SALT MINES OF ILLETZKAYA-ZASTCHITA. 
185 
men at work on different horizontal stages Long lozenge-shaped pieces in pro- 
cess of extraction at different levels are seen to be divided from the mass, by 
lateral, vertical joints, which have been cut open with the hatchet. The block, 
thus squared, is then completely separated from the body of the rock beneath, by 
heaving against its free end a huge beam of wood, w’hich swings upon a triangle 
and is worked to and fro by a company of the miners. Owing to the crystalline 
and brittle nature of the substance, a few violent jars only of this battering ram 
are required to sever the mass from the parent rock, and thus a vast amount of 
labour is saved, which at Wieliczka and other salt mines is employed in the ex- 
traction of the mineral'. This process of side-cutting and horizontal battering 
necessarily produces in the body of the salt a direct resemblance to many stone 
quarries, with their natural joints and floors. 
Other external circumstances, resulting from existing causes, are worthy of notice 
in this great salt quarry. The upper surface of the salt having been corroded by 
long-continued atmospheric action of the rain-water and melted snow which 
percolates through the thin cover of red sand and marl, the result has been the 
formation of a number of needles, which are good miniature representatives of 
the snowy “ Aiguilles” of the Alps. Again, on that side of the quarry which 
has been worked to the greatest depth, and is now r abandoned, the atmospheric 
action, smoothing away every irregularity, has left a vertical glassy cliff fifty to 
sixty feet high ; and, lastly, the w^ater lodged against its base during the spring 
period of Russian debacle, has excavated and dissolved the salt to the height of 
the spring-floods, leaving a dark cavern, over which the saline mirror seems sus- 
pended, and hanging from the bottom of which are stalactitic crystals of salt. 
Having stated that the floor of this immediate district consists of rock salt, it is 
natural that every pond of water, supplied either by springs which rise up from 
beneath, or by rain-water which rests upon or communicates with the salt, should 
be intensely saline. Such is the case, particularly in a natural pool of bright, 
transparent, greenish water, w’hich is used by the natives as a salubrious bath 2 , 
and in tvhich myriads of small animals, peculiar to brine springs, are seen in lively 
agitation. 
1 It is well worthy of notice, that Russian ingenuity accomplishes by a sudden stroke, a line of clean 
separation similar to that which an Austrian miner labours to effect during many days with his pickaxe 
and other tools. 
2 We bathed in this natural pellucid brine-pit, and had great difficulty in sinking the body. 
