Chapter Eleven.
A Land of Mystery.
Henty, having been interested in mining early in life, was at any time eager to seize upon an opportunity to plunge into the bowels of the earth, and not long after he commenced as war correspondent to the Standard, that is, at the termination of the Italo-Austrian campaign, he took occasion when at Trieste to run up into the hill country for a few days and visit the three great sights of Carniola, namely, the Grotto of Adelsberg, the Lake of Zirknitz, and the quicksilver mines of Idria.
Here the man who had studied mining in his youth with the possibility of succeeding to his father’s industrial occupation was in his element, and showed himself ready to study the country with an open and receptive mind. He was eager at once to investigate the mountainous and sterile country covered by the Alps and Tyrol, the vast forests and their timber, the transport, the burning of charcoal, and the general cheerlessness of a land of desolation often covered with huge boulders and scaurs of white stone. Quite the geologist here, he notes the hard white limestone of the secondary formation, quarried extensively, being excellent for building, and known through Italy as Istrian marble. He speaks of it as being the same stone which extends through Carniola and through Dalmatia into Greece, and here he seems to revel in a kind of exciting pleasure as he finds himself in a limestone formation somewhat similar to that of our own Derbyshire, asking to be explored and tempting him to excursions, honeycombed as it is with fissures and caverns.
Probably in no tract of country of equal size in the world are there so many singular freaks of nature. Rivers of navigable size and depth issue from its mountains—rivers which far surpass the subterranean streams of Central France—and these, after running for a few miles, enter a cavern and lose themselves as suddenly and mysteriously as they appeared.
It is a land of mystery and wonder, and, as if the spirit were moving within him to store up his mind with the natural wonders for attractive stories to come, such as would in some form or another fascinate readers yet unborn, Henty, with great eagerness, embraced the opportunity here offered to explore a wild land of savage sterility, where, as if to be in keeping with the “crag, knoll, and mound confusedly hurled, the fragments of an earlier world,” terrible tempests sweep with irresistible force. In the fury which rages in this inhospitable region, horses and wagons are not infrequently hurled over precipices, and a foot passenger, surprised in one of the tempestuous mountain squalls, is forced to seek for shelter beneath the parapets that have been built along the road.
Here he found that he was in a country where the railroads were protected by strong stone walls ten or twelve feet high, or equally lofty wooden palisading supported on both sides by massive struts, so as to afford some shelter to the passing trains which, when the gales are at their worst, are quite unable to pursue their journey.
Here, too, the engineering difficulties encountered in the construction of one of the lines had the deepest interest for Henty as a mining engineer, for not only was he face to face with the difficulties of the making of the railroad, but also with those of obtaining a supply of water at the various stations. Where the line ran, all was aridity and desolation. The water was below, requiring the help of powerful engines to raise it, and aqueducts over the surface to bear it along, one of these water-bridges being twenty-five miles in length. It was a very giant-land for a writer of fiction to fill with adventure.
Passing through this country of desolation, he at last reached the well-named village of Adelsberg, which in a state of nature might very well have supplied the crags where the eagles built. This he found a comfortable well-to-do village, Swiss-like in appearance, with its chalet style of architecture; but he was bent on the works of nature, and drove out to the famed Lake of Zirknitz, a piece of water that has obtained fame through its peculiar habit of quitting its bed once a year for a few weeks and so supplying the natives of those parts with an opportunity for growing a crop of coarse grass and millet before its return. This is all a suggestion of the peculiar workings of the subterranean waters below, and the regularity is more or less wonderful.
About midsummer the waters of the lake begin to shrink, growing lower and lower, and so rapidly that, after about twenty days in July, the lake is empty, remaining so till September or October, according to the season. This is the rule; but as there is no rule without an exception, the lake sometimes remains full for three or four years together, to the great loss of the people of the stony neighbourhood, who depend upon the little crop of buckwheat and millet which they are able to grow in the muddy bed. They also look forward to another harvest given to them when the water dries away; for, strange to state, at this time a plentiful supply of fish that flourish in the depths of the lake is left high and dry, and forms a portion of the natives’ food.
