yards, when the passage took a turn, and sloped steeply into the
heart of the hill. With many angles and windings and
branchings-off, and sometimes with steps where it came upon a
natural gulf, it led them deep into the hill before they arrived at
the place where they were at present digging out the precious ore.
This was of various kinds, for the mountain was very rich in the
better sorts of metals. With flint and steel, and tinder-box, they
lighted their lamps, then fixed them on their heads, and were soon
hard at work with their pickaxes and shovels and hammers. Father
and son were at work near each other, but not in the same gang -
the passages out of which the ore was dug, they called gangs - for
when the lode, or vein of ore, was small, one miner would have to
dig away alone in a passage no bigger than gave him just room to
work - sometimes in uncomfortable cramped positions. If they
stopped for a moment they could hear everywhere around them, some
nearer, some farther off, the sounds of their companions burrowing
away in all directions in the inside of the great mountain - some
boring holes in the rock in order to blow it up with gunpowder,
others shovelling the broken ore into baskets to be carried to the
mouth of the mine, others hitting away with their pickaxes.
Sometimes, if the miner was in a very lonely part, he would hear
only a tap-tapping, no louder than that of a woodpecker, for the
sound would come from a great distance off through the solid
mountain rock.

The work was hard at best, for it is very warm underground; but it
was not particularly unpleasant, and some of the miners, when they
wanted to earn a little more money for a particular purpose, would
stop behind the rest and work all night. But you could not tell
night from day down there, except from feeling tired and sleepy;