And the way of making a marble quarry is to
sink a tunnel, slanting very steeply down into the earth, like a well
turned askew, till you reach fifty, seventy, or perhaps one hundred feet
deep. Then from the bottom of this shaft there spread out narrow passages
or tunnels, mostly six feet high, but sometimes only three or four, and
in these the marble is dug. These quarries were made by men centuries
ago, some say by the Romans themselves; and though some are still worked
in other parts of Purbeck, those at the back of Anvil Point have been
disused beyond the memory of man.
We had left the stony village fields, and the face of the country was
covered once more with the closest sward, which was just putting on the
brighter green of spring. This turf was not smooth, but hummocky, for
under it lay heaps of worthless stone and marble drawn out of the
quarries ages ago, which the green vestment had covered for the most
part, though it left sometimes a little patch of broken rubble peering
out at the top of a mound. There were many tumble-down walls and low
gables left of the cottages of the old quarrymen; grass-covered ridges
marked out the little garden-folds, and here and there still stood a
forlorn gooseberry-bush, or a stunted plum-or apple-tree with its
branches all swept eastward by the up-Channel gales.
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