346 Reminiscences of Werner and Freiberg. 
all directions, the numerous veins which everywhere tra- 
versed them had been opened up, and not a few of them fully 
exhausted. The shafts were sunk perpendicularly, or more 
or less slantingly downwards to points the most different in 
situation. Sideways from these shafts, the vein-masses had 
been pierced and mined above and below. At certain depths, 
at an equal level, the different mines were united together by 
galleries running horizontally, which were conducted to the 
surface. Formed with a slight inclination, they serve to carry 
off the water from the mines, to transport the ore by an easier 
route than the shaft, and to introduce a fresh current of air. 
The deeper the gallery-connection, the more advantageous 
it is. 
I have touched on these well-known circumstances, because 
they made a deep impression on my imagination. I asked my- 
self the question: When thousands of years shall have passed 
away, what will remain of our times? What that can be 
compared with the gigantic walls of former races, with the re- 
mains of Cyclopean buildings, with Susa and Palmyra, with 
the ruins of Greece and Rome, with their roads and aqueducts? 
Our slightly built towns will scarcely leave a trace behind ; 
our palaces will crumble away, our largest manufactories, 
changeable as the speculations which called them forth, will 
speedily disappear. Here and there the walls of a church of 
the middle ages may support the tradition of a fine taste in 
architecture ; every thing else produced by the modern period 
will be swallowed up in the immeasurable mass of what has 
been written and printed, nay, will be as dimly perceptible 
from this abyss, as are the sagas and mythological fables from 
mere oral tradition. When, then, a curious traveller shall wan- 
der through the desert places of formerly flourishing states, 
when an accident of any kind shall open up the entrance to 
one of these deeply situated galleries,—when bold men shall 
have courage to penetrate deeper and deeper, when openings 
in different directions shall afford access to a knowledge of the 
connection of these subterranean workings, though they may 
not admit of their being directly followed through all their ra- 
mifications; then will subterranean works be encountered, gi- 
gantic like the works of the ancients ; and it appeared to me as 
