Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland Volume II Part 8

Just as I had thanked him for his courtesy, a young gentleman from Cracow, in a barouche with four horses, drove up, and, hearing my difficulty, politely offered to take me in with him. I gladly accepted his offer, and arrived at Cracow at about dark, where, upon his recommendation, I went to the Hotel de la Rose Blanche, and cannot well describe the satisfaction with which I once more found myself on the borders of civilized Europe, within reach of the ordinary public conveyances, and among people whose language I could understand. "Shall I not take mine ease in mine own inn?" Often, after a hard day's journey, I have asked myself this question, but seldom with the same self-complacency and the same determination to have mine ease as at Cracow. I inquired about the means of getting to Vienna, which, at that moment, I thought no more of than a journey to Boston. Though there was no particular need of it, I had a fire built in my room for the a.s.sociations connected with a cheerful blaze. I put on my morning-gown and slippers, and hauling up before the fire an old chintz-covered sofa, sent for my landlord to come up and talk with me. My host was an Italian, and an excellent fellow. Attached to his hotel was a large restaurant, frequented by the first people at Cracow. During the evening an old countess came there to sup; he mentioned to her the arrival of an American, and I supped with her and her niece; neither of them, however, so interesting as to have any effect upon my slumber.

CHAPTER XIV.

Cracow.--Casimir the Great.--Kosciusko.--Tombs of the Polish Kings.--A Polish Heroine.--Last Words of a King.--A Hero in Decay.--The Salt-mines of Cracow.--The Descent.--The Mines.--Underground Meditations.--The Farewell.

CRACOW is an old, curious, and interesting city, situated in a valley on the banks of the Vistula; and approaching it as I did, toward the sunset of a summer's day, the old churches and towers, the lofty castles and the large houses spread out on the immense plains, gave it an appearance of actual splendour. This faded away as I entered, but still the city inspired a feeling of respect, for it bore the impress of better days.

It contains numerous churches, some of them very large, and remarkable for their style and architecture, and more than a hundred monasteries and convents. In the centre is a large square, on which stands the church of Notre Dame, an immense Gothic structure, and also the old palace of Sobieski, now cut down into shops, and many large private residences, uninhabited and falling to ruins. The princ.i.p.al streets terminate in this square. Almost every building bears striking marks of ruined grandeur. On the last part.i.tion of Poland in eighteen hundred and fifteen by the Holy Alliance, Cracow, with a territory of five hundred square miles and a population of a hundred and eight thousand, including about thirty thousand Jews, was erected into a republic; and at this day it exists nominally as a _free city_, under the protection of the three great powers; emphatically, such protection as vultures give to lambs; three masters instead of one, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, all claiming the right to interfere in its government.

But even in its fallen state Cracow is dear to the Pole's heart, for it was the capital of his country when Poland ranked high among nations, and down to him who last sat upon her throne, was the place of coronation and of burial for her kings. It is the residence of many of the old Polish n.o.bility, who, with reduced fortunes, prefer this little foothold in their country, where liberty nominally lingers, to exile in foreign lands. It now contains a population of about thirty thousand, including Jews. Occasionally the seigneur is still seen, in his short ca.s.sock of blue cloth, with a red sash and a white square-topped cap; a costume admirably adapted to the tall and n.o.ble figure of the proud Pole, and the costume of the peasant of Cracow is still a striking feature in her streets.

After a stroll through the churches, I walked on the old ramparts of Cracow. The city was formerly surrounded with regular fortifications, but, as in almost all the cities of Europe, her ancient walls have been transformed into Boulevards; and now handsome avenues of trees encircle it, destroying altogether its Gothic military aspect, and on Sundays and fete days the whole population gathers in gay dresses, seeking pleasure where their fathers stood clad in armour and arrayed for battle.

The Boulevards command an extensive view of all the surrounding country.

"All the sites of my country," says a national poet, "are dear to me; but, above all, I love the environs of Cracow; there at every step I meet the recollections of our ancient glory and our once imposing grandeur."

