This was of various kinds, for the mountain was very rich in the better sorts of metals.

With flint and steel, and tinder-box, they lighted their lamps, then fixed them on their heads, and were soon hard at work with their pickaxes and shovels and hammers.

Father and son were at work near each other, but not in the same gang--the passages out of which the ore was dug, they called gangs--for when the lode, or vein of ore, was small, one miner would have to dig away alone in a passage no bigger than gave him just room to work--sometimes in uncomfortable cramped positions.

If they stopped for a moment they could hear everywhere around them, some nearer, some farther off, the sounds of their companions burrowing away in all directions in the inside of the great mountain--some boring holes in the rock in order to blow it up with gunpowder, others shovelling the broken ore into baskets to be carried to the mouth of the mine, others hitting away with their pickaxes.

Sometimes, if the miner was in a very lonely part, he would hear only a tap-tapping, no louder than that of a woodpecker, for the sound would come from a great distance off through the solid mountain rock.
The work was hard at best, for it is very warm underground; but it was not particularly unpleasant, and some of the miners, when they wanted to earn a little more money for a particular purpose, would stop behind the rest and work all night.