Consolations in Travel; or, the Last Days of a Philosopher

by Sir Humphry Davy

favourite haunts. It is a cataract which, when the river is full, may be almost compared to that of Schaffhausen for magnitude, and possesses the same peculiar characters of grandeur in the precipitous rush of its awful and overpowering waters, and of beauty in the tints of its streams and foam, and in the forms of the rocks over which it falls, and the cliffs and woods by which it is overhung. In this spot an accident, which had nearly been fatal to me, occasioned the renewal of my acquaintance in an extraordinary manner with the mysterious unknown stranger. Eubathes, who was very fond of fly-fishing, was amusing himself by catching graylings for our dinner in the stream above the fall. I took one of the boats which are used for descending the canal or lock artificially cut in the rock by the side of the fall, on which salt and wood are usually transported from Upper Austria to the Danube; and I desired two of the peasants to assist my servant in permitting the boat to descend by a rope to the level of the river below. My intention was to amuse myself by this rapid species of locomotion along the descending sluice. For some moments the boat glided gently along the smooth current, and I enjoyed the beauty of the moving scene around me, and had my eye fixed upon the bright rainbow seen upon the spray of the cataract above my head; when I was suddenly roused by a shout of alarm from my servant, and, looking round, I saw that the piece of wood to which the rope had been attached had given way, and the boat was floating down the river at the mercy of the stream. I was not at first alarmed, for I saw that my assistants were procuring long poles with which it appeared easy to arrest the boat before it entered the rapidly descending

water of the sluice, and I called out to them to use their united force to reach the longest pole across the water that I might be able to catch the end of it in my hand. And at this moment I felt perfect security; but a breeze of wind suddenly came down the valley and blew from the nearest bank, the boat was turned by it out of the side current and thrown nearer to the middle of the river, and I soon saw that I was likely to be precipitated over the cataract. My servant and the boatmen rushed into the water, but it was too deep to enable them to reach the boat; I was soon in the white water of the descending stream, and my danger was inevitable. I had presence of mind enough to consider whether my chance of safety would be greater by throwing myself out of the boat or by remaining in it, and I preferred the latter expedient. I looked from the rainbow upon the bright sun above my head, as if taking leave for ever of that glorious luminary; I raised one pious aspiration to the divine source of light and life; I was immediately stunned by the thunder of the fall, and my eyes were closed in darkness. How long I remained insensible I know not. My first recollections after this accident were of a bright light shining above me, of warmth and pressure in different parts of my body, and of the noise of the rushing cataract sounding in my ears. I seemed awakened by the light from a sound sleep, and endeavoured to recall my scattered thoughts, but in vain; I soon fell again into slumber. From this second sleep I was awakened by a voice which seemed not altogether unknown to me, and looking upwards I saw the bright eye and noble countenance of the Unknown Stranger whom I had met at Pæstum. I faintly articulated: “I

am in another world.” “No,” said the stranger, “you are safe in this; you are a little bruised by your fall, but you will soon be well; be tranquil and compose yourself. Your friend is here, and you will want no other assistance than he can easily give you.” He then took one of my hands, and I recognised the same strong and warm pressure which I had felt from his parting salute at Pæstum. Eubathes, whom I now saw with an expression of joy and of warmth unusual to him, gave a hearty shake to the other hand, and they both said, “You must repose a few hours longer.” After a sound sleep till the evening, I was able to take some refreshment, and found little inconvenience from the accident except some bruises on the lower part of the body and a slight swimming in the head. The next day I was able to return to Gmünden, where I learnt from the Unknown the history of my escape, which seemed almost miraculous to me. He said that he was often in the habit of combining pursuits of natural history with the amusements derived from rural sports and was fishing the day that my accident happened below the fall of the Traun for that peculiar species of the large salmo of the Danube which, fortunately for me, is only to be caught by very strong tackle. He saw, to his very great astonishment and alarm, the boat and my body precipitated by the fall, and was so fortunate as to entangle his hooks in a part of my dress when I had been scarcely more than a minute under water, and by the assistance of his servant, who was armed with the gaff or curved hook for landing large fish, I was safely conveyed to the shore, undressed, put into a warm bed, and by the modes of restoring suspended animation, which were familiar to him, I

soon recovered my sensibility and consciousness. I was desirous of reasoning with him and Eubathes upon the state of annihilation of power and transient death which I had suffered when in the water; but they both requested me to defer those inquiries, which required too profound an exertion of thought, till the effects of the shock on my weak constitution were over and my strength was somewhat re-established: and I was the more contented to comply with their request as the Unknown said it was his intention to be our companion for at least some days longer, and that his objects of pursuit lay in the very country in which we were making our summer tour. It was some weeks before I was sufficiently strong to proceed on our journey, for my frame was little fitted to bear such a trial as that which it had experienced; and, considering the weak state of my body when I was immerged in the water, I could hardly avoid regarding my recovery as providential, and the presence and assistance of the Stranger as in some way connected with the future destiny and utility of my life. In the middle of August we pursued our plans of travel. We first visited those romantic lakes, Hallsstadt, Aussee, and Töplitz See, which collect the melted snows of the higher mountains of Styria to supply the unfailing sources of the Traun. We visited that elevated region of the Tyrol which forms the crest of the Pusterthal, and where the same chains of glaciers send down streams to the Drave and the Adige, to the Black Sea and to the Adriatic. We remained for many days in those two magnificent valleys which afford the sources of the Save, where that glorious and abundant river rises, as it were, in the very bosom of beauty, leaping from its subterraneous

reservoirs in the snowy mountains of Terglou and Manhardt in thundering cataracts amongst cliffs and woods into the pure and deep cerulean lakes of Wochain and Wurzen, and pursuing its course amidst pastoral meadows so ornamented with plants and trees as to look the garden of Nature. The subsoil or strata of this part of Illyria are entirely calcareous and full of subterranean caverns, so that in every declivity large funnel-shaped cavities, like the craters of volcanoes, may be seen, in which the waters that fall from the atmosphere are lost: and almost every lake or rives has a subterraneous source, and often a subterraneous exit. The Laibach river rises twice from the limestone rock, and is twice again swallowed up by the earth before it makes its final appearance and is lost in the Save. The Zirknitz See or Lake is a mass of water entirely filled and emptied by subterraneous sources, and its natural history, though singular, has in it nothing of either prodigy, mystery, or wonder. The Grotto of the Maddalena at Adelsberg occupied more of our attention than the Zirknitz See. I shall give the conversation that took place in that extraordinary cavern entire, as well as I can remember it, in the words used by my companions.

Eub.—We must be many hundred feet below the surface, yet the temperature of this cavern is fresh and agreeable.

The Unknown.—This cavern has the mean temperature of the atmosphere, which is the case with all subterraneous cavities removed from the influence of the solar light and heat; and, in so hot a day in August as this, I know no more agreeable or salutary manner of taking a cold bath than in descending to a part of

the atmosphere out of the influence of those causes which occasion its elevated temperature.

Eub.—Have you, sir, been in this country before?

The Unknown.—This is the third summer that I have made it the scene of an annual visit. Independently of the natural beauties found in Illyria, and the various sources of amusement which a traveller fond of natural history may find in this region, it has had a peculiar object of interest for me in the extraordinary animals which are found in the bottom of its subterraneous cavities: I allude to the Proteus anguinus, a far greater wonder of nature than any of those which the Baron Valvasa detailed to the Royal Society a century and half ago as belonging to Carniola, with far too romantic an air for a philosopher.