THE ROMANCE OF ACCIDENT. 



571 



Oreads and other nymphs ; and finally reaching 

 the highest stage of this spiritual development in 

 the imagining of such general spirits of vegetation 

 or growth as have been variously personified by 

 popular fancy under the form of a rustic Jack-in- 

 the-Green or May-Queen, or a princely Adonis, or 

 divine Pan. And, certainly, never have all the 



thousand changing aspects, under which these 

 ideas have been represented by popular mythol- 

 ogy, been so clearly defined and rendered intel- 

 ligible as in Dr. Mannhardt's latest contribution 

 to our knowledge of the mystic law of the corn- 

 field, the meadow, and the forest. — Contemporary 

 Review. 



THE BOMANCE OF ACCIDENT. 



MANY of our most important inventions and 

 discoveries owe their origin to the most 

 trivial circumstances ; from the simplest causes 

 the most important effects have ensued. The 

 following are a few culled at random for the 

 amusement of our readers : 



The trial of two robbers before the Court of 

 Assizes of the Basses-Pyrenees accidentally led 

 to a most interesting archaeological discovery. 

 The accused, Rivas a shoemaker, and Bellier a 

 weaver, by armed attacks on the highways and 

 frequent burglaries, had spread terror around 

 the neighborhood of Sisteron. The evidence 

 against them was clear ; but no traces could be 

 obtained of the plunder, until one of the men 

 gave a clew to the mystery. Rivas in his youth 

 had been a shepherd-boy near that place, and 

 knew the legend of the Trou d' Argent, a cavern 

 on one of the mountains with sides so precipitous 

 as to be almost inaccessible, and which no one 

 was ever known to have reached. The commis- 

 sary of police of Sisteron, after extraordinary 

 labor, succeeded in scaling the mountain, and 

 penetrated to the mysterious grotto, where he 

 discovered an enormous quantity of plunder of 

 every description. The way having been once 

 found, the vast cavern was afterward explored 

 by savants ; and their researches brought to light 

 a number of Roman medals of the third century, 

 flint hatchets, ornamented pottery, and the re- 

 mains of ruminants of enormous size. These in- 

 teresting discoveries, however, obtained no indul- 

 gence for the accused (inadvertent) pioneers of 

 science, who were sentenced to twenty years' 

 hard labor. 



The discovery of gold in Nevada was made 

 by some Mormon immigrants in 1850. Advent- 

 urers crossed the Sierras and set up their sluice- 

 boxes in the canons; but it was gold they were 

 after, and they never suspected the existence of 



silver, nor knew it when they saw it. The bluish 

 stuff which was so abundant, and which was 

 silver-ore, interfered with their operations and 

 gave them the greatest annoyance. Two broth- 

 ers named Grosch possessed more intelligence 

 than their fellow-workers, and were the real dis- 

 coverers of the Comstock lode ; but one of them 

 died from a pickaxe-wound in the foot, and the 

 other was frozen to death in the mountains. 

 Their secret died with them. When at last, in 

 the early part of 1859, the surface croppings of 

 the lode were found, they were worked for the 

 gold they contained, and the silver was thrown 

 out as being worthless. Yet this lode since 1860 

 has yielded a large proportion of all the silver 

 produced throughout the world. The silver- 

 mines of Potosi were discovered through the 

 trivial circumstance of an Indian accidentally 

 pulling up a shrub, to the roots of which were 

 attached some particles of the precious metal. 



During the Thirty Years' War in Germany, 

 the little village of Coserow in the island of Use- 

 dom, on the Prussian border of the Baltic, was 

 sacked by the contending armies, the villagers 

 escaping to the hills to save their lives. Among 

 them was a simple pastor named Schwerdler, and 

 his pretty daughter Mary. When the danger was 

 over, the villagers found themselves without 

 houses, food, or money. One day, we are told, 

 Mary went up the Streckelberg to gather black- 

 berries ; but soon afterward she ran back joy- 

 ous and breathless to her father, with two shin- 

 ing pieces of amber each of very great size. 

 She told her father that near the shore the wind 

 had blown away the sand from a vein of amber; 

 that she straightway broke off these pieces with 

 a stick ; that there was an ample store of the 

 precious substance ; and that she had covered it 

 over to conceal her secret. The amber brought 

 money, food, clothing, and comfort ; but those 



