The traveller raised his foot over the abyss, and set it on the tun, into which one of the workmen received him, and held him; and the chains rattled; the pulleys turned; the tun sank slowly, hovering through the air.  But he felt the descent; he felt it through his bones and marrow; through all the nerves.  Her icy breath blew in his neck, and down the spine, and the air itself became colder and colder.  It seemed to him as if the rocks grew over his head, always higher and higher:  the tun made a slight swinging, but he felt it, like a fall—­a fall in sleep, that shock in the blood.  Did it go quicker downwards, or was it going up again?  He could not distinguish by the sensation.

The tun touched the ground, or rather the snow—­the dirty trodden, eternal snow, down to which no sunbeam reaches, which no summer warmth from above ever melts.  A hollow sound was heard from within the dark, yawning cavern, and a thick vapour rolled out into the cold air.  The stranger entered the dark halls; there seemed to be a crashing above him:  the fire burned; the furnaces roared; the beating of hammers sounded; the watery damps dripped down—­and he again entered the tun, which was hoven up in the air.  He sat with closed eyes, but giddiness breathed on his head, and on his breast; his inwardly-turned eye measured the giddy depth through the tun:  “It is appalling,” said he.

“Appalling!” echoed the brave and estimable stranger, whom we met at Danemora’s great gulf.  He was a man from Scania, consequently from the same street as the Sealander—­if the Sound be called a street (strait).  “But, however, one can say one has been down there,” said he, and he pointed to the gulf; “right down, and up again; but it is no pleasure at all.”

“But why descend at all?” said I.  “Why will men do these things?”

“One must, you know, when one comes here,” said he.  “The plague of travelling is, that one must see everything:  one would not have it supposed otherwise.  It is a shame to a man, when he gets home again, not to have seen everything, that others ask him about.”

“If you have no desire, then let it alone.  See what pleases you on your travels.  Go two paces nearer than where you stand, and become quite giddy:  you will then have formed some conception of the passage downward.  I will hold you fast, and describe the rest of it for you.”  And I did so, and the perspiration sprang from his forehead.

“Yes, so it is:  I apprehend it all,” said he:  “I am clearly sensible of it.”

I described the dirty grey snow covering, which the sun’s warmth never thaws; the cold down there, and the caverns, and the fire, and the workmen, &c.

“Yes; one should be able to tell all about it,” said he.  “That you can, for you have seen it.”