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Soon he had led his men into the suburbs of the city, while Worth and Quitman charged inward over the neighboring causeways with equal impetuosity. A strong force was quickly within the streets of the city, assailed by skirmishers firing from houses and gardens, who could be reached only by forcing a way in with pickaxes and bars.
Determined, then, on seeing with our own eyes all these wonders, we set out for San-Mateo, taking with us an Indian, having with him a crowbar and a couple of pickaxes, to dig us out a way, should we have the chance of prolonging our subterraneous walk beyond the limits which we all already knew. We also took with us a good provision of flambeaus, so necessary to put our project into execution.
Here a short halt was made, and on the last day of March they set off for Ascalon, their animals laden with shovels, pickaxes, and baskets. On arriving at their destination the tents were pitched in the midst of the ruins, while a cottage was fitted up for Lady Hester without the walls. Orders were at once despatched to the neighbouring villages for relays of labourers to work at the excavations.
Four asses groaned under our personal effects; hens for consumption rode in a sort of lobster-pot by the side of clattering pickaxes and chairs; six policemen, or peons, were in our train, each on a donkey. One carried a paraffin lamp, another a basket of eggs on the palm of his hand, and as there were no reins and no stirrups, the wonder is that these articles ever survived.
They passed beneath where we sat, and, when about a stonecast beyond, they all jumped into a trench or pit, which I had not noticed before, about twenty feet long, by eight wide. It was already nearly six feet deep, but it seemed they had instructions to sink it further, for they first plied their pickaxes, and then began to shovel out the earth.
In some cases the thieves have succeeded, by the aid of levers, in moving a few inches the formidable lid; in others, by persevering with blows of pickaxes, they have pierced, in the thickness of the granite, a hole through which a man has been enabled to crawl like a rat, or a worm, and then, groping his way, to plunder the sacred mummy.
Any man wishing to cast an unclean vote was driven from the booth: all those attempting to introduce any element of brute force or rowdyism into the election were cracked over the head. In the lower part of the town scores of willing workers, recruited often from the humblest classes, kept order with pickaxes.
This is not so difficult a matter in Berlin as in New York, because Berlin is built upon a bed of sand and the difficulties of rock excavation do not exist. Women are employed on the railroads, working with pickaxes on the road-bed. Women drive the great yellow post carts of Berlin.
A monumental aspect often has its birth in ruin. In a wall near the arcade opens another arched door, of the time of Henry IV., permitting a glimpse of the trees of an orchard; beside this door, a manure-hole, some pickaxes, some shovels, some carts, an old well, with its flagstone and its iron reel, a chicken jumping, and a turkey spreading its tail, a chapel surmounted by a small bell-tower, a blossoming pear-tree trained in espalier against the wall of the chapel behold the court, the conquest of which was one of Napoleon's dreams.
We went on our way some three miles when a drenching shower came on, and we took shelter in the cavernous interior of an enormous, half-ruined oak-tree. Natural decay and the pickaxes of the woodman seeking fuel for his camp-fire had hollowed out a comfortable retreat from the storm. Surrounding the tree was a bed of wild strawberries, which helped to beguile the time.
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