G. Hartwig

“ First on the list stands Great Britain, whose pre-eminence in industry and commerce is entirely founded on her vast deposits of coal. It is this invaluable mineral which sets those countless steam-engines in motion that perform the labours of a hundred millions of men; which spins and weaves the cotton of America, the silk of China, the wool of Australia, and the flax of Belgium into that amazing variety of tissues that serve to clothe almost all the nations of the globe; and which finally produces a greater quantity of the cheapest iron than the combined efforts of all the world. ”

“ On man, the phenomenon makes a peculiarly deep impression.
‘A bad earthquake,’ says Mr. Darwin, ‘at once destroys our oldest associations. The earth, the very emblem of solidity, has moved beneath our feet like a thin crust over a fluid. One second of time has created in the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would not have produced.’ We can no longer trust the soil on which we stand, and feel ourselves completely at the mercy of some unknown destructive power, which at any moment, without forewarning, can destroy our property or our lives. ”

“ But in order to make one feel the full impression of night and silence, the guide, after penetrating to some distance into the interior of the cave, extinguishes his torch. A strange sensation of awe then creeps over the boldest heart, and by an almost irresistible instinct the stranger seeks the nearest wall, as if to convince himself that he has at least the sense of touch to depend upon where the eye vainly seeks for the least ray of light, and the ear as vainly listens for a sound. ”

“ To those who stand below the cliff and look up from the sea, the view is fearfully grand, and remarkable for the combination of the wonders of art with the wonders of nature. The separate parts of an enormous steam-engine had to be lowered 200 feet down the almost perpendicular precipice, and a tram-road runs right up the face of the cliff. Lofty chimneys, pouring out dense volumes of black smoke, are seen perched on the verge and even on the ledges of a tremendous precipice, and the miner has built his hut over the sea-bird’s roost. ”

“ If, even during an ordinary storm, the black clouds, the howling of the wind, the flashes of lightning, and the loud claps of thunder strike men and brutes with fear, we may naturally expect to see terror carried to its highest pitch by so dreadful a phenomenon as an earthquake. All creatures living or burrowing under the earth—rats, mice, moles, snakes—hastily creep forth from their subterranean abodes, though many no doubt are gripped and suffocated by the suddenly moved soil before they can effect their escape ”

“ On one side of the cliff tall ladders scale the rock; but he must have strong nerves who can tread them fearlessly, the sea roaring under him and flinging its raging spray after him as he ascends, while in other parts mules and their riders may be seen trotting up and down the rocky tracks which the pedestrian visitor would scarcely dare to pass. A strange and restless life pervades a scene which nature seemed to have for ever removed far from the busy haunts of man. ”

“ Boring through hard stone is necessarily a very tedious work, but as it proceeds it awakens not only in those who are directly interested in its success, but in every intelligent witness, all the stirring emotions of a game of chance. ‘Of all branches of business,’ says Williams, a thoroughly devoted miner—‘of all the experiments that a man of sensibility can be engaged in, or attend to, there is, perhaps, none so amusing, so engaging, and delightful as a successful trial upon the vestigia, or appearances, of a seam of coal, or other mineral discoveries. ”

“ Accompanied by a guide, the stranger enters these amazing quarries, that extend for miles into the interior of the mountain, and is soon lost in wonder at their endless passages, perpetually crossing each other to the right and left, and ending in utter darkness. The dismal grandeur of these dark regions is increased by their awful silence, for but rarely a drop of water falls from the vaults into a small pool below, and even the voice of man dies away without awakening an echo. ”

“ Huge trees of wonderful form stand out far into the water. There seems no intervening beach. A thick hedge of reeds, tall as the masts of pinnaces, runs along the deeper bays, like water-flags at the edge of a lake. A river of vast volume comes rolling from the interior, darkening the water for leagues with its slime and mud, and bearing with it to the open sea reeds and ferns and cones of the pine, and 394immense floats of leaves, and now and then some bulky tree undermined and uprooted by the current. We near the coast, and now enter the opening of the stream. ”

