Passages were excavated on either hand, in every sense; and, indeed, a second and lower storey, at times even a third, was dug out.

And here, you see, we are in a gallery which is certainly thirteen feet high.

Now, you may wonder how they raised the bodies to place them in the compartments of the top tier.

Well, they did not raise them to any such height; in all their work they kept on going lower and lower, removing more and more of the soil as the compartments became filled.

And in this wise, in these catacombs of St.Calixtus, in less than four centuries, the Christians excavated more than ten miles of galleries, in which more than a million of their dead must have been laid to rest.