O’er milk-white vales in ivory channels spread,
And wondering seek their subterraneous bed.
Long lines of lusters pour their trembling rays,
And the bright vault returns the mingled blaze.”
The deposit near Cracow is worked on four different levels or stories, divided into innumerable compartments, with thousands of excavations in every direction, and descending to the vast depth of one thousand feet below the surface. The length of the several passages, in their windings and turnings, is calculated to be nearly three hundred miles; about two thousand men are constantly employed in the mining operations; and, though the operations have been carrying on for the known period at least of six hundred years, the mass of rock-salt in the locality is still of inexhaustible extent.
The mines in our own land are equally remarkable after their kind, and cannot fail to interest, if not to astonish, the neophyte who ventures a descent. From the mode in which they are worked, the huge pillars left to support the roof, the thousand lights that illuminate the caverns, the reverberations from the blasting which at intervals ring through their depths, a grandeur and impressiveness are imparted to a scene which scarcely any other combination of objects could produce. And another world—a world of coal and iron—in all its magnificence and riches, lies interred under these glistering stores of lime and salt! How strangely contrasting in their qualities and structure the two formations. But except that a wise and far-seeing Providence collected and garnered up the waste and decay of both for man’s use, no principle have we to guide us when speculating on their mineral properties and arrangement—no natural law certainly, self-acting upon matter and evolving new creations of its own, organic or inorganic, to reveal His inscrutable purposes.
CHAPTER III.
THE OOLITIC OR JURASSIC SYSTEM—AGE OF REPTILES.
When one is about to travel, or to undertake a journey of any distance from the daily beat of home, it is very seldom indeed that he puts into his pocket a book of science. Voyages, travels, a review at most, or the newest novel, may fill up a spare place in the portmanteau: anything that requires study, or would draw upon the reflective faculties, can be no fitting companion for the occasion, with at least nine-tenths of our moving public.
If the preceding pages have been perused with any attention at all, it is to be hoped that other things will be considered as worthy of a passing glance, as sure we are they cannot fail to be replete with lessons of instructive wisdom. On the ground of mere ephemeral curiosities by the way, geological matters claim consideration. They are exhaustless, too, and ever varying as you proceed. When you imagine that the last mountain rock or quarry contained the whole catalogue of Natural History, and showed you more than Goldsmith, or Buffon, you find that over the next ridge, or in the neighboring field, there are new subjects for study, and still renewing matters for wonder.