Beyond this group are a few miners resting from toil.  One of these, as he stands leaning his folded arms on a jutting rock, upon which he has placed his candle, elicits our spontaneous admiration.  His beauty is Apollo-like,—­every chiselled feature perfect in its classic regularity; his eyes sad, slumberous, and yet deep and glowing, are quite enough for any susceptible maiden’s heart; about a broad expanse of forehead cluster thick masses of dark brown hair; his shirt, open at the throat, reveals glimpses of ivory; altogether he is statuesque and beautiful.  Even his hands, strongly knit as they are, have not been rendered coarse by labor; they bear the same pallid hue as his face, and he looks like some nobly-born prisoner.  “What untoward fate cast him there?” I often ask myself.  He exists in my memory as a veritable Prince Charming, held captive in those gloomy caves of enchantment that yielded up to me their unreal realities in that nightmarish experience.  I never fancy him on upper earth living coarsely, even, it may be, talking ungrammatically, defying Horne Tooke and outraging Murray, among beings of a lower order of humanity; but he rises like a statue, standing silent and apart.

Some one throws away a nearly burnt-out candle at this spot.  It falls but a few inches from a can of gunpowder, which is not too securely closed.  As I utter a quick word of warning to the careless one, a miner starts.  “Good Heaven!” I hear him exclaim, as we disappear,—­“that was a woman!”

When we reach the next shaft, the Captain deposits himself in the descending bucket, and, irregularly tossing from side to side, goes down to overlook some work, and leave fresh orders with the miners.  We await his return before again betaking ourselves to the ladders.

On the next level, we behold scores of men in busy action.  I can think only of ants in an ant-hill:  some are laden with ore; others bearing the refuse rocks and earth, the debris of the mine, to the shafts; others, again, are preparing blasts,—­we do not tarry long with these; others with picks work steadily at the tough ore.  In some places, the copper freshly broken glitters like gold, and the specks on the rocks, or in the earth-covered mass, as our candle-light awakens their sparkles, gleam like the spangles on a dancer’s robe or stars in a midnight sky.  All the while we hear the dreadful rattle of the down-sinking caldrons, or the heavy labor of the freighted ones, as they ascend from level to level.

Suddenly our path conducts us past a seated bevy of miners taking their “crib,” as it is termed, from the food-can, which stands at hand,—­a small fire blazing in the midst of them.  Weary and sore, we seat ourselves near them, while our hardier companions talk with the respectful group.

They work eight hours at a time, they tell us,—­ascending at the expiration of that period to betake themselves to their homes, which are mostly in the little village where the yelping curs also reside.  They enjoy unusual health, and pity the upper-world of surface-laborers, whom they regard with a kind of contempt.  Accidents are not frequent, considering the perils of their occupation.  The miners here are generally Cornish-men, with some Germans.