Knowing the character of the lake, Henty on his visit had looked forward to finding the place empty; but it presented no attraction for the visitor, appearing to be only an ordinary sheet of water some four miles long by three wide. There were villages about its shores, and a few small islands dotted its surface; but no opportunity was afforded him of examining what to a mining engineer would have been a matter of intense interest, the natural machinery which operates in the remarkable process of emptying and refilling. For above ground the lake has neither outlet nor inlet; but the limestone which forms its bed contains a number of funnel-shaped holes communicating with the vast caves, grottoes, and reservoirs in the mountains, by which the water enters or is drawn off. Some of these act as ebbing-pipes only; by others the water both enters and retires.
Upon occasions when the lake is empty, and there has been a sudden storm in the mountains, the water pours into the dry bed with such wonderful force and rapidity that it is sometimes filled in twenty-four hours. The annual emptying of the lake, however, is observed almost as a fête by the surrounding villages. The church announces the strange phenomenon, and the inhabitants become fishers for the nonce. Nets are prepared, and every description of vessel is held ready for the capture of the fish left behind when the water retreats, the nets being principally used as the waters sink and the funnel-shaped holes can be reached by the fishermen, who endeavour to cover these orifices before the fish can descend through them into the natural reservoirs below.
As the waters gradually disappear, a certain number of little pools are left, each being the property of one or other of the villages, and bearing its name. These pools vary greatly in the extent of the harvest they yield the villagers. One year a pool will contain cart-loads of fish, another year perhaps only a few dozen.
Henty gives a most interesting account of the strange phenomenon, but says nothing respecting the quality of the fish, except such as is conveyed by the eagerness of the inhabitants to obtain this natural yielding of the lake. They in all probability, however, belong to the coregonus family, a kind of lake fish which in variety haunt the lakes of Central Europe, and which one can answer for being very good eating, a quality not often possessed by fresh-water fish. In this case, as salt forms a large source of trade in the neighbourhood of Lake Zirknitz, the fish obtained from its waters most likely partake of the firmness and good qualities of those obtained from the sea.
In this mountainous region Henty’s observation was always busy, and he notes everything, not forgetting the accommodation. He describes the inns as rude, but not uncomfortable, the cookery not bad, but considers the people display an undue affection for stewed apples, which they look upon as a vegetable to be consumed with meat of all kinds.
He was much interested, too, in the custom of the villagers of keeping bees. He noticed in some villages several long carts, upon each of which were placed some twenty or thirty bee-hives of the shape of fig-boxes, but about two feet and a half long by a foot wide and nine inches deep. These hives are the property of various villagers, who club together, take a cart, and send it from place to place, so as to give the bees a fresh hunting-ground and a change of blossom for their supply.
Of course it is in the nature of a bee to be busy. Here they all seemed to be very active and hard at work, but they were rather a nuisance in the villages by reason of their numbers. However, they seemed particularly good-tempered bees, a fact of which Henty gives an example, and were not so much a nuisance through offering injury as from their habit of clustering upon the grapes and other fruits exposed for sale.
Henty says he remonstrated with a market woman, of whom he was willing to buy a bunch of grapes, when she held it out to him with eight or ten bees upon it, busily extracting honey, whereupon she laughed at him, picked the insects off with her fingers, and held them out to him to show that they were not disposed to use their stings even when roughly handled. An interesting fact this in natural history, and one which Henty admired, though he preferred seeing it done with other fingers than his own, and was quite content that the woman should have a poor opinion of his personal courage. But there are bees and bees, some more aggressive than others.
We all know the qualities of our own native bee, and any bee-keeper, unless he has been stung frequently and become inured, will tell you that the bees imported of late years from Liguria, and now acclimatised, have a rather vicious disposition.
These from the neighbourhood of Adelsberg are in all probability the reverse in character. Certainly they seem to vary, for Henty describes the honey as by no means good, being very dark-coloured, and having a strong, unpleasant twang. On the other hand, the flavour depends upon the neighbouring growth of flowers, and the taste may be given by some nectary common to the neighbourhood, possibly by what Henty describes when he says the fields were bright with purple crocus, which he had never before seen flowering at this time of year—October—evidently a mistake on his part, for the colchicum, the producer of the old-world remedy for gout.