This photograph shows men working at a graphite mine in Sri Lanka [Ceylon]. It probably was taken at Bogala, then the country's principal graphite mine in the 1880s. Graphite, a form of carbon, is used in pencils and numerous industrial goods and compounds.

Sri Lanka is one of the world's major sources, renowned for the high quality of graphite the island's peculiar geological formations have made possible. Today it remains the only area of the world where deep underground graphite vein mining takes place. The Bogala mine is still working.

The men are hauling graphite slurry up in buckets; roughly 50 men are visible in the image.