where my cheerful room looked on the
suspension bridge, and commanded a full view
of all the shipping on the Seine.

SLATES.

THOSE who now run through Wales on the
way to Ireland should, unless their time be
very limited indeed, turn aside from the iron
pathway, and glance at the wonderful slate
quarries up Nant Francon. They will be
repaid for their trouble. And if a circuitous
coach-route be adopted instead of the rail,
there are Mr. Asherton Smith's quarries in
the very bosom of Snowdonia, and Mrs.
Oakley's quarries near the beautiful
Ffestiniog. Plenty of slate in North Wales, if
we will turn a little out of the highway to look
for it; but of all the quarries in the Principality
— of all in the world, perhaps — the place
of honour must be given to those which have
Bangor for their shipping port, and which
have poured such wealth into the coffers of
the Penrhyns and the Pennants. Penrhyn
castle, one of the best of all modern castles,
built at a cost of a hundred thousand pounds,
may be regarded as a slate trophy ; its cost
was defrayed by the fortunes of the quarry-
owners, and it very properly contains rooms
and furniture, and ornaments of slate.

It is alone worth a journey into North
Wales, and a walk of seven miles from Bangor,
and a day's heat or cold, or rain or
snow, to see the pigmies at work high up Y
Bron, " the pap," a name frequently given in
Wales to rounded summits. The excavation
commences at a low level in the mountain;
but as the workings have been carried
on for ninety years or more, they now
extend more than half a mile into its heart,
and form a vast amphitheatre. It is an
amphitheatre of terraces one above another,
like the seats of the ancient Coliseum, but
so vastly large as to eclipse them in every
sense; while the workmen appear like mere
specks, so high and so wide-spreading are
the workings. The adoption of this terrace-
like mode of working is due to the peculiar
structure of slate. The slate is not
merely separable into beds or layers, nearly
horizontal, but it has innumerable lines of
cleavage nearly vertical; and these lines
facilitate the separation of the blocks from
the vertical face of the mountain. A trench
is first worked into the side of the slate
mountain; and, when this has extended to
such a distance that the rise of the mountain
causes the height of the trench to
be about forty feet, another trench is
commenced at the top of the former, and then
another and another, like a huge flight of
steps up the side of the mountain.
Meanwhile, the gradual widening of the lowermost
trenches will be effected by detaching blocks
of slate. The upper part of the mountain
being of course narrower than the base, it
necessarily follows that the lowest trenches
can be expanded farther and wider than the
upper. In fact, the lowest trenches have
ceased altogether to be trenches at Y Bron,
and have become vast semicircular cuttings.
No less than sixteen heights or terraces, each
about forty feet above the one next below it,
now exist ; and all sixteen are advancing
simultaneously further and further into the
heart of the mountain. As the quarrymen
proceed, they will probably have to make
other terraces still nearer the summit of the
mountain.

Two thousand men are digging, and blasting,
and levelling, some of them at a height
from the ground equal to double the height
of St. Paul's Cathedral, and all working
open to the light of day, instead of burrowing
underground like miners. The blasting
is extraordinary work, requiring no little
firmness of nerve. The men are suspended
by ropes from the edge of an upright crag of
the rock; they drill holes into the vertical
face of the slate; they put the blasting-
charges into these holes; they are hauled up
again, and, when precautions have been made
for obviating danger, the charges are fired,
the blast takes place, and huge masses of slate
become loosened. At the upper part of the
quarry the slates are loose enough to be
detached by crow-bars; but, at greater
depths, the slate is more compact and
requires the aid of gunpowder for its disruption.
So many are the perils at Y Bron,
that accidental deaths are painfully numerous
among the quarrymen. There are parts at
which the slate is interrupted by veins of
intensely-hard basalt or greenstone, the
presence of which is a sore trouble to the
proprietor and the workmen.

The men, the slates, the tools, and the
working-tackle, are raised and lowered from
one terrace to another by means of inclined
planes. A drum and a brake-wheel are placed
at the top of each inclined plane; and, by
dexterous management, trucks are raised and
lowered with great facility. The men not
only blast the compact recesses, and split the
loose blocks with wedges, but also separate
these blocks again into slabs, thin slates.
They then square and trim them. On most
of the terraces there are sheds or workshops
in which these subsidiary operations are
carried on. The very hard blocks are cut
with saws into slabs; while the looser kind
are split into roofing-slates by means of long
wedge-shaped pieces of iron.

But the quarries themselves are only one
part of this great Penrhyn property — one end
of a commercial chain. We have said that the
valley on the side of which this slate mountain
is situated is called Nant Francon. The
quarries are called by the Welsh name of
Dolawen, or the still more Welsh name, of
Braich-y-Cavn; or Penrhyn, after the name
of the first worker; or Bangor, after the name
of the shipping-port: but it matters little
what we call them, provided we bear in mind