Account of the Gold and Silver Mines of Hungary. 17 
office, where numerous plans and sections of the mining district 
were laid before me. The whole country is intersected, at dif- 
ferent levels, by the galleries of mines, forming one stupendous 
subterranean labyrinth, so well understood, however, that the 
exact limit of each adventurer’s right is known, and the moment 
the ore has been traced to that boundary the workman stops ; 
nor may he proceed until a compact has been made with the 
neighbouring proprietor. Besides generat maps, there were par- 
ticular plans of each mine, with the most accurate surveys of all 
its parts. 
Stephani-schacht.—~We descended into this mine in the same 
manner as we had done into that of Windschacht. When ar- 
rived at a certain depth, we turned into a gallery dark and dis- 
mal, and pursued for several hours its various windings. The 
workmen, with parties of whom we fell in at intervals, are divided 
into companies of eight each, and are paid not only according 
to the quantity but the quality of the ore they collect, so that 
they are themselves interested in the research ; as may indeed 
be easily perceived by the different tone of voice in which they 
speak when they have hit upon a good or a bad vein. When 
they find any pieces particularly rich, of which they are very 
accurate judges, they lay them aside in a bag, that they may not 
be lost in the general mass. The ore, when dug out, is placed 
in a small obloug box or wheelbarrow, in which it is conveyed 
with wonderful rapidity and skill along narrow planks to the 
shaft, and is there laden into the large buckets of the machine, 
by which it is drawn up to the surface. 
The rock here is clay porphyry passing almost into grunstein. 
It is much harder than at Windsehacht; and is often firm enough 
to become a building stone. The timber used in this mine is 
consequently less, and the shafts by which we ascended and de- 
scended were only secured by a kind of strong trellis-work. In 
some parts of the great vein the feldspar was so predominant as 
to render it almost white, interspersed witi distinct crystals of 
hornblende ; but the vein soon passed again so completely into 
the nature of the surrounding rock, that it was difficult to say 
where the one ended or the other began. At the depth of the 
Emperor Franicis’s level, which is here above seventy fathoms, my 
conductor pointed out to me a singular appearance. ‘The mas- 
sive porphyry is interspersed with nodules of the same substance, 
but much more compact than the surrounding rock, and some- 
times presenting, though indistinctly, the appearance of erystal- 
lized facets. The size of these balls, as well as their frequency, 
varies in different parts from two inches to one-tenth of an inch 
in diameter, in the space of a few fathoms to which this singu~ 
Vol. 52. No. 243. July 1818. B larity 
