We had to cut through the solid rock, working in the air, suspended by ropes.

This perilous labour so disheartened our workmen that some of them left us; to encourage the rest, I was slung up like them, and like them handled the pickaxe.

One day, in the explosion of a charge a piece of stone struck the rope of one of my men with such violence that it cut it as clean in two as the edge of a razor would have done.

The man fell--I believed him to be lost; by a miracle, his clothes caught in some brushwood, to which he succeeded in clinging.

It was I who went to his assistance, and I swear to you that in this rescue I proved the strength of my muscles, and ran the risk twenty times of breaking my neck.