We entered a cage and were lowered to the one
thousand-foot level; then we got out of the cage and, walking about
twenty yards, we entered a chamber where there was another shaft and
hoisting works and were lowered to the two-thousand foot level, which
opened out in every direction, connecting with a drainage tunnel eight
miles long, which carried off all the water for sixteen square miles of
surface. After explaining to me the old methods of mining he said with a
smile: "Come with me now and I will show you our new method," and
entering a large chamber that looked like an immense warehouse, we
stepped into a cage and went down, changing from one cage to another
every thousand feet, until we stopped at the sixty-four-thousand-foot
level. We visited several crosscuts and drifts on this level and found
several hundred men at work taking out platinum ore of a high grade, and
my companion told me that they were doing the same work on several other
thousand-foot levels, the ore improving in quality as they went down.
"You no doubt observed as we came down that the shaft was circular, but
you may not have seen a second shaft of the same diameter as the hoisting
shaft forty feet away.
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