On the opposite bank of the river is a large tumulus of earth, marking the grave of Cracus, the founder of the city. A little higher up is another mound, reverenced as the sepulchre of his daughter Wenda, who was so enamoured of war that she promised to give her hand only to the lover who should conquer her in battle. Beyond this is the field of Zechino, where the brave Kosciusko, after his return from America, with a band of peasants, again struck the first blow of revolution, and, by a victory over the Russians, roused all Poland to arms.

About a mile from Cracow are the ruins of the palace of Lobzow, built by Casimir the Great, for a long time the favourite royal residence, and identified with a crowd of national recollections; and, until lately, a large mound of earth in the garden was reverenced as the grave of Esther, the beautiful Jewess, the idol of Casimir the Great. Poetry has embellished the tradition, and the national muse has hallowed the palace of Lobzow and the grave of Esther.

"Pa.s.ser-by, if you are a stranger, tremble in thinking of human destruction; but if you are a Pole, shed bitter tears; heroes have inhabited this palace.... Who can equal them?...

"Casimir erected this palace: centuries have hailed him with the name of the great....

"Near his Esther, in the delightful groves of Lobzow, he thought himself happy in ceasing to be a king to become a lover.

"But fate is unpitiable for kings as for us, and even beauty is subject to the common law. Esther died, and Casimir erected a tomb in the place she had loved.

"Oh! if you are sensible to the grief caused by love, drop a tear at this tomb and adorn it with a crown. If Casimir was tied to humanity by some weaknesses, they are the appendage of heroes! In presence of this chateau, in finding again n.o.ble remains, sing the glory of Casimir the Great."

I was not a sentimental traveller, nor sensible to the grief that is caused by love, and I could neither drop a tear at the tomb of Esther nor sing the glory of Casimir the Great; but my heart beat high as I turned to another monument in the environs of Cracow; an immense mound of earth, standing on an eminence visible from every quarter, towering almost into a mountain, and sacred to the memory of Kosciusko! I saw it from the palace of the kings and from the ramparts of the fallen city, and, with my eyes constantly fixed upon it, descended to the Vistula, followed its bank to a large convent, and then turned to the right, direct for the mound. I walked to the foot of the hill, and ascended to a broad table of land. From this table the mound rises in a conical form, from a base three hundred feet in diameter, to the height of one hundred and seventy-five feet. At the four corners formerly stood small houses, which were occupied by revolutionary soldiers who had served under Kosciusko. On the farther side, enclosed by a railing, was a small chapel, and within it a marble tomb covering Kosciusko's heart! A circular path winds round the mound; I ascended by this path to the top.

It is built of earth sodded, and was then covered with a thick carpet of gra.s.s, and reminded me of the tumuli of the Grecian heroes on the plains of Troy; and perhaps, when thousands of years shall have rolled by, and all connected with our age be forgotten, and time and exposure to the elements shall have changed its form, another stranger will stand where I did, and wonder why and for what it was raised. It was erected in 1819 by the voluntary labour of the Polish people; and so great was the enthusiasm, that, as an eyewitness told me, wounded soldiers brought earth in their helmets, and women in their slippers; and I remembered, with a swelling heart, that on this consecrated spot a nation of brave men had turned to my country as the star of liberty, and that here a banner had been unfurled and hailed with acclamations by a.s.sembled thousands, bearing aloft the sacred inscription, "Kosciusko, the friend of Washington!"

The morning was cold and dreary, the sky was overcast with clouds, and the sun, occasionally breaking through lighted up for a moment with dazzling brilliancy the domes and steeples of Cracow, and the palace and burial-place of her kings, emblematic of the fitful gleams of her liberty flashing and dazzling, and then dying away. I drew my cloak around me, and remained there till I was almost drenched with rain. The wind blew violently, and I descended and sheltered myself at the foot of the mound, by the grave of Kosciusko's heart!

