so disposed.

Of course these mines cave in, in places, occasionally, and then it is
worth one's while to take the risk of descending into them and observing
the crushing power exerted by the pressing weight of a settling mountain.
I published such an experience in the Enterprise, once, and from it I
will take an extract:

AN HOUR IN THE CAVED MINES.--We journeyed down into the Ophir mine,
yesterday, to see the earthquake. We could not go down the deep
incline, because it still has a propensity to cave in places.
Therefore we traveled through the long tunnel which enters the hill
above the Ophir office, and then by means of a series of long
ladders, climbed away down from the first to the fourth gallery.
Traversing a drift, we came to the Spanish line, passed five sets of
timbers still uninjured, and found the earthquake. Here was as
complete a chaos as ever was seen--vast masses of earth and
splintered and broken timbers piled confusedly together, with
scarcely an aperture left large enough for a cat to creep through.
Rubbish was still falling at intervals from above, and one timber
which had braced others earlier in the day, was now crushed down out
of its former position, showing that the caving and settling of the
tremendous mass was still going on. We were in that portion of the
Ophir known as the "north mines." Returning to the surface, we
entered a tunnel leading into the Central, for the purpose of
getting into the main Ophir. Descending a long incline in this
tunnel, we traversed a drift or so, and then went down a deep shaft
from whence we proceeded into the fifth gallery of the Ophir. From
a side-drift we crawled through a small hole and got into the midst
of the earthquake again--earth and broken timbers mingled together
without regard to grace or symmetry. A large portion of the second,
third and fourth galleries had caved in and gone to destruction--the
two latter at seven o'clock on the previous evening.

At the turn-table, near the northern extremity of the fifth gallery,
two big piles of rubbish had forced their way through from the fifth
gallery, and from the looks of the timbers, more was about to come.
These beams are solid--eighteen inches square; first, a great beam
is laid on the floor, then upright ones, five fe