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.
The brine that pours with an equable flow into the seething pan at
Ebensee, is brought by wooden troughs from the salt mine at Hallein, a
distance of thirty miles in a direct line. It comes by way of mountains
and along a portion of the valley of the Traun, through which we
continued our journey the same evening from Ebensee, until the darkness
compelled us to rest for the night at a small inn on a hill side. The
next day we went through Ischl and Wolfgang, and spent three hours of
afternoon in climbing up the Scharfberg, which is more than a thousand
feet higher than Snowdon, to see the sunset and the sunrise. There was
sleeping accommodation on the top: so there is on the top of Snowdon. On
the Scharfberg we had a hay-litter in a wooden shed, and ate goat's
cheese and bread and butter. We saw neither sunset nor sunrise, but had
a night of wind and rain, and came down in the morning through white mist
within a rugged gully ploughed up by the rain, to get a wholesome
breakfast at St. Gilgen on the lake. More I need not say about the
journey than that, on the fifth day after leaving Ebensee, having rested
a little in the very beautiful city of Salzburg, we marched into the town
of Hallein, at the foot of the Durrnberg, the famous salt mountain,
called Tumal by old chroniclers, and known for a salt mountain seven
hundred and thirty years ago.
After a night's rest in the town, we were astir by five o'clock in the
morning, and went forward on our visit to the mines. In the case of the
Durrnberg salt mine, as I have already said, the miner enters at the top
and comes out at the bottom. Our first business, therefore, was to walk
up the mountain, the approach to which is by a long slope of about four
English miles.
We met few miners by the way, and noticed in them few peculiarities of
manners or costume. The national dress about these regions is a sort of
cross between the Swiss Alpine costume and a common peasant dress of the
lowlands. We saw indications of the sugar-loafed hat; jackets were worn
almost by all, with knee-breeches and coloured leggings. The clothing
was always neat and sound, and the clothed bodies looked reasonably
healthy, except that they had all remarkably pale faces. The miners did
not seem bodily to suffer from their occupation.
As we approached the summit of the Durrnberg, the dry brownish limestone
showed its bare front to the morning sun. We entered the offices, partly
contained in the rock, and applied for admission into the dominion of the
gnomes. Our arrival was quite in the nick of time, for we had not to be
kept waiting, as we happened to complete the party of twelve, without
which the guides do not start. It was a Tower of London business; and,
as at the Tower, the demand upon our purses was not very heavy. One
gulden-schein--about tenpence--is the regulated fee. Our full titles
having been duly put down in the register, each of us was furnished with
a miner's costume, and, so habited, off we set.
We started from a point that is called the Obersteinberghauptstollen; our
guides only having candles, one in advance, the other in the rear.
We were sensible of a pleasant coldness in the air when we had gone a
little way into the sloping tunnel. The tunnel was lofty, wide, and dry.
Having walked downwards on a gentle decline for a distance of nearly
three thousand feet through the half gloom and among the echoes, we
arrived at the mouth of the first shaft, named Freudenberg. The method
of descent is called the "Rolle." It is both simple and efficacious.
Down the steep slope of the shaft, and at an angle, in this case, of
forty-one and a half degrees, runs a smooth railway consisting of two
pieces of timber, each of about the thickness of a scaffold pole; they
are twelve inches apart, and run together down the shaft like two sides
of a thick ladder without the intervening rounds. Following the
directions and example of the foremost guide, we sat astride, one behind
the other, on this wooden tramway, and slid very comfortably to the
bottom. The shaft itself was only of the width necessary to allow room
for our passage. In this way we descended to the next chamber in the
mountain, at a depth of a hundred and forty feet (perpendicular) from the
top of the long slide.
