mine which we were then descending. Konhauser-return-shaft is, I think, however, about the meaning of that compound word.
So far we had felt nothing like real cold, although I had been promised a wintry atmosphere. Possibly with a miner’s dress over my ordinary clothing, and with plenty of exercise, there was enough to counteract the effects of the chill air. But our eyes began to ache at the uncertain light, and we all straggled irregularly along the smooth cut shaft level for another sixty feet, and so reached the Konhauser-rolle, the fourth slide we had encountered in our progress.
That cheered us up a little, as it shot us down another one hundred and eight feet perpendicular depth to the Soolererzeugungswerk-Konhauser—surely a place nearer than ever to the magic regions of Abracadabra. If not Aladdin’s garden, something wonderful ought surely by this time to have been reached. I was alive to any sight or sound, and was excited by the earnest whispering of my fellow adventurers, and the careful directions as to our progress given by the guides and light-bearers.
With eager rapidity we flitted among the black shadows of the cavern, till we reached a winding flight of giant steps. We mounted them with desperate excitement, and at the summit halted, for we felt that there was space before our faces, and had been told that those stairs led to a mid mountain lake, nine hundred and sixty feet below the mountain’s top; two hundred and forty feet above its base. Presently, through the darkness, we perceived at an apparently interminable distance a few dots of light, that shed no lustre, and could help us in no way to pierce the pitchy gloom of the great cavern. The lights were not interminably distant, for they were upon the other shore, and this gnome lake is but a mere drop of water in the mountain mass, its length being three hundred and thirty, and its breadth one hundred and sixty feet.
Our guides lighted more candles, and we began to see their rays reflected from the water; we could hear too the dull splashing of the boat, which we could not see, as old Charon slowly ferried to our shore. More lights were used; they flashed and flickered from the opposite ferry station, and we began to have an indistinct sense of a spangled dome, and of an undulating surface of thick, black water, through which the coming boat loomed darkly. More candles were lighted on both sides of the Konhauser lake, a very Styx, defying all the illuminating force of candles; dead and dark in its
dim cave, even the limits of which all our lights did not serve to define. The boat reached the place of embarcation, and we, wandering ghosts, half walked and were half carried into its broad clumsy hulk, and took each his allotted seat in ghostly silence. There was something really terrible in it all; in the slow funereal pace at which we floated across the subterranean lake; in the dead quiet among us, only interrupted by the slow plunge of the oar into the sickly waters. In spite of all the lights that had been kindled we were still in a thick vapour of darkness, and could form but a dreamy notion of the beauty and the grandeur of the crystal dome within which we men from the upper earth were hidden from our fellows. The lights were flared aloft as we crept sluggishly across the lake, and now and then were flashed back from a hanging stalactite, but that was all. The misty darkness about us brought to the fancy at the same time fearful images, and none of us were sorry when we reached the other shore in safety. There a rich glow of light awaited us, and there we were told a famous tale about the last Arch-ducal visit to these salt mines, where some thousands of lighted tapers glittered and flashed about him, and exhibited the vaulted roof and spangled lake in all their beauty. As we were not Archdukes, we had our Hades lighted only by a pound of short sixteens.
We left the lake behind us, and then, traversing a further distance of seventy feet along the Wehrschachtricht, arrived at the mouth of the Konhauser Stiege. Another rapid descent of forty-five feet at an angle of fifty degrees, and we reached Rupertschachtricht, a long cavern of the extent of five hundred and sixty feet, through which we toiled with a growing sense of weariness. We had now come to the top of the last and longest “slide” in the whole Dürrnberg. It is called the Wolfdietrichberg-rolle, and is four hundred and sixty-eight feet long, carrying us two hundred and forty feet lower down into the mountain. We went down this “slide” with the alacrity of school-boys, one after another keeping the pot boiling, and all regulating our movements with great circumspection, for we knew that we had far to go and we could never see more than a few yards before us.
Having gained the ground beneath in safety, our attention was drawn to a fresh water well or spring, sunk in this spot at great cost by order of the Archduke, and blessed among miners. Amid all the stone and salt and brine, a gush of pure fresh water at our feet was very welcome to us all. The well was sunk, however, to get
water that was necessary for the mining operations. We did not see any of those operations underground, for they are not exhibited; the show-trip underground is only among the ventilating shafts and galleries. Through the dark openings by which we had passed, we should have found our way (had we been permitted) to the miners. I have seen them working in the Tyrol, and their labours are extremely simple. Some of the rock-salt is quarried in transparent crystals, which undergo only the process of crushing before they are sent into the market as an article of commerce. Very little of this grain salt is seen in England, but on the continent it may be found in some of the first hotels, and on the table of most families. It is cheaper than the loaf salt, and is known in Germany under the title of salzkorn, and in France, as selle de cuisine. In order to obtain a finer grained and better salt, it is necessary that the original salt-crystals should be dissolved, and for this purpose parallel galleries are run into the rock, and there is dug in each of them a dyke or cistern. These dykes are then flushed with water, which is allowed to remain in them undisturbed for the space of from five to twelve months, according to the richness of the soil; and, being then thoroughly saturated with the salt that it has taken up, the brine is drawn off through wooden pipes from Hallein over hill and dale into the evaporating pans.
We had traversed the last level, and had reached what is generally called the end of the salt-mine; but we were still a long way distant from the pure air and the sunshine. We had travelled through seven galleries of an aggregate length of nearly two miles; we had floated across an earthy piece of water; had followed one another down six slides, and had penetrated to the depth of twelve hundred feet into the substance of the mountain limestone, gypsum, and marl. Having done all this, there we were, in the very heart of the Dürrnberg, left by our guides, and intrusted to the care of two lank lads with haggard faces. We stood together in a spacious cavern, poorly lighted by our candles; there was a line of tram-rail running through the middle of it, and we soon saw the carriage that was to take us out of the mountain emerging from a dark nook in the distance. It was a truck with seats upon it, economically arranged after the fashion of an Irish jaunting car. The two lads were to be our horses, and our way lay through a black hollow in one side of the cavern, into which the tram-rail ran.