“No more than you,” said I.  “I came to the gulf; I saw the depth, the snow below, the smoke that rolled out of the caverns; but when it was time I should get into the tun—­no, thank you.  Giddiness tickled me with her long, awl-like legs, and so I stayed where I was I have felt the descent, through the spine and the soles of the feet, and that as well as any one:  the descent is the pinch.  I have been in the Hartz, under Rammelsberg; glided, as on Russian mountains, at Hallein, through the mountain, from the top down to the salt-works; wandered about in the catacombs of Rome and Malta:  and what does one see in the deep passages?  Gloom—­darkness!  What does one feel?  Cold, and a sense of oppression—­a longing for air and light, which is by far the best; and that we have now.”

“But nevertheless, it is so very remarkable!” said the man; and he drew forth his “Hand-book for Travellers in Sweden,” from which he read:  “Danemora’s iron-works are the oldest, largest, and richest in Sweden; the best in Europe.  They have seventy-nine openings, of which seventeen only are being worked.  The machine mine is ninety-three fathoms deep.”

Just then the bells sounded from below:  it was the signal that the time of labour for that day was ended.  The hue of eve still shone on the tops of the trees above; but down in that deep, far-extended gulf, it was a perfect twilight.  Thence, and out of the dark caverns, the workmen swarmed forth.  They looked like flies, quite small in the space below:  they scrambled up the long ladders, which hung from the steep sides of the rocks, in separate landing-places:  they climbed higher and higher—­upwards, upwards—­and at every step they became larger.  The iron chains creaked in the scaffolding of beams, and three or four young fellows stood in their wooden shoes on the edge of the tun; chatted away right merrily, and kicked with their feet against the side of the rock, so that they swung from it:  and it became darker and darker below; it was as if the deep abyss became still deeper!

“It is appalling!” said the man from Scania.  “One ought, however, to have gone down there, if it were only to swear that one had been.  You, however, have certainly been down there,” said he again to me.

“Believe what you will,” I replied; and I say the same to the reader.

THE SWINE.

* * * * *

That capital fellow, Charles Dickens, has told us about the swine, and since then it puts us into a good humour whenever we hear even the grunt of one.  Saint Anthony has taken them under his patronage, and if we think of the “prodigal son,” we are at once in the midst of the sty, and it was just before such a one that our carriage stopped in Sweden.  By the high road, closely adjoining his house, the peasant had his sty, and that such a one as there is probably scarcely its like in the world.  It