In a few minutes the chorus of demons appeared in the shape of hard-featured, muscular, ill-looking miners, asking for kreuzers, in consideration of the efficient aid they had lent to the depressing performance. As I have said, I was well supplied, and I could play the part of My Lord Bountiful with very little expense. Three or four kreuzers were enough to make the stolid faces of the miners brighten as if they had fallen into the possession of pecuniary independence. What they could purchase with such a trifle, I could not comprehend, for I felt that I should be no better off, in my own judgment, with fifty times the amount I had bestowed as gratuities upon the gnomes of Wieliczka.
My two guides denounced the begging unfortunates for their mercenary conduct in a vile Polish patois, which must have consisted chiefly of curses. I am sure they mentioned mercenary conduct, which must have been an ironical expression, since none of the wretches, in asking for trinkgeld, received, at the highest, more than four or five cents. The rebuke reminded me of the familiar instance of the parsimonious father who handed his boy a penny, accompanied by the precaution that he should not make a beast of himself, or of the over-thrifty husband, who, having been asked for a little money by his wife, wished to know what had become of the dollar and a half he had given her a month before.
STOLIDITY OF THE MINERS.
The majority of the miners are Poles, unable either to read or write, to whom labor in the mines has been an inheritance—their sole one, indeed. Many of them have never been five miles from home, nor do they expect to be. They are rooted to the spot by the necessity of toil and their narrow circumstances. Some of the workmen are Austrians, and they are usually more intelligent, or rather less ignorant, than the others. After a few years of service, they often leave Wieliczka, seek a larger field of labor and a better kind of employment. But the Poles, possessing a certain kind of stupid contentment, appear to have no ambition, and no future. I ascribe this partially to their loss of nationality, than which no greater calamity can befall a people. It robs them of their individuality, impairs their energy, and depreciates their self-esteem. They feel that they are deprived of what they have a right to enjoy, and that they are likely to be despised for a misfortune for which they are not directly responsible.
Nearly all the miners reveal in their features and expression the hard fate that has attended them. They have all the marks of undevelopment, all the traces of an animal and undisciplined nature. Mind, in the strict sense, is omitted in their composition. They are merely machines of flesh and blood, obeying physical instincts, and impelled by the law of self-preservation.
Years ago, the Austrian government used to condemn political prisoners to a term of service in the mines, sometimes extending through life; but of late this practice has been abandoned, and now all who work are regularly paid, and free to go or stay, as they like.
Going out of the mines, I followed almost the same course that I had coming in. Altogether I spent some six hours under ground, and might have spent weeks there, had I been inclined to exercise, since the combined length of its excavations and passages is said to exceed three hundred miles.
Accidents are uncommon in the mines, not averaging more than thirty a year, and few of these are fatal. They occur either from falls, or from being run over by the cars drawn to and fro by horses. These cars run on tracks from the place where the salt is dug out, to the mouth of the shaft, and thence the salt is drawn up by machinery to the surface of the earth. I had made my entrance through the parts that had been excavated and abandoned, that way having been selected to give me a clear idea of the progress of the work, and the gradual deepening of the mines. I observed afterwards, at the lower levels, where hundreds of men were actively employed, how the salt was thrown into the cars, and then carried by the railway to the principal shafts.
Wieliczka is impregnated with tales and traditions, natural and supernatural. Of the latter the peasants relate many, and believe them sincerely.
THE MIRACULOUS SIGN.