I returned to the city and entered the Cathedral Church. It stands by the side of the old palace, on the summit of the rock of Wauvel, in the centre of and commanding the city, enclosed with walls and towers, and allied in its history with the most memorable annals of Poland; the witness of the ancient glory of her kings, and their sepulchre. The rain was pattering against the windows of the old church as I strolled through the silent cloisters and among the tombs of the kings. A verger in a large c.o.c.ked hat, and a group of peasants, moved, like myself, with noiseless steps, as if afraid to disturb the repose of the royal dead.

Many of the kings of Poland fill but a corner of the page of history.

Some of their names I had forgotten, or, perhaps, never knew until I saw them inscribed on their tombs; but every monument covered a head that had worn a crown, and some whose bones were mouldering under my feet will live till the last records of heroism perish.

The oldest monument is that of Wladislaus le Bref, built of stone, without any inscription, but adorned with figures in bas-relief, which are very much injured. He died in thirteen hundred and thirty-three, and chose himself the place of his eternal rest. Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, on his invasion of Poland, visited the Cathedral Church, and stopped before this tomb. A distinguished canon who attended him, in allusion to the position of John Casimir, who was then at war with the King of Sweden, remarked, "And that king was also driven from his throne, but he returned and reigned until his death." The Swede answered with bitterness, "But your John Casimir will never return." The canon replied respectfully, "G.o.d is great and fortune is fickle;" and the canon was right, for John Casimir regained his throne.

I approached with a feeling of veneration the tomb of Casimir the Great.

It is of red marble; four columns support a canopy, and the figure of the king, with a crown on his head, rests on a coffin of stone. An iron railing encloses the monument. It is nearly five hundred years since the palatins and n.o.bles of Poland, with all the insignia of barbaric magnificence, laid him in the place where his ashes now repose. The historian writes, "Poland is indebted to Casimir for the greatest part of her churches, palaces, fortresses, and towns," adding that "he found Poland of wood and left her of marble." He patronized letters, and founded the University of Cracow; promoted industry and encouraged trade; digested the unwritten laws and usages into a regular code; established courts of justice; repressed the tyranny of the n.o.bles, and died with the honourable t.i.tle of King of the Peasants; and I did not forget, while standing over his grave, that beneath me slept the spirit that loved the groves of Lobzow and the heart that beat for Esther the Jewess.

The tomb of Sigismund I. is of red marble, with a figure as large as life reclining upon it. It is adorned with bas-reliefs and the arms of the republic, the white eagle and the armed cavalier of Lithuania. He died in fifteen hundred and forty-one, and his monument bears the following inscription in Latin: "Sigismund Jagellon, King of Poland, Grand-duke of Lithuania, Conqueror of the Tartars, of the Wallachians, of the Russians and Prussians, reposes under this stone, which he prepared for himself." Forty years ago Thaddeus Czacki, the Polish historian, opened the tombs of the kings, and found the head of Sigismund resting upon a plate of silver bearing a long Latin inscription; the body measured six feet and two inches in height, and was covered with three rich ermines; on the feet were golden spurs, a chain of gold around the neck, and a gold ring on one finger of the left hand. At his feet was a small pewter coffin enclosing the body of his son by Bone Sforza.

By his side lies the body of his son Sigismund II., the last of the Jagellons, at whose death began the cabals and convulsions of an elective monarchy, by which Poland lost her influence among foreign powers. His memory is rendered interesting by his romantic love for Barbe Radzewill. She appeared at his father's court, the daughter of a private citizen, celebrated in Polish history and romance as uniting to all a woman's beauty a mingled force and tenderness, energy and goodness. The prince had outlived all the ardour of youth; disappointed and listless amid pleasures, his energy of mind destroyed by his excesses, inconstant in his love, and at the summit of human prosperity, living without a wish or a hope; but he saw Barbe, and his heart beat anew with the pulsations of life. In the language of his biographer he proved, in all its fulness, that sentiment which draws to earth by its sorrows and raises to heaven by its delights. He married her privately, and on his father's death proclaimed her queen. The whole body of n.o.bles refused to acknowledge the marriage, and one of the nuncios, in the name of the representatives of the nation, supplicated him for himself, his country, his blood, and his children, to extinguish his pa.s.sion; but the king swore on his sword that neither the diet, nor the nation, nor the whole universe should make him break his vows to Barbe; that he would a thousand times rather live with her out of the kingdom than keep a throne which she could not share; and was on the point of abdicating, when his opponents offered to do homage to the queen. When Czacki opened the coffin of this prince, he found the body perfectly preserved, and the head, as before, resting on a silver plate containing a long Latin inscription.

