“Pity the poor blind!”
In the greatest fear lest, even in his present blind condition, he might recognise, and claim me as an acquaintance, I hurried from the spot with all the speed of which I was capable, and, thank Heaven, never set eyes upon him again.
CHAPTER XXI.
a walk through a mountain.
I lately took a walk through the substance of a mountain, entering at the top, and coming out at the bottom, after a two or three mile journey underground. Perhaps the story of this trip is worth narrating. The mountain was part of an extensive property belonging to the Emperor of Austria, in his character of salt merchant, and contained the famous salt mine of Hallein.
The whole salt district of Upper Austria, called the Salzkammergut, forms part of a range of rocks that extends from Halle in the Tyrol, passes through Reichenthal in Bavaria, and continues by way of Hallein in Salzburg, to end at Ausse in Styria. The Austrian part of the range is now included in what is called the
district of Salzburg, and that district abounds, as might be expected, in salt springs, hot and cold, which form in fact the baths of Gastein, Ischl, and some other places. The names of Salzburg (Saltborough), the capital, and of the Salzack (Saltbrook), on the left bank of which that pleasant city stands, indicate clearly enough the character of the surrounding country. Hallein is a small town eight miles to the south-east of Salzburg, and it was to the mine of Hallein, as before said, that I paid my visit.
On the way thither, we, a party of three foot-travellers, passed through much delightful rock and water scenery. From Linz, the capital of Upper Austria, we got through Wells and Laimbach to the river Traun, and trudged afoot beside its winding waters till we reached the point of its junction with the Traunsee, or Lake of Traun. At Gmunden, we stopped to look over the Imperial Salt Warehouses. The Emperor of Austria, as most people know, is the only dealer in salt and tobacco with whom his subjects are allowed to trade. His salt warehouses, therefore, must needs be extensive. They are situated at Gmunden to the left of the landing-place, from which a little steamer plies across the lake; and they are so built as to afford every facility for the unloading of boats that bring salt barrels from the mine by the highway of the Traun. The warehouses consisted simply of a large number of sheds piled with the salt in barrels, a few offices, and a low but spacious hall, filled, in a confused way, with dusty models. There were models of river-boats and salt moulds, mining tools, and tram ways, hydraulic models of all kinds, miniature furnaces, wooden troughs, and seething pans. We looked through these until the bell from the adjacent pier warned us, at five o’clock in the evening, to go on board the steamer that was quite ready to puff and splash its way across the beautiful green lake. We went under the shadow of the black and lofty Traunstien, and among pine-covered rocks, of which the reflections were mingled in the water with a ruddy glow, that streamed across a low shore from some fires towards which we were steering.
The glow proceeded from the fires of the Imperial Saltern, erected at Ebensee. We paid a short visit to the works, which have been erected at great cost; and display all the most recent improvements in the art of getting the best marketable salt from saline water. We found that the water, heavily impregnated, is conducted
from the distant mines by wooden troughs into the drying pan. The pan is a large shallow vessel of metal, supported by small piles of brick, and a low brick wall about three feet high, extending round two-thirds of its circumference; leaving one-third, as the mouth of the furnace, open to the air. Among the brick columns, and within the wall, the fire flashed and curled under the seething pan. Ascending next into the house over the great pan, and looking down upon the surface and its contents through sliding doors upon the floors, we saw the white salt crusting like a coat of snow over the boiling water, and being raked, as it is formed, by workmen stationed at each of the trap doors. As the water evaporated, the salt was stirred and turned from rake to rake; and finally, when quite dry, raked into the neighbourhood of a long-handled spade, with which one workman was shovelling among the dried salt, and filling a long row of wooden moulds, placed ready to his hand. These moulds are sugar-loaf shaped, and perforated at the bottom like a sugar mould, in order that any remaining moisture may drain out of them. The moulds will be placed finally in a heated room before the salt will be considered dry enough for storeage as a manufactured article.