SCENES IN THE GREAT WIELICZKA SALT MINES AT GALICIA AUSTRIA.
A TORTUOUS ROUTE.
My guides were Poles; but I soon found that they spoke German, of which I had sufficient knowledge to ask ordinary questions, and understand the answers thereto. We set out on the second part of our journey, one of my conductors in front, and one behind; each of us carrying a torch in the left hand, at a forward point of elevation, so as to furnish as much light as possible. We threaded several passages which seemed to be veined with quartz, but which, on examination, I discovered to be the green salt. We went over bridges, down staircases, to the right and to the left, passing various chambers and avenues, until my head became completely turned, and I could not have retraced my way to save my soul. I observed, however, that our general course was downward; and finally we arrived at a large chamber, represented to be seven hundred feet below the surface. This chamber had been abandoned because all the salt in the stratum had been obtained; but it had been arranged like a chapel, containing an altar, several crosses, and some images of saints, all made of rock salt. When the light of the torches was reflected on these natural objects, the effect was superb. The crystals glittered like diamonds, and only a little imagination was needed to transform the rude vault into an apartment of Aladdin’s palace.
After I had sufficiently admired the chapel, we resumed our excursion over more bridges, down more steps, and through more passages, until we came to what the guides termed a river. It was not a very remarkable stream, reminding me, in its smallness, of the renowned Rubicon, or the Manzenares, when the latter does not happen to be altogether dry. Such as it was, however, we stepped into a rude little boat and crossed over, where we were soon on another bridge, and crawled down another staircase of the most rickety and tumble-down description.
I was surprised that we had met so few workmen, and mentioned my surprise to the stalwart fellows with me. They informed me that the part of the mine through which we had passed had been worked out, and that the miners had gone farther down, following the strata containing the salt. In half an hour or less, we encountered a number of miners hewing out a new passage. They were naked above the waist, and some of them wore the garb of southern savages, the high temperature rendering clothing uncomfortable, if not superfluous. They used picks and crowbars, and, in the beginning of their excavations, would lie down on their backs, and strike out the salt with their implements, covering their eyes with pieces of leather, to prevent injury from the falling fragments. It is not often that men can work well with their eyes blinded, but there they succeeded better without seeing than with seeing. As they increased the cavity to sufficient height, they stood up and labored in the regular way.
There was now no lack of miners, who were visible on every hand, delving hard, steadily, and silently. Their toil is excessively monotonous and severe. As most of them have done nothing else, and as they are densely ignorant, they are not tortured by brighter memories, nor haunted by pictures of the possible. Their earnings are miserably small—not more, I believe, on an average, than thirty to forty cents a day, and working about twelve hours out of the twenty-four. Out of these wages they usually have families to support; for it is as true in Austria as in every other land, that extreme poverty incites to marriage and prolific paternity.
CROSSING UNDERGROUND RIVERS.
The one so-called river which we had crossed was an introduction to a number of others, all of them small, and more like pools than streams. The two workmen generally pushed a little boat over with poles, though they sometimes used oars very much in the same fashion as the Lethe and the Styx in the Mammoth Cave are crossed. These pools or rivers are formed by percolations of water through the strata, and in them the miners have not unfrequently been drowned.
