THE WIELICZKA SALT MINES.

THE GREAT WIELICZKA SALT

MINES, THE LARGEST IN THE
PRODUCT. — DESCENT INTO

HISTORY. - EXTENT AND

WORLD. THEIR

AND EXPLORATION

OF THEM. -WHAT IS TO BE SEEN. MINERS AT WORK BLINDFOLDED. WONDERFUL CHAMBERS. GLOOM CONVERTED INTO SPLENDOR. — BANQUETS IN THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH. THE INFERNAL LAKE. - HUMAN DEMONS. AWFUL APPARITIONS. EXTRAORDINARY NARRATIVES.

THE Wieliczka salt mines in Galicia, Austrian Poland, are probably the largest and most productive on the globe. They are generally called the Cracow mines, though they are ten miles from the ancient capital of Poland - perhaps because Wieliczka (pronounced Vyalitchka) is so much harder for the tongue to master. They are connected with the mines of Bohemia, this town is some eighteen miles east of Wieliczka, -and extend over a space two miles long, and nearly one mile broad, with a depth varying from six hundred to eleven hundred feet. The time of their discovery is unknown; but it is held that salt was obtained from them in small quantities as early as the eighth century. That they were worked in the beginning of the twelfth century, when they belonged to Poland, there can be no manner of doubt. Less than two hundred years later, they had grown so productive, that Cassimir the Great established rules respecting them. In 1656 they were ceded to Austria, and twenty-seven years after recovered by John Sobieski. Austria again obtained posses sion of them at the first dismemberment of Poland, and has held them from 1772 to the present time, except for the six years preceding 1815. They have been a great source of wealth to the empire, and from them the Polish monarchs have drawn their principal revenues. So important were they considered, that, at each royal election, the Polish nobles stipu

ENTERING A SALT MINE.

931

lated that the salt of Wieliczka should be furnished to them at cost. The mines have never yielded so abundantly as at present; the annual product being, I have understood, about six hundred thousand tons, which, at ten dollars a ton - the usual market rate creates a revenue of some six million dollars. As many as fourteen or fifteen hundred men, and as many as six or seven hundred horses, are generally employed in extracting the salt, which is found in lenticular masses inclined at a high angle. The salt varies very much in purity. Some of it, called green salt, has six or seven per cent. of clay; another kind (spiza) is mixed with sand, and the third and best sort (szybik) lies at the lower levels in unadulterated and beautifully transparent crystals. The Bohemian mines employ six or seven hundred workmen, and yield from two hundred to two hundred and fifty thousand tons of salt yearly. The figures I give, I obtained on the spot, and they may therefore be regarded as accurate.

A few years ago I made a special journey from Vienna,. in order to go through the Wieliczka mines, in which I had felt a great interest ever since the geography of my boyish days had introduced me to their acquaintance. I had no trouble in procuring a ticket of admission at the Chateau of Wieliczka; and, well supplied with kreuzers for the workmen,. I changed my clothes, and announced myself ready for the descent. There are ten or twelve shafts, but I asked to enter by the one the miners generally used. This is rather primitive,. -material improvements having been made in some of the others, or rather the means of descent are primitive. I was assigned to the charge of two miners, who were as stout, and hardy, and grim-looking as if they had toiled in the bowels of the earthas no doubt they had nearly all their lives. They were provided with torches, and they handed me one, at the same time showing me a place in the cap I had put on into which I could thrust the torch for convienence in carrying it. At the top of the shaft was a kind of windlass for letting us down, the construction of which I did not examine. A long vertical iron bar was in the centre of the shaft, and about this:

932

DESCENDING IN DARKNESS.

bar was a steel ring, to which iron baskets or chairs were fastened by chains.

In these we took our seats, our legs hanging down, while we held to the chains above. At a given signal, the steel ring slipped along the bar, and we went smoothly and steadily down. The sensation very closely resembled that of descending a well. The darkness of the pit, which the feeble light of our torches made still darker, and the flickering shadows lent a certain gloomy picturesqueness to our perpendicular journey.

I might describe the anxiety and apprehension which I felt lest the chains should break, or I should be thrown out of my narrow seat into the great blackness below; but, as I did not have any such feeling, and as I question seriously if men of nerve or experience have it either, I will not try to render myself the hero of an imaginary situation.