“ From some of these hollows the flames of piles of fir-wood are seen to creep along the hard rock which they are to soften, and the deep gulf is animated by troops of miners, the distant clang of whose hammers, closely resembling the clicking of a number of clocks, forms a strange concert with the creaking noise of the machinery. Attracted by the novelty of the interesting sight, the eye wanders from one object to another, and time steals on rapidly and unperceived—when suddenly a bell tolls, and the scene as suddenly changes. ”

“ Bayard Taylor, an American traveller who visited them a few years ago, ‘we saw the first veins of rock-salt in a bed of clay and crumbled sandstone. Thirty feet more, and we were in a world of salt. Level galleries branched off from the foot of the staircase; overhead, a ceiling of solid salt, under foot a floor of salt, and on either side gray walls of salt, sparkling here and there with minute crystals. Lights glimmered ahead, and on turning a corner we came upon a gang of workmen, some hacking away at the solid floor, others trundling wheelbarrows full of the precious cubes. ”

“ Descending ladder after ladder, and passing on from gallery to gallery, stepping over rough stones and awkward holes, now stooping down under masses of overhanging rock, and now climbing over stony projections beneath your feet, you are at length informed that you are vertically 120 feet below the sea-level, and horizontally 480 feet under the bottom of the ocean or beyond low-water mark, while still deeper down human beings are hewing the hard rock. The brine oozes through the metallic ceiling, and the sound of distant waters falls faintly upon the ear. ”

“ If he ascends in a balloon, he soon reaches the limits where the rarefied atmosphere renders breathing impossible; a few thousand feet limit his efforts to pierce the earth’s crust; and should he be cast out into the sea, he is soon drowned. But beyond the limits to which his body is confined, his mind soars into space, and plunging into the unknown interior of our globe, seeks to unravel the mystery of its formation. ”

“ After crossing this broad portal, the last faint traces of daylight glimmering from the distant aperture in the Piuka entirely disappear, and the scene suddenly changes. The expanding cavern assumes the proportions of an imposing dome. On its left side a mound has been formed by the falling in of the roof; but every block of stone is completely covered with calcareous incrustations of the purest white. From the floor to the centre of the vault millions upon millions of brilliant spars reflect the light: every hollow in the walls is a cabinet of gems. ”

“ Many other eruptions have no doubt been on a grander scale, or may have spread ruin and desolation over a wider area, but never has a volcano, awakening from the slumber of a thousand years, devastated a more smiling paradise than the fields of happy Campania, or buried more beautiful cities.
Before that terrible catastrophe, Mount Vesuvius, now constantly smoking, even in times of rest, had, ever since the first colonisation of South Italy by the Greeks, exhibited no signs of volcanic activity. Even tradition knew of no previous disturbance. ”

“ In early spring the change of climate will be almost miraculous; on one side winter still reigning supreme, the earth covered with deep snow and the cold wind moaning through the leafless trees—and then, after a short interval of darkness, the rich vegetation of an Italian vale bursting forth in all its first luxuriance, birds singing in the chestnut groves, and the green meads enamelled with myriads of flowers. ”

“ Within two miles of the foot of the mountain, the eye discerns the city of Palermo, with its beautiful villas and luxuriant gardens, and then, taking a wider range, glances to the north, over the dark blue sea bounded by the Lipari Islands and the ever-fuming cone of Stromboli; while to the east a large portion of Etna, although at the distance of almost the whole length of Sicily, towers like a giant above the minor mountain chains. ”

“ Often, in order to lose as little time as possible, a number of shots are fired together, so that the explosions, pouring out their tongues of flame in rapid succession, and awakening the subterranean echoes far and wide, afford a highly interesting spectacle. But woe to the miner if he be too hasty to return to his post, for it often happens that a treacherous shot goes off several minutes after being lighted, and, exploding in the face of the imprudent workman, disfigures him for life, or kills him on the spot. ”

