LETTER XVI.
Departure from Vienna—The Eil-Wagon—Motley quality of the passengers—Thunderstorm in the Mountains of Styria—Trieste—Short beds of the Germans—Grotto of Adelsburgh—Curious Ball-Room in the Cavern—Nautical preparations for a Dance on board the “United States” swept away by the Bora—Its successful termination.
I left Vienna at daylight in a diligence nearly as capacious as a steamboat—inaptly called the eil-wagon. A Friuli count, with a pair of cavalry moustaches, his wife, a pretty Viennese of eighteen, scarce married a year, two fashionable-looking young Russians, an Austrian midshipman, a fat Gratz lawyer, a trader from the Danube, and a young Bavarian student, going to seek his fortune in Egypt, were my companions. The social habits of continental travellers had given me thus much information by the end of the first post.
We drove on with German regularity, three days and three nights, eating four meals a-day (and very good ones), and improving hourly in our acquaintance. The Russians spoke all our languages. The Friulese and the Bavarian spoke everything but English, and the lady, the trader, and the Gratz avocat, were confined to their vernacular. It was a pretty idea of Babel when the conversation became general.
We were coursing the bank of a river, in one of the romantic passes of the mountains of Styria, with a dark thunder-storm gathering on the summit of a crag overhanging us. I was pointing out to one of my companions a noble ruin of a castle seated very loftily on the edge of one of the precipices, when a streak of the most vivid lightning shot straight upon the northern-most turret, and the moment after several large masses rolled slowly down the mountain-side. It was so like the scenery in a play, that I looked at my companion with half a doubt that it was some optical delusion. It reminded me of some of Martin’s engravings. The sublime is so well imitated in our day that one is less surprised than he would suppose when nature produces the reality.
The night was very beautiful when we reached the summit of the mountain above Trieste. The new moon silvered the little curved bay below like a polished shield, and right in the path of its beams lay the two frigates like a painting. I must confess that the comfortable cot swinging in the ward-room of the “United States” was the prominent thought in my mind as I gazed upon the scene. The fatigue of three days and nights’ hard driving had dimmed my eye for the picturesque. Leaving my companions to the short beds[[5]] and narrow coverlets of a German hotel, I jumped into the first boat at the pier, and in a few minutes was alongside the ship. How musical is the hail of a sentry in one’s native tongue, after a short habitation to the jargon of foreign languages! “Boat ahoy!” It made my heart leap. The officers had just returned from Venice, some over land by the Friuli, and some by the steamer through the gulf, and were sitting round the table laughing with professional merriment over their various adventures. It was getting back to country and friends and home.
I accompanied the commodore’s family yesterday in a visit to the Grotto of Adelsburgh. It is about thirty miles back into the Friuli mountains, near the province of Cariola. We arrived at the nearest tavern at three in the afternoon, and subscribing our names upon the magistrate’s books, took four guides and the requisite number of torches, and started on foot. A half hour’s walk brought us to a large rushing stream, which, after turning a mill, disappeared with violence into the mouth of a broad cavern, sunk in the base of a mountain. An iron gate opened on the nearest side, and lighting our torches, we received an addition of half a dozen men to our party of guides, and entered. We descended for ten or fifteen minutes, through a capacious gallery of rock, up to the ankles in mud, and feeling continually the drippings exuding from the roof, till by the echoing murmurs of dashing water we found ourselves approaching the bed of a subterraneous river. We soon emerged in a vast cavern, whose height, though we had twenty torches, was lost in the darkness. The river rushed dimly below us, at the depth of perhaps fifty feet, partially illuminated by a row of lamps, hung on a slight wooden bridge by which we were to cross to the opposite side.