, after the cessation
of the works. In the Yarrow shaft there remained only a long succession
of ladders, separated at every fifty feet by narrow landings.
Thirty of these ladders placed thus end to end led the visitor
down into the lower gallery, a depth of fifteen hundred feet.
This was the only way of communication which existed between
the bottom of the Dochart pit and the open air. As to air,
that came in by the Yarrow shaft, from whence galleries communicated
with another shaft whose orifice opened at a higher level;
the warm air naturally escaped by this species of inverted siphon.