36 SALT WORKS. 



ported roof of solid rock. It made one tremble to think of the moun- 

 tain mass above him, with nothing but the solidity of the rock in the 

 bosom of which he was moving, to prevent it from falling in and crush- 

 ing all beneath. The lights ranged round this sheet of water were all 

 seen again in its placid surface ; the pyramids inverted, his Imperial 

 Majesty, in a gay transparency, dancing upon his head among the rip- 

 ples caused by our floating platform. And now we neared the opposite 

 side. The stillness of the grave reigned in the heart of the mountain. 

 The spontaneous burst of surprise by which we had at first involunta- 

 rily disturbed it, had been succeeded by a silence that no one ventured 

 to break. But who could have refrained from a hearty laugh at the odd 

 appearance of our Charon, who, sheltered behind a pyramid of lights, 

 had all the while been industriously engaged at a windlass, silently 

 transferring us from one side to the other of this fairy sea ? We never 

 gave a Trinkgeld in a belter humor ; surely it had seldom been received 

 with a more comical grin. The dimensions of this lake are stated, in 

 the statistical account of the mine, which I purchased on the spot, to 

 be fifty-five fathoms and six feet long (Salzberg measure,) and twenty- 

 eight fathoms wide. Reckoning the fathom at fifty feet, would stretch 

 our subterranean sail to nearly a thousand. It did not seem half that 

 long to me, but I was entranced the while and took no note of time or 

 distance. 



Leaving the lake we advanced some distance further in a horizontal 

 shaft, of the usual narrow dimensions. At the point of its intersection 

 with another, some fifteen or twenty feet square of the salt rock had 

 been cut away, and several monuments erected to the memory of some 

 of the archbishops of Salzberg, who once owned and blessed these 

 mines. We did not stop long to decipher all the good deeds recorded 

 of their episcopal highnesses, for we grew indignant at their very names, 

 calling up, as they could not fail to do, associations so painful to every 

 Protestant, not to say Lutheran. 



We passed on to the chamber of curiosities. There are preserved 

 large and splendid specimens of the various minerals yielded by the 

 mountain. Especially interesting were some relics of the ancient Ro- 

 mans, who had already penetrated these recesses. Mining implements 

 have been found embedded in the rock^ and in one instance a piece of 

 raw hide, both ends of which are exposed whilst the middle is com- 

 pletely buried in the solid stone. 



We were not sorry to find another inclined plane at the end of this 

 shaft; we had grown quite fond of this kind of locomotion. This de- 

 scent was at an angle of 42°. But our sailing and .sliding were now at an 