At the foot of his coffin is that of his sister and successor, Anne; and in a separate chapel is the tomb of Stephen Battory, one of the greatest of the kings of Poland, raised to the throne by his marriage with Anne.

I became more and more interested in this asylum of royal dead. I read there almost the entire history of the Polish republic, and again I felt that it was but a step from the throne to the grave, for near me was the great chair in which the kings of Poland were crowned. I paused before the tomb of John Casimir; and there was something strangely interesting in the juxtaposition of these royal dead. John Casimir lies by the side of the brother whom he endeavoured to supplant in his election to the throne. His reign was a continued succession of troubles and misfortunes. Once he was obliged to fly from Poland. He predicted what has since been so fearfully verified, that his country, enfeebled by the anarchy of its government and the licentiousness of the n.o.bles, would be dismembered among the neighbouring powers; and, worn out with the cares of royalty, abdicated the throne, and died in a convent in France. I read at his tomb his pathetic farewell to his people.

"People of Poland,

"It is now two hundred and eighty years that you have been governed by my family. The reign of my ancestors is past, and mine is going to expire. Fatigued by the labours of war, the cares of the cabinet, and the weight of age; oppressed with the burdens and vicissitudes of a reign of more than twenty-one years, I, your king and father, return into your hands what the world esteems above all things, a crown, and choose for my throne six feet of earth, where I shall sleep with my fathers. When you show my tomb to your children, tell them that I was the foremost in battle and the last in retreat; that I renounced regal grandeur for the good of my country, and restored my sceptre to those who gave it me."

By his side, and under a monument of black marble, lies the body of his successor, Michel Wisniowecki, an obscure and unambitious citizen, who was literally dragged to the throne, and wept when the crown was placed upon his head, and of whom Casimir remarked, when informed of his late subjects' choice, "What, have they put the crown on the head of that poor fellow?" And again I was almost startled by the strange and unnatural mingling of human ashes. By the side of that "poor fellow"

lies the "famous" John Sobieski, the greatest of the long line of kings of a n.o.ble and valorous nation;

"One of the few, the immortal names, That were not born to die."

On the lower floor of the church, by the side of Poniatowski, the Polish Bayard, is the tomb of one n.o.bler in my eyes than all the kings of Poland or of the world. It is of red marble, ornamented with the cap and plume of the peasant of Cracow, and bears the simple inscription "T.

Kosciusko." All over the church I had read elaborate panegyrics upon the tenants of the royal sepulchres, and I was struck with this simple inscription, and remembered that the white marble column reared amid the magnificent scenery of the Hudson, which I had often gazed at from the deck of a steamboat, and at whose base I had often stood, bore also in majestic simplicity the name of "Kosciusko." It was late in the afternoon, and the group of peasants, two Poles from the interior, and a party of the citizens of Cracow, among whom were several ladies, joined me at the tomb. We could not speak each other's language; we were born and lived thousands of miles apart, and we were strangers in our thoughts and feelings, in all our hopes and prospects, but we had a bond of sympathy at the grave of Kosciusko. One of the ladies spoke French, and I told them that, in my far distant country, the name of their nation's idol was hallowed; that schoolboys had erected a monument to his memory. They knew that he had fought by the side of Washington, but they did not know that the recollection of his services was still so dearly cherished in America; and we all agreed that it was the proudest tribute that could be paid to his memory, to write merely his name on his monument. It meant that it was needless to add an epitaph, for no man would ask, Who was Kosciusko?

It was nearly dark when I returned to my hotel. In the restaurant, at a small table directly opposite me, sat the celebrated Chlopicki, to whom, on the breaking out of the last revolution, Poland turned as to another Kosciusko, and who, until he faltered during the trying scenes of that revolution, would have been deemed worthy to lie by Kosciusko's side.

