70 M. Beudant's Travels in Hungary. 



In another excursion, M. Beniczki accompanied me to an 

 old lead mine which had been abandoned, and where he had 

 again set men at work. The old entrance lies at the foot of an 

 immense wall of rocks, in a situation truly picturesque. There 

 was always a natural cavern, which the mining labours have 

 extended. Of the minerals, the principal masses are a brown 

 earthy carbonated iron, and an earthy oxydated iron, in which 

 are portions of sulphurated copper and galena, more* or less 

 considerable. There is also carbonated copper, green and 

 blue, carbonated lead, phosphated lead in mass, sometimes, 

 but rarely, crystallised, and of a greenish yellow ; also calamine 

 in little square masses. 



We came-afterwards to the little town of Libethen, elevated 

 to the rank of a free and mining town, by king Lewis I., son 

 and successor of Charles Robert. Though founded by the 

 Saxons, invited thither by king Andrew II., it is now wholly 

 inhabited by Sclavonians. The town suffered much from wars 

 and revolutions. About the end of the fifteenth century, 

 during the wars of Mathias Corvin with the Bohemians, it was 

 attacked suddenly, when one part of the inhabitants were 

 driven to quit the place, and the rest, who had fled to the 

 mines, were miserably suffocated by the fire and smoke thrown 

 into them. The town then remained desolate forty years, till 

 the mines began again to be worked, at the beginning of the 

 sixteenth century. The town is but indifferently built, and 

 lies in rather a wild situation, at the bottom of a valley, with 

 groupes of mountains on every side. It is not larger than one 

 of our smallest villages about Paris. We came also to the 

 village of Sajba, famous for the most beautiful opal jasper and 

 opalised wood ; hence come those samples of a yellowish white 

 opalised wood, and others of a very brilliant grey, that have 

 long been in our collections at Paris ; they are found here in 

 every shade of colour, lustre, and pellucidity. 



Tradition reports that the country of Libethen anciently had 

 gold mines, but it is certain that, for a long time, nothing but 

 copper has been worked. The mines must have been very 

 important to raise the town to the rank of free and royal, but 

 now it is partly abandoned, and the number of workmen 

 greatly diminished. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE COUNTRY OF KREMNITZ. 



We can go from Neusohl to Ki emnitz by a foot way, to the 

 W. S. W. of the town, by traversing the range of mountains 







