John Stephens - Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. 2 (of 2)

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 noble 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 ignoble existence; and, though a stranger, could but regret that, in the wane of life, circumstances, 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 partition of that country, fell to the share of Austria. Although at so short a distance, it was necessary to go through all the passport 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 municipal 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 principal street, and in a few minutes crossed the Vistula. At the end of the bridge an Austrian soldier stopped me for my passport, 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 smutty-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 principal 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 canvass 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 passages 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 passages, 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.