At Hancock the steamer waits several hours, giving an opportunity to visit the wonderful copper-mines.  We chanced to be there just at the hour to see one of the unique sights of America,—­the working of the man-engine that brings the miners up from their work.  Even by machinery it takes them half an hour to reach daylight.  The mine is worked to the depth of fifteen hundred feet, and for five hundred we could gaze down into the dark and awful shaft, lit for us by the candles burning in the miners’ caps.  Two long beams, to which are attached at right angles little platforms at intervals of eight feet, each platform holding one man, work up and down.  As each man reaches the level of the platform above on the opposite beam the engine stops just long enough for him to step from one to the other.  The long, silent, spectral procession, moving with such shadowy precision and constant motion, with the glimmering lights changing, not fitfully, but with the regularity of well-trained will-o’-the-wisps, made a panorama not easily forgotten.  Every minute or two, as the engine paused, the miner whose platform had reached the top sprang suddenly, like a jack-in-the-box, out of the opening into which we were gazing, touched his hat, and disappeared into the town.  Long as we waited, the procession was not yet ended when we had to go back to the Japan.

It is just beyond Hancock that the river broadens into the beautiful expanse so like Lake George.  As we glided away from the wharf in the light of a splendid sunset, it was curious to look back at the simple little town, so remote from luxury, even from civilization, so humble in its own wants and pleasures, yet pouring such vast sources of supply into the great world of which it knew nothing and asked nothing, save the privilege of enriching it.

At twilight we entered the canal.  I have been up the Saguenay, I have been over the Marshall Pass and through the Royal Gorge of the Arkansas, and I have seen many noble scenes in Europe, but no scenery has ever impressed me with such solemnity as the landscape on that canal in the twilight of an August afternoon.  Nor was it merely a personal impression.  There were two hundred souls on board, with the usual proportion of giddy young girls and talkative youths; the negro waiters as we entered the canal were singing and playing their violins; but in an instant, as the speed of the steamer was again checked to four miles an hour, every sound was hushed on board.  During the hour that was occupied in going through the canal, it is a literal fact that not a sound was heard on the great steamer but the low impressive orders of the captain and—­if you chanced to be on the captain’s bridge—­the ticking of the clock in the wheel-house. People spoke in whispers, if they spoke at all, quite unconscious of it till they remembered it afterward.  What made it so impressive?  I am sure I do not know.  Certainly there was nothing awful in the scenery, and