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 feet high, stand on
it, supporting another horizontal beam, and so on, square above
square, like the framework of a window. The superincumbent weight
was sufficient to mash the ends of those great upright beams fairly
into the solid wood of the horizontal ones three inches, compressing
and bending the upright beam till it curved like a bow. Before the
Spanish caved in, some of their twelve-inch horizontal timbers were
compressed in this way until they were only five inches thick!
Imagine the power it must take to squeeze a solid log together in
that way. Here, also, was a range of timbers, for a distance of
twenty feet, tilted six inches out of the perpendicular by the
weight resting upon them from the caved galleries above. You could
hear things cracking and giving way, and it was not pleasant to know
that the world overhead was slowly and silently sinking down upon
you. The men down in the mine do not mind it, however.

Returning along the fifth gallery, we struck the safe part of the
Ophir incline, and went down it to the sixth; but we found ten
inches of water there, and had to come back. In repairing the
damage done to the incline, the pump had to be stopped for two
hours, and in the meantime the water gained about a foot. However,
the pump was at work again, and the flood-water was decreasing.
We climbed up to the fifth gallery again and sought a deep shaft,
whereby we might descend to another part of the sixth, out of reach
of the water, but suffered disappointment, as the men had gone to