Born of a n.o.ble family, a soldier from his birth, he served in the memorable campaigns of the great patriot, distinguished himself in the Polish legions in Italy under Dombrowski, and, as colonel of a regiment of the army of the Vistula, behaved gloriously in Prussia. In Spain he fought at Saragossa and Sagunta, and was called by Suchet _le brave des braves_; as general of brigade in the army of Russia, he was wounded at Valentina, near Smolensk, and was general of a division in eighteen hundred and fourteen, when Poland fell under the dominion of the autocrat. The Grand-duke Constantine censured him on parade, saying that his division was not in order; and Chlopicki, with the proud boast, "I did not gain my rank on the parade-ground, nor did I win my decorations there," asked his discharge the next day, and could never after be induced to return to the service. The day after the revolutionary blow was struck, all Poland turned to Chlopicki as the only man capable of standing at the head of the nation. The command of the army, with absolute powers, was conferred upon him by acclamation, and one of the patriot leaders concluded his address to him with these words: "Brother, take the sword of your ancestors and predecessors, Czarnecki, Dombrowski, and Kosciusko. Guide the nation that has placed its trust in you in the path of honour. Save this unhappy country." Chlopicki, with his silver head grown white in the service of Poland, was hailed by a hundred thousand people on the Champ de Mars with shouts of "our country and its brave defender, Chlopicki, for ever." He promised never to abuse their confidence, and swore that he would defend the liberty of Poland to the last moment. The whole nation was enthusiastic in his favour; but in less than three months, at a stormy session of the diet, he threw up his high office of dictator, and refused peremptorily to accept command of the army. This brave army, enthusiastically attached to him, was struck with profound grief at his estrangement; but, with all the faults imputed to him, it never was charged that he attempted to take advantage of his great popularity for any ambitious purposes of his own.

At the battle of Grokow he fought nominally as a private soldier, though Skryznecki and Radziwill being both deficient in military experience, the whole army looked to him for guidance. Once, when the battle was setting strong against the Poles, in a moment of desperation he put himself at the head of some disposable battalions, and turning away from an aiddecamp who came to him for orders, said, "Go and ask Radziwill; for me, I seek only death." Grievously wounded, his wounds were dressed in presence of the enemy; but at two o'clock he was borne off the field, the hopes of the soldiers died, and the army remained without any actual head. Throughout the revolution his conduct was cold, indifferent, and inexplicable; private letters from the Emperor of Russia were talked of, and even _treason_ was whispered in connexion with his name. The Poles speak of him more in sorrow than in anger; they say that it was not enough that he exposed his person on the field of battle; that he should have given them the whole weight of his great military talents, and the influence of his powerful name; that, standing alone, without children or relations to be compromised by his acts, he should have consummated the glory of his life by giving its few remaining years for the liberty of his country. He appeared about sixty-five, with hair perfectly white, a high florid complexion, a firm and determined expression, and in still unbroken health, carrying himself with the proud bearing of a distinguished veteran soldier. I could not believe that he had bartered the precious satisfaction of a long and glorious career for a few years of ign.o.ble existence; and, though a stranger, could but regret that, in the wane of life, circ.u.mstances, whether justly or not, had sullied an honoured name. It spoke loudly against him that I saw him sitting in a public restaurant at Cracow, unmolested by the Russian government.

The next day I visited the celebrated salt-mines at Wielitska. They lie about, twelve miles from Cracow, in the province of Galicia, a part of the kingdom of Poland, which, on the unrighteous part.i.tion of that country, fell to the share of Austria. Although at so short a distance, it was necessary to go through all the pa.s.sport formalities requisite on a departure for a foreign country. I took a fiacre and rode to the different bureaux of the city police, and, having procured the permission of the munic.i.p.al authorities to leave the little territory of Cracow, rode next to the Austrian consul, who thereupon, and in consideration of one dollar to him in hand paid, was graciously pleased to permit me to enter the dominions of his master the Emperor of Austria. It was also necessary to have an order from the director of the mines to the superintendent; and furnished with this I again mounted my fiacre, rattled through the princ.i.p.al street, and in a few minutes crossed the Vistula. At the end of the bridge an Austrian soldier stopped me for my pa.s.sport, a _douanier_ examined my carriage for articles subject to duty, and, these functionaries being satisfied, in about two hours from the time at which I began my preparations I was fairly on my way.