We then stood in a low-roofed chamber, small enough to be lighted
throughout by the dusky glare of our two candles. The walls and roof
sparkled with brown and purple colours, showing the unworked stratum of
rock-salt. We stood then at the head of the Untersteinberghauptstulm,
and after a glance back at the narrow slit in the solid limestone through
which we had just descended, we pursued our way along a narrow gallery of
irregular level for a further distance of six hundred and sixty feet. A
second shaft there opened us a passage into the deeper regions of the
mine. With a boyish pleasure we all seated ourselves again upon a
"Rolle"--this time upon the Johann-Jacob-berg-rolle, which is laid at an
angle of forty-five and a half degrees--and away we slipped to the next
level, which is at the perpendicular depth of another couple of hundred
feet.
We alighted in another chamber where our candles made the same half
gloom, with their ruddy glare into the darkness, and where there was the
same sombre glittering upon the walls and ceiling. We pursued our track
along a devious cutting, haunted by confused and giant shadows, suddenly
passing black cavernous sideways that startled us as we came upon them,
and I began to expect mummies, for I thought myself for one minute within
an old Egyptian catacomb. After traversing a further distance of two
thousand seven hundred feet we halted at the top of the third slide, the
Konigsrolle. That shot us fifty-four feet deeper into the heart of the
mountain. We had become quite expert at our exercise, and had left off
considering, amid all these descents and traverses, what might be our
real position in the bowels of the earth. Perhaps we might get down to
Aladdin's garden and find trees loaded with emerald and ruby fruits. It
was quite possible, for there was something very cabalistic, very strong
of enchantment in the word Konhauserankehrschachtricht, the name given to
the portion of the 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 Durrnberg. 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 Durrnberg, 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.
We took our seats, instructed to sit perfectly still, and to restrain our
legs and arms from any straggling. There was no room to spare in the
shaft we were about to traverse. Our car was run on to the tram-line,
and the two lads, with a sickly smile, and a broad hint at their expected
gratuity, began to pull, and promised us a rapid journey. In another
minute we were whirring down an incline with a rush and a rattle, through
the subterranean passage tunnelled into the solid limestone which runs to
the outer edge of the Durrnberg. The length of this tunnel is
considerably more than an English mile.
The reverberation and the want of light were nothing, but we were
disagreeably sensible of a cloud of fine stone dust, and knew well that
we should come out not only stone deaf, but as white as millers.
Clinging to our seats with a cowardly instinct, down we went through a
hurricane of sound and dust. At length we were sensible of a diminution
in our speed, and the confusion of noises so far ceased, that we could
hear the panting of our biped cattle. Then, straight before us, shining
in the centre of the pitchy darkness, there was a bright blue star
suddenly apparent. One of the poor lads in the whisper of exhaustion,
and between his broken pantings for breath, told us that they always know
when they have got half way by the blue star, for that is the daylight
shining in.
A little necessary rest, and we were off again, the blue star before us
growing gradually paler, and expanding and still growing whiter, till
with an uncontrollable dash, and a concussion, we are thrown within a few
feet of the broad incomparable daylight. With how much contempt of
candles did I look up at the noonday sun! The two lads, streaming with
perspiration, who had dragged us down the long incline, were made happy
by the payment we all gladly offered for their services. Then, as we
passed out of the mouth of the shaft, by a rude chamber cut out of the
rock, we were induced to pause and purchase from a family of miners who
reside there a little box of salt crystals, as a memento of our visit.
Truly we must have been among the gnomes, for when I had reached the inn
I spread the brilliant crystals I had brought home with me on my bedroom
window sill, and there they sparkled in the sun and twinkled rainbows,
changing and shifting their bright colours as though there were a living
imp at work within. But when I got up next morning and looked for my
crystals, in the place where each had stood, I found only a little slop
of brine. That fact may, I have no doubt, be accounted for by the
philosophers; but I prefer to think that it was something wondrous
strange, and that I fared marvellously like people of whom I had read in
German tales, how they received gifts from the good people who live in
the bowels of the earth, and what became of them. I have had my
experiences, and I do not choose to be sure whether those tales are
altogether founded upon fancy.