the appearance that I should present when laid out for surgical treatment, or perhaps for burial, on one of those dirty prison cots.
As we slowly descended into the depths of the mine, sometimes on ladders and sometimes on slippery notched logs, I became conscious of a peculiar, unpleasant odor, which I presumed to be due to a recent explosion of dynamite in one of the adjacent galleries. Our candles began to burn blue and finally went out altogether, matches could hardly be made to light, and we found ourselves clinging to a worn ladder, in total darkness, over a bottomless abyss, wondering how long air that would not support combustion would support life. We did not feel any sensation of oppression, nor did we seem to be in any immediate danger of asphyxiation; but there was evidently very little of oxygen in the air, and we were not a little relieved when, by dint of striking innumerable matches, we succeeded in groping our way down two or three more ladders to the mouth of a gallery where our candles would again burn. Along this gallery we proceeded for a hundred yards or more, clambering here and there over piles of glittering ore which convicts were carrying on small hand-barrows to one of the hoisting shafts. The temperature of the mine seemed to be everywhere below the freezing point, and in many places the walls and roof were thickly incrusted with frost-crystals, which sparkled in the candlelight as if the gallery were lined with gems. After wandering about hither and thither in a maze of low, narrow passages, we came to another shaft, and descended another series of worn, icy ladders to the deepest part of the mine. Here six or eight men were at work getting out ore and drilling holes in the rock for the insertion of blasting cartridges. Their tools and appliances were of the rudest, most primitive description, and the way in which the work was being carried on would have brought a contemptuous smile to the face of a Nevada miner. The air almost everywhere on the lower level had been exhausted of its oxygen and vitiated by ex-
