h of 3,280
feet. The attainment of that depth was made the occasion of a
festival, which continued three days, and was still further honored by
the striking off of commemorative medals of the value of a florin
each. There is no record of the beginning of work on this mine at
Przibram, although its written history goes back to 1527.

Twenty years ago very few mining shafts in the world had reached a
depth of 2,000 feet. The very deepest at that time was in a
metalliferous mine in Hanover, which had been carried down 2,900 feet;
but this was probably not a single perpendicular shaft. Two vertical
shafts near Gilly, in Belgium, are sunk to the depth of 2,847 feet. At
this point they are connected by a drift, from which an exploring
shaft or winze is sunk to a further depth of 666 feet, and from that
again was put down a bore hole 49 feet in depth, making the total
depth reached 3,562 feet. As the bore hole did not reach the seam of
coal sought for, they returned and resumed operations at the 2,847
level. In Europe it is thought worthy of particular note that there
are vertical shafts of the following depths:

Feet.
Eimkert's shaft of the Luganer Coal Mining
Company, Saxony 2,653

Sampson shaft of the Oberhartz silver mine,
near St. Andreasberg, Hanover. 2,437

The hoisting shaft of the Rosebridge Colliery,
near Wigan, Lancashire, England. 2,458

Shaft of the coal mines of St. Luke, near
St. Chaumont, France. 2,253

Amelia shaft, Shemnitz, Hungary. 1,782

The No. 1 Camphausen shaft, near Fishbach,
in the department of the Saarbruck
Collieries, Prussia. 1,650

Now, taking the mines of the Comstock for a distance of over a
mile--from the Utah on the north to the Alto on the south--there is
hardly a mine that is not down over 2,500 feet, and most of the shafts
are deeper than those mentioned above; while the Union Consolidated
shaft has a vertical depth of 2,900 feet, and the Yellow Jacket a
depth of 3,030 feet. In his closing argument before the Congressional
Committee on Mines and Mining in 1872, Adolph Sutro of the Sutro
tunnel said: "The deepest hole dug by man since the world has existed
is only 2,700 feet deep, and it remains for the youngest nation on
earth to contribute more