I had supposed we should go to the lowest depths of the mines, but we stopped when we had descended four or five hundred feet, and got out. I learned then that the mines were full of wooden bridges and staircases by which the different levels were reached, and that by these communication was kept up with distant quarters. Some of the other shafts, as I was informed, are much deeper, requiring to be on a level with the galleries where the excavations are working. I had been taken down that particular one in order that I might see the entire arrangement and construction of the mines.

My guides were Poles; but I soon found that they spoke German, of which I had sufficient knowledge to ask ordinary questions, and understand the answers thereto. We set out on the second part of our journey, one of my conductors in front, and one behind; each of us carrying a torch in the left hand, at a forward point of elevation, so as to furnish as much light as possible. We threaded several passages which seemed to be veined with quartz, but which, on exami nation, I discovered to be the green salt. We went over bridges, down staircases, to the right and to the left, passing

A TORTUOUS ROUTE.

933

various chambers and avenues, until my head became completely turned, and I could not have retraced my way to save my soul. I observed, however, that our general course was downward; and finally we arrived at a large chamber, represented to be seven hundred feet below the surface. This chamber had been abandoned because all the salt in the stratum had been obtained; but it had been arranged like a chapel, containing an altar, several crosses, and some images of saints, all made of rock salt. When the light of the torches was reflected on these natural objects, the effect was superb. The crystals glittered like diamonds, and only a little imagination was needed to transform the rude vault into an apartment of Aladdin's palace.

After I had sufficiently admired the chapel, we resumed our excursion over more bridges, down more steps, and through more passages, until we came to what the guides termed a river. It was not a very remarkable stream, reminding me, in its smallness, of the renowned Rubicon, or the Manzenares, when the latter does not happen to be altogether dry. Such as it was, however, we stepped into a rude little boat and crossed over, where we were soon on another bridge, and crawled down another staircase of the most rickety and tumble-down description.

I was surprised that we had met so few workmen, and mentioned my surprise to the stalwart fellows with me. They informed me that the part of the mine through which we had passed had been worked out, and that the miners had gone farther down, following the strata containing the salt. In half an hour or less, we encountered a number of miners hewing out a new passage. They were naked above the waist, and some of them wore the garb of southern savages, the high temperature rendering clothing uncomfortable, if not superfluous. They used picks and crowbars, and, in the beginning of their excavations, would lie down on their backs, and strike out the salt with their implements, covering their eyes with pieces of leather, to prevent injury from the falling fragments. It is not often that men can work well with

934

CROSSING UNDERGROUND RIVERS.

their eyes blinded, but there they succeeded better without seeing than with seeing. As they increased the cavity to sufficient height, they stood up and labored in the regular

way.

There was now no lack of miners, who were visible on every hand, delving hard, steadily, and silently. Their toil is excessively monotonous and severe. As most of them have done nothing else, and as they are densely ignorant, they are not tortured by brighter memories, nor haunted by pictures of the possible. Their earnings are miserably small — not more I believe, on an average, than thirty to forty cents a day, and working about twelve hours out of the twenty-four. Out of these wages they usually have families to support; for it is au true in Austria as in every other land, that extreme poverty incites to marriage and prolific paternity.

The one so-called river which we had crossed was an introduction to a number of others, all of them small, and more like pools than streams. The two workmen generally pushed a little boat over with poles, though they sometimes used oars very much in the same fashion as the Lethe and the Styx in the Mammoth Cave are crossed. These pools or rivers are formed by percolations of water through the strata, and in them the miners have not unfrequently been drowned.

Our onward progress soon brought us to a large open space it must have been a hundred feet high, and nearly two hundred in length and breadth called the Chamber of Letow; and about half a mile farther is another of still greater dimensions, known as the Chamber of Michelawic. These chambers, which were excavations, were decked out in all the splendor of rock salt. There were chairs, candlesticks, chandeliers, statues, thrones, columns, and altars composed of the chief staple; and when lamps were lighted in the natural hall, the rays of light were reflected from thousands of points, and the whole interior shone in sparkling splendor. It recalled to my mind the Crystal Saloon, as it is styled, in the New Palace at Potsdam, when it is illuminated on some special occasion.