SALT DIGGING.
IN THE WIELICZKA SALT MINES.
Our onward progress soon brought us to a large open space—it must have been a hundred feet high, and nearly two hundred in length and breadth—called the Chamber of Letow; and about half a mile farther is another of still greater dimensions, known as the Chamber of Michelawic. These chambers, which were excavations, were decked out in all the splendor of rock salt. There were chairs, candlesticks, chandeliers, statues, thrones, columns, and altars composed of the chief staple; and when lamps were lighted in the natural hall, the rays of light were reflected from thousands of points, and the whole interior shone in sparkling splendor. It recalled to my mind the Crystal Saloon, as it is styled, in the New Palace at Potsdam, when it is illuminated on some special occasion.
A WONDERFUL SCENE.
I had brought with me from Cracow some small fireworks, such as red lights, serpents, and Catharine wheels, for the purpose of burning them in the mines; and this was evidently one of the places for their use. I handed some of them to the guides, and in a few seconds the cavern, more than eight hundred feet under ground, was ablaze with different colors, and showers of radiance. To produce a greater effect, all the lights were extinguished, and then another pyrotechnic exhibition began. The result was marvellous. One would have imagined that the moon, and stars, and sun, had all burst through the earth, that divided us from the upper air, and were gleaming and flashing under our very eyes. The rock salt was as so many prisms, revealing all the lines of the rainbow, and coruscating like a vault studded with jewels.
Such glorious radiance I had never witnessed under ground, nor had I deemed such radiance possible there. The extraordinary contrast between the pitchy darkness and the magnificence of the illumination can hardly be expressed in words. It was as a sudden plunge from a Memphian night into a tropical noon, and the first effect was almost blinding. I have witnessed, in my time, numberless exhibitions of fireworks on a grand scale, but none of them furnished so splendid a spectacle as the few pieces burned in the depths of Wieliczka. So much for accessories. Rock salt has its æsthetic as well as material uses; and, confronted with common lamps and common fireworks, it assumes the beauties of Dreamland and the shining glories which theological rhapsodists have associated with the Celestial Kingdom.
The Chamber of Michelawic is consecrated, I was told, to St. Anthony, and I think the saint would show his much boasted power,—not to speak of his kindness,—if he would relieve the poor devils who so implicitly believe in him from their need of wasting toil in those dreary caverns. On the 3d of every July, grand mass is celebrated in the chamber,—then regarded as a chapel,—and is followed by a banquet, in which the principal officials of Cracow and the directors of the mines participate. At that date the workmen are given a partial holiday, and receive trifling sums of money, that are quite enough to render them happy, and to make them wish that every day of the year were the 3d of July.