Leaving the Vistula, I entered a pretty, undulating, and well-cultivated country, and saw at a distance a high dark line, marking the range of the Carpathian mountains. It was a long time since I had seen anything that looked like a mountain. From the Black Sea the whole of my journey had been over an immense plain, and I hailed the wild range of the Carpathian as I would the spire of a church, as an evidence of the approach to regions of civilization.

In an hour and a half I arrived at the town of Wielitska, containing about three thousand inhabitants, and standing, as it were, on the roof of the immense subterraneous excavations. The houses are built of wood, and the first thing that struck me was the almost entire absence of men in the streets, the whole male population being employed in the mines, and then at work below. I rode to the office of the superintendent, and presented my letter, and was received with great civility of manner but his _Polish_ was perfectly unintelligible. A s.m.u.tty-faced operative, just out of the mines, accosted me in Latin, and I exchanged a few shots with him, but hauled off on the appearance of a man whom the superintendent had sent for to act as my guide; an old soldier who had served in the campaigns of Napoleon, and, as he said, become an amateur and proficient in fighting and French. He was dressed in miner's costume, fanciful, and embroidered with gold, holding in his hand a steel axe; and, having arrayed me in a long white frock, conducted me to a wooden building covering the shaft which forms the princ.i.p.al entrance to the mine. This shaft is ten feet square, and descends perpendicularly more than two hundred feet into the bowels of the earth. We arranged ourselves in canva.s.s seats, and several of the miners, who were waiting to descend, attached themselves to seats at the end of the ropes, with lamps in their hands, about eight or ten feet below us.

When my feet left the brink of the shaft I felt, for a moment, as if suspended over the portal of a bottomless pit; and as my head descended below the surface, the rope, winding and tapering to a thread, seemed letting me down to the realms of Pluto. But in a few moments we touched bottom. From within a short distance of the surface, the shaft is cut through a solid rock of salt, and from the bottom pa.s.sages almost innumerable are cut in every direction through the same bed. We were furnished with guides, who went before us bearing torches, and I followed through the whole labyrinth of pa.s.sages, forming the largest excavations in Europe, peopled with upward of two thousand souls, and giving a complete idea of a subterraneous world. These mines are known to have been worked upward of six hundred years, being mentioned in the Polish annals as early as twelve hundred and thirty-seven, under Boleslaus the Chaste, and then not as a new discovery, but how much earlier they had existed cannot now be ascertained. The tradition is, that a sister of St. Casimir, having lost a gold ring, prayed to St.

Anthony, the patron saint of Cracow, and was advised in a dream that, by digging in such a place, she would find a treasure far greater than that she had lost, and within the place indicated these mines were discovered.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Salt-mines of Wielitska.]

There are four different stories or ranges of apartments; the whole length of the excavations is more than six thousand feet, or three quarters of an hour's walk, and the greatest breadth more than two thousand feet; and there are so many turnings and windings that my guide told me, though I hardly think it possible, that the whole length of all the pa.s.sages cut through this bed of salt amounts to more than three hundred miles. Many of the chambers are of immense size. Some are supported by timber, others by vast pillars of salt; several are without any support in the middle, and of vast dimensions, perhaps eighty feet high, and so long and broad as almost to appear a boundless subterraneous cavern. In one of the largest is a lake covering nearly the whole area. When the King of Saxony visited this place in eighteen hundred and ten, after taking possession of his moiety of the mines as Duke of Warsaw, this portion of them was brilliantly illuminated; and a band of music, floating on the lake, made the roof echo with patriotic airs. We crossed the lake in a flatboat by a rope, the dim light of torches, and the hollow sound of our voices, giving a lively idea of a pa.s.sage across the Styx; and we had a scene which might have ent.i.tled us to a welcome from the prince of the infernals, for our torch-bearers quarrelled, and in a scuffle that came near carrying us all with them, one was tumbled into the lake. Our Charon caught him, and, without stopping to take him in, hurried across, and as soon as we landed beat them both unmercifully.

