Formerly from this place could be heard the powerful whistle of the air inhaled by the ventilators.

It was now a silent abyss.

It was like being at the mouth of some extinct volcano.
When the mine was being worked, ingenious machines were used in certain shafts of the Aberfoyle colliery, which in this respect was very well off; frames furnished with automatic lifts, working in wooden slides, oscillating ladders, called "man-engines," which, by a simple movement, permitted the miners to descend without danger.
But all these appliances had been carried away, after the cessation of the works.

In the Yarrow shaft there remained only a long succession of ladders, separated at every fifty feet by narrow landings.

Thirty of these ladders placed thus end to end led the visitor down into the lower gallery, a depth of fifteen hundred feet.