Thus, cavern’d round, in Cracow’s mighty mines,
With crystal walls a gorgeous city shines;
Scoop’d in the briny rock long streets extend
Their hoary course, and glittering domes ascend:
Down their bright steeps, emerging into day,
Impetuous fountains burst their headlong way,
O’er milk-white vales in ivory channels spread,
And wondering seek their subterraneous bed.
Form’d in pellucid salt, with chisel nice,
The pale lamp glittering through the sculptur’d ice,
With wild reverted eyes fair Lotta stands,
And spreads to heaven, in vain, her glassy hands;
Cold dews condense upon her pearly breast,
And the big tear rolls lucid down her vest.
Far gleaming o’er the town, transparent fanes
Rear their white towers, and wave their golden vanes:
Long lines of lusters pour their trembling rays,
And the bright vault resounds with mingled blaze.—DARWIN.
These celebrated excavations are about five miles distant from the city
of Cracow, in a small town named Wielicza, which is entirely undermined,
the cavities reaching to a considerable extent beyond its limits. The
length of the great mine, a view of which is seen on the next page, from
east to west, is six thousand feet; its breadth, from north to south,
two thousand; and its greatest depth eight hundred; but the veins of
salt are not limited to this extent, the depth and length of them, from
east to west, being yet unknown, and their breadth only, hitherto
determined. There are at present ten shafts; and not a single spring has
been discovered throughout the extent of the mine.
In descending to the bottom, the visitor is surprised to find a kind of
subterraneous commonwealth, consisting of many families, who have their
peculiar laws and polity. Here are likewise public roads and carriages,
horses being employed to draw the salt to the mouths of the mine, where
it is taken up by engines. These horses, when once arrived at their
destination, never more see the light of the sun; and many of the people
seem buried alive in this strange abyss, having been born there, and
never stirring out; while others are not denied frequent opportunities
of breathing the fresh air in the fields, and enjoying the surrounding
prospects. The subterraneous passages, or galleries, are very spacious,
and in many of them chapels are hewn out of the rock-salt. In these
passages crucifixes are set up, together with the images of saints,
before which a light is kept constantly burning. The places where the
salt is hewn out, and the empty cavities whence it has been removed, are
called chambers, in several of which, where the water has stagnated, the
bottoms and sides are covered with very thick incrustations of thousands
of salt crystals, lying one on the other, and many of them weighing half
a pound and upward. When candles are placed before them, the numerous
rays of light reflected by these crystals emit a surprising luster.
[Illustration: GREAT SALT MINE OF CRACOW.]
In several parts of the mine, huge columns of salt are left standing, to
support the rock; and these are very fancifully ornamented. But the most
curious object in the inhabited part, or subterraneous town, is a statue
which is considered by the immured inhabitants as the actual
transmutation of Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt; and in proportion as
this statue appears either dry or moist, the state of the weather above
ground is inferred. The windings in this mine are so numerous and
intricate, that the workmen have frequently lost their way; and several,
whose lights have been extinguished, have thus perished. The number of
miners to whom it gives employment, is computed at between four and five
hundred; but the whole amount of the men employed in it is about seven
hundred.
The salt lies near the surface, in large, shapeless masses, from which
blocks of sixty, eighty, or a hundred feet square, may be hewn; but at a
considerable depth it is found in smaller lumps. About six hundred
thousand quintals of salt are dug annually out of the mines of Cracow.
The worst and cheapest is called green salt, from its greenish color,
occasioned by a heterogenous mixture of a grayish mineral, or clay, and
entirely consists of salt crystals of different dimensions. A finer sort
is dug out in large blocks; and the third kind is the _sal gemmæ_, or
crystal salt, which is found in small pieces interspersed in the rock,
and, when detached from it, breaks into cubes of rectangular prisms.
This is usually sold unprepared. The color of the salt stone is a dark
gray mixed with yellow.