From this we entered an immense cavern, in which several hundred men were working with pickaxes and hatchets, cutting out large blocks of salt, and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g them to suit the size of barrels. With their black faces begrimed with dust and smoke, they looked by the light of the scattered torches like the journeymen of Beelzebub, the prince of darkness, preparing for some great blow-up, or like the spirits of the d.a.m.ned condemned to toil without end. My guide called up a party, who disengaged with their pickaxes a large block of salt from its native bed, and in a few minutes cut and trimmed it to fit the barrels in which they are packed. All doubts as to their being creatures of our upper world were removed by the eagerness with which they accepted the money I gave them; and it will be satisfactory to the advocates of that currency to know that paper money pa.s.ses readily in these lower regions.

There are more than a thousand chambers or halls, most of which have been abandoned and shut up. In one is a collection of fanciful things, such as rings, books, crosses, &c., cut in the rock-salt. Most of the princ.i.p.al chambers had some name printed over them, as the "Archduke,"

"Carolina," &c. Whenever it was necessary, my guides went ahead and stationed themselves in some conspicuous place, lighting up the dark caverns with the blaze of their torches, and, after allowing me a sufficient time, struck their flambeaux against the wall, and millions of sparks flashed and floated around and filled the chamber. In one place, at the end of a long, dark pa.s.sage, a door was thrown open, and I was ushered suddenly into a s.p.a.cious ballroom lighted with torches; and directly in front, at the head of the room, was a transparency with coloured lights, in the centre of which were the words "Excelso hospiti," "To the ill.u.s.trious guest," which I took to myself, though I believe the greeting was intended for the same royal person for whom the lake chamber was illuminated. Lights were ingeniously arranged around the room, and at the foot, about twenty feet above my head, was a large orchestra. On the occasion referred to a splendid ball was given in this room; the roof echoed with the sound of music; and n.o.bles and princely ladies flirted and coquetted the same as above ground; and it is said that the splendid dresses of a numerous company, and the blaze of light from the chandeliers reflected upon the surface of the rock-salt, produced an effect of inconceivable brilliancy. My chandeliers were worse than Allan M'Aulay's strapping Highlanders with their pine torches, being dirty, ragged, s.m.u.tty-faced rascals, who threw the light in streaks across the hall. I am always willing to believe fanciful stories; and if my guide had thrown in a handsome young princess as part of the welcome to the "Excelso hospiti," I would have subscribed to anything he said; but, in the absence of a consideration, I refused to tax my imagination up to the point he wished. Perhaps the most interesting chamber of all is the chapel dedicated to that Saint Anthony who brought about the discovery of these mines. It is supposed to be more than four hundred years old. The columns, with their ornamented capitals, the arches, the images of the Saviour, the Virgin and saints, the altar and the pulpit, with all their decorations, and the figures of two priests represented at prayers before the shrine of the patron saint, are all carved out of the rock-salt, and to this day grand ma.s.s is regularly celebrated in the chapel once every year.

Following my guide through all the different pa.s.sages and chambers, and constantly meeting miners and seeing squads of men at work, I descended by regular stairs cut in the salt, but in some places worn away and replaced by wood or stone, to the lowest gallery, which is nearly a thousand feet below the surface of the earth. I was then a rather veteran traveller, but up to this time it had been my business to move quietly on the surface of the earth, or, when infected with the soaring spirit of other travellers, to climb to the top of some lofty tower or loftier cathedral; and I had fulfilled one of the duties of a visiter to the eternal city by perching myself within the great ball of St.

Peter's; but here I was far deeper under the earth than I had ever been above it; and at the greatest depth from which the human voice ever rose, I sat down on a lump of salt and soliloquized,