The Subterranean World

by G. Hartwig

The iron-working industry of Austria has its chief seats in Styria, Carinthia, Transylvania, and Bohemia, and, though out of proportion with the vast natural resources of the empire, has of late made rapid progress. The ores, which are of an excellent quality, are mostly smelted with charcoal, as they are generally situated at a great distance from the coal mines. The Noric or Styrian iron has enjoyed an excellent reputation ever since the time of the Romans, when the imperial manufactory of Laureacum on the Danube supplied the legions with swords and javelins.

In a pass of the Styrian Alps, between the valleys of the Mur and the Enns, lies one of the most remarkable iron mines in the world, the famous Erzberg or iron-mountain, which rises to a height of 3,000 feet, and whose summit and sides are almost everywhere coated with a thick mantle of the richest ore. Authentic records show that it has been worked ever since the year 712; and probably the Romans derived a part of their Noric iron from this source, as the ore is not here concealed in the bowels of the earth, but crops out on the surface, near a mountain pass which was undoubtedly known to them. As at Nishne-Tagilsk, the ore thus conveniently situated is quarried from the mountain, and thus in course of time extensive excavations or grottoes have been formed all over its surface, affording a most interesting spectacle. The bottom of these iron-stone pits is irregularly strewn with large blocks of ore through which wind narrow footpaths. Roads lead from one pit to the other, and close by are situated the small huts in each of which ten or twenty of the miners sleep as long as the working season lasts, for their families generally live lower down in the deeper valleys. On the top of the mountain stands a colossal crucifix of iron, near which an annual thanksgiving feast is celebrated. Though the mines are easily worked, the conveyance of their produce to the smelting-ovens of Eisenerz and Vordernberg is a matter of much greater difficulty, and requires numerous tram-roads, galleries, and shafts, through which the ore is precipitated from a higher to a lower level. At the foot of the mountain they all unite in one main shaft, which leads into a gallery ornamented with a monumental gate. Thus the whole of the Erzberg is covered with various machines, pits, horizontal and vertical galleries, tunnels, and roads, and represents as it were a mine turned inside out, where all the operations which are elsewhere performed underground are, as at the Carclaze tin-mine in Cornwall, exposed to the open day. Here, instead of dirty and dangerous ladders, convenient footpaths, bordered with trees and illumined by the sun, lead from gallery to gallery and from pit to pit, and instead of being confined in dismal passages, the miner enjoys magnificent views of the grandest Alpine scenery. The annual produce of the Erzberg amounts to 25,000 tons of excellent iron, as the ore (sparry iron, carbonate of iron, sphærosiderite) is nearly as pure as the magnetic iron-stone of Russia, and affords natural steel with the greatest facility. The railroad now being built in Styria will no doubt greatly increase this production, which might be continued for many thousand years without exhausting the vast mineral wealth which Nature has here deposited.

Though Sweden furnishes but an insignificant quantity of iron when measured by an English scale, yet, in point of quality, its produce is unrivalled in the world. The purest iron-ores (magnetic iron-stone) abound in the mountain chains which traverse the kingdom, and immense forests afford almost inexhaustible supplies of charcoal for their smelting, so that hitherto the want of roads has alone prevented the production of iron from attaining dimensions equal to the natural resources of the country. Many of the richest mines, particularly in the more northern provinces, have never yet been worked, as for instance the enormous mounds of magnetic iron-ore at Gellivara (67° N. lat.) in Swedish Lapland, beyond the Arctic circle, which, from their situation in a polar desert, have hitherto been totally useless. In 1865 an attempt was made to utilize them by means of a railroad and the canalization of the river Luleo, but after a heavy expense the works were finally abandoned.

Thus the manufacture of iron, which, under more favourable circumstances, would reach as far as its ores extend, is confined to Dalecarlia, the more central provinces of Kopperberg, Wermland, and Upsala, where the celebrated mines of Dannemora, which furnish the fine Oeregrund iron, largely imported into England for the manufacture of steel, deserve our particular notice, both for their ancient renown and their wild and colossal grandeur. An excellent road leads from the famous university town of Upsala to Old Upsala, old and hoary in the fullest sense of the word, for its church dates from the Pagan times, and close by rise three tumuli which, according to popular tradition, contain the remains of no less important personages than Odin, Thor, and the divine Freya.

Further on towards the north-east, six geographical miles from Upsala, lie the iron-works of Oesterby, remarkable for their beautiful situation in a natural park of forests and lakes, and thence half an hour’s walk over the plain brings one to the far-famed pit of Dannemora.

The country around is perfectly level, a succession of pine-woods and open grounds, and no sign announces the vicinity of the mine, until at length the traveller sees a few huts and some machines for lifting the ore, and then suddenly stands on the brink of an enormous pit, or rather of a vast crater, whose black and precipitous walls inclose an area of at least a mile in circumference. On looking down into the abyss, which descends to a depth of 450 feet, and is here and there enlivened with patches of perennial snow, he perceives along its black walls the still blacker entrances to labyrinthine caves fringed in some parts with long stalactites of ice of aquamarine transparency and colour. From some of these hollows the flames of piles of fir-wood are seen to creep along the hard rock which they are to soften, and the deep gulf is animated by troops of miners, the distant clang of whose hammers, closely resembling the clicking of a number of clocks, forms a strange concert with the creaking noise of the machinery. Attracted by the novelty of the interesting sight, the eye wanders from one object to another, and time steals on rapidly and unperceived—when suddenly a bell tolls, and the scene as suddenly changes.

It is noon, and the tuns, which before were hauled up from the deep laden with ore, are now seen ascending with a living freight—men, women, and children—standing quite unconcernedly on the narrow edge of the tub, and holding with one hand the chain to which it is attached.

Soon a deathlike silence reigns in the pit—a striking contrast with the noise and life it erewhile displayed—and now loud shouts are heard, warning all those who may have remained behind that the battery prepared during the previous working hours is about to explode. Again a profound silence—and then loud thunder bursts forth, with many an echo, from the depth of the abyss.

For several minutes the whole neighbourhood trembles as if shaken by an earthquake. Through the black clouds of smoke which ascend from the gulf, pieces of stone or ore are hurled upwards, frequently far beyond the brink of the pit, and most of the detonations are followed by the crash of the falling fragments rent by the explosion from the mother-rock.

For many centuries this remarkable mine has afforded employment to many hundreds of workmen, without showing any signs of exhaustion, for its mighty mass of magnetic iron-ore descends to an unknown depth and seems to be practically inexhaustible.