How hard was tunneling through rock in old times?

In preindustrial times, when tunneling meant guys with a hammer and chisel, how difficult was tunneling through rock?* What kind of progress could be reasonably expected per day or per week? And were there practical limits to how far you could go before ventilation and other problems made it impossible?

*of course limestone would be one thing and granite another entirely.

ETA: I’m trying to establish a baseline for a RPG on what’s plausible, such as how quickly an underground fortress could be carved out of a mountain, or how long an escape tunnel could be.

They also used explosives in the 1800s, not just manual digging methods. They used black powder until dynamite was invented in 1866.

This says one tunnel was dug at about 25 cm (10 inches) a day even with black powder.

History of gunpowder - Wikipedia

I really hate to link to Wikipedia, but my primary source is offline and I do not feel like typing a lot. In any event, it’s an example of tunnel construction by an organized group of folks without explosives.

From: Fucine Lake - Wikipedia

Wouldn’t it depend on the rock too? I’d much rather tunnel through sand stone then granite.

Even the tunnel boring machines they use now can run into problems, sometimes they get stuck. Getting them unstuck can be a real pain.

Even pre-gunpowder, it wasn’t just hammer & chisel - repeated heating & dowsing of rock was used to crack the tunnel face.

Agricola’s De Re Metallica is the definitive reference for medieval mining. Luckily, it’s online.

I think that translation is the greatest thing an American president has ever done before his presidency. Yes, that includes winning that little Revolution.

Considering which president it was, I’d think that’s the second* greatest thing he’s EVER done, before or after his presidency.

*The first is his directorship of the American Relief Administration.