“They came here next day after the piano was sent home, and said they were upholstering the house, and were consulted about a piano. They recommended mine as specially adapted to the house, and said it was bought through their influence. I paid them the commission. Since then the carpenters have been here, and now you make the third applicant. I am sorry it has happened so, but take a check for fifty dollars, and whenever you influence another sale, let me know at once.”
The music teacher was badly sold, as it afterwards turned out that Reps & Co. did not know a word about the piano till they saw it in the house. Had he been as sharp as some others of his profession, he would have notified each of the piano makers, as soon as Maria broached the subject, that he was trying to sell his piano, and then, no matter whose make she selected, he would have obtained his honestly earned commission.
LXVI.
THE WIELICZKA SALT MINES.
THE GREAT WIELICZKA SALT MINES, THE LARGEST IN THE WORLD.—THEIR HISTORY.—EXTENT AND PRODUCT.—DESCENT INTO AND EXPLORATION OF THEM.—WHAT IS TO BE SEEN.—MINERS AT WORK BLINDFOLDED.—WONDERFUL CHAMBERS.—GLOOM CONVERTED INTO SPLENDOR.—BANQUETS IN THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH.—THE INFERNAL LAKE.—HUMAN DEMONS.—AWFUL APPARITIONS.—EXTRAORDINARY NARRATIVES.
The Wieliczka salt mines in Galicia, Austrian Poland, are probably the largest and most productive on the globe. They are generally called the Cracow mines, though they are ten miles from the ancient capital of Poland—perhaps because Wieliczka (pronounced Vyalitchka) is so much harder for the tongue to master. They are connected with the mines of Bohemia,—this town is some eighteen miles east of Wieliczka,—and extend over a space two miles long, and nearly one mile broad, with a depth varying from six hundred to eleven hundred feet. The time of their discovery is unknown; but it is held that salt was obtained from them in small quantities as early as the eighth century. That they were worked in the beginning of the twelfth century, when they belonged to Poland, there can be no manner of doubt. Less than two hundred years later, they had grown so productive, that Casimir the Great established rules respecting them. In 1656 they were ceded to Austria, and twenty-seven years after recovered by John Sobieski. Austria again obtained possession of them at the first dismemberment of Poland, and has held them from 1772 to the present time, except for the six years preceding 1815. They have been a great source of wealth to the empire, and from them the Polish monarchs have drawn their principal revenues. So important were they considered, that, at each royal election, the Polish nobles stipulated that the salt of Wieliczka should be furnished to them at cost. The mines have never yielded so abundantly as at present; the annual product being, I have understood, about six hundred thousand tons, which, at ten dollars a ton—the usual market rate—creates a revenue of some six million dollars. As many as fourteen or fifteen hundred men, and as many as six or seven hundred horses, are generally employed in extracting the salt, which is found in lenticular masses inclined at a high angle. The salt varies very much in purity. Some of it, called green salt, has six or seven per cent. of clay; another kind (spiza) is mixed with sand, and the third and best sort (szybik) lies at the lower levels in unadulterated and beautifully transparent crystals. The Bohemian mines employ six or seven hundred workmen, and yield from two hundred to two hundred and fifty thousand tons of salt yearly. The figures I give, I obtained on the spot, and they may therefore be regarded as accurate.
ENTERING A SALT MINE.
A few years ago I made a special journey from Vienna, in order to go through the Wieliczka mines, in which I had felt a great interest ever since the geography of my boyish days had introduced me to their acquaintance. I had no trouble in procuring a ticket of admission at the Château of Wieliczka; and, well supplied with kreuzers for the workmen, I changed my clothes, and announced myself ready for the descent. There are ten or twelve shafts, but I asked to enter by the one the miners generally used. This is rather primitive,—material improvements having been made in some of the others,—or rather the means of descent are primitive. I was assigned to the charge of two miners, who were as stout, and hardy, and grim-looking as if they had toiled in the bowels of the earth—as no doubt they had—nearly all their lives. They were provided with torches, and they handed me one, at the same time showing me a place in the cap I had put on into which I could thrust the torch for convenience in carrying it. At the top of the shaft was a kind of windlass for letting us down, the construction of which I did not examine. A long vertical iron bar was in the centre of the shaft, and about this bar was a steel ring, to which iron baskets or chairs were fastened by chains.