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

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 passages 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 passage across the Styx; and we had a scene which might have entitled 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 trimming 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 damned 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 passes 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 principal 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 passage, a door was thrown open, and I was ushered suddenly into a spacious 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 illustrious 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 nobles 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, smutty-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 mass is regularly celebrated in the chapel once every year.

Following my guide through all the different passages 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,

"Through what varieties of untried being, Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!"

I have since stood upon the top of the Pyramids, and admired the daring genius and the industry of man, and at the same time smiled at his feebleness when, from the mighty pile, I saw in the dark ranges of mountains, the sandy desert, the rich valley of the Nile and the river of Egypt, the hand of the world's great Architect; but I never felt man's feebleness more than here; for all these immense excavations, the work of more than six hundred years, were but as the work of ants by the roadside. The whole of the immense mass above me, and around and below, to an unknown extent, was of salt; a wonderful phenomenon in the natural history of the globe. All the different strata have been carefully examined by scientific men. The uppermost bed at the surface is sand; the second clay occasionally mixed with sand and gravel, and containing petrifactions of marine bodies; the third is calcareous stone; and from these circumstances it has been conjectured that this spot was formerly covered by the sea, and that the salt is a gradual deposite formed by the evaporation of its waters. I was disappointed in some of the particulars which had fastened themselves upon my imagination. I had heard and read glowing accounts of the brilliancy and luminous splendour of the passages and chambers, compared by some to the lustre of precious stones; but the salt is of a dark gray colour, almost black, and although sometimes glittering when the light was thrown upon it, I do not believe it could ever be lighted up to shine with any extraordinary or dazzling brightness. Early travellers, too, had reported that these mines contained several villages inhabited by colonies of miners, who lived constantly below, and that many were born and died there, who never saw the light of day; but all this is entirely untrue. The miners descend every morning and return every night, and live in the village above. None of them ever sleep below. There are, however, two horses which were foaled in the mines, and have never been on the surface of the earth. I looked at these horses with great interest. They were growing old before their time; other horses had perhaps gone down and told them stories of a world above which they would never know.