“ The rough-hewn block in the quarry does not bear more distinct proof of the hammer and the chisel of the workman than these interminable galleries afford of its denuding and dissolving power. At Niagara we see a vast chasm evidently cut by water for seven miles, and still in progress; but we cannot see beneath the cataract the water-worn surface, nor the rounded angles of the precipice; while the frosts and rains of countless winters have reduced the walls of the chasm itself to a talus of crumbling and moss-grown rocks. ”

“ The large cauldron, in place of its bloody glare, now glowed with intense brilliancy, and the surface sparkled with shifting points of dazzling light, occasioned by the jets in constant play. The broad canopy of clouds above the pit, which seemed to rest on a column of wreaths and curling heaps of lighted vapour, and the amphitheatre of rocks around the lower depths, were brightly illuminated from the boiling lavas, while a lurid red tinged the distant parts of the inclosing walls and threw their cavernous recesses into deeper shades of darkness. ”

“ The deep and inaccessible bottom of the crater loses itself in misty obscurity, and glimmers indistinctly through the vapours which are there slowly and incessantly ascending from its mysterious depths. All is desolate and silent, save when a solitary falcon, hovering over the vast chasm, awakes with her discordant screech the echoes of the precipice. Through a telescope may be seen, in various parts of the huge crater walls, swarms of small swallows, which have there built their nests, flying backwards and forwards. ”

“ The descent into the crater of an active volcano is at all times a difficult and hazardous enterprise, both from the steepness of its encircling rock walls, and the suffocating vapours rising from its bottom; but it is rare indeed that a traveller has either the temerity or the good fortune to penetrate as far as the very mouth of the eruptive channel, and to gain a glimpse of its mysterious horrors. ”

“ Enormous masses of stone, piled up by the falling in of the roof, have blocked up and narrowed the bed of the river to fifteen feet, and cause the stream to shoot down in a broad sheet ten feet high. The cataract, madly rushing over the jet-black rocks and casting up flakes of milk-white foam, is very beautiful, and, when brightly illuminated, must produce a truly magical effect. ”

“ It clothes our war ships with a case of impenetrable armour, and sets the finest watch in motion; it provides the sempstress with her needle, and guides the mariner over the ocean; it furnishes the husbandman with his ploughshare, and the soldier with his sword; it concentrates in the steam-engine the sinews of a thousand horses, and mocks on the railroad the fleetness of the swiftest courser. It is, in one word, the embodiment of power, the chief agent of all social progress. ”

“ Thus the rock-tombs of the Egyptian Pharaohs and the sacred grottoes of India still bear witness to the feelings which conceived and realised the idea of these stupendous excavations.
Our own times furnish no similar examples of underground temples or mausoleums on a scale so grand as to command the admiration of posterity. We neither scoop out whole mountains nor deeply plunge into the entrails of the earth to reverence the dead or to testify our devotion; our subterranean labours all bear the stamp of practical utility. ”

“ The history of the primitive races of mankind, as far as we are able to trace it in the few relics that have survived their existence, shows us that an age of stone was followed by one of bronze, which in its turn was succeeded by one of iron. The Golden Age has probably never existed but in the fancy of poets who sought in the land of dreams a compensation for the deficiencies of the real world; and there can be no doubt that, despite California and Australia, our own times are as far from realising the pleasing vision as any before them. ”

“ No other quarries in the world can boast of their material having undergone a more beautiful transformation, for never has marble been more highly ennobled than by the genius of Pheidias! The ancient roads ascending from the foot of the mountain to the quarries still show the traces of the sledges on which were transported the huge blocks of more than twenty tons in weight that now lie scattered among the ruins of the Acropolis. ”

“ For several minutes the whole neighbourhood trembles as if shaken by an earthquake. Through the black clouds of smoke which ascend from the gulf, pieces of stone or ore are hurled upwards, frequently far beyond the brink of the pit, and most of the detonations are followed by the crash of the falling fragments rent by the explosion from the mother-rock. ”

“ As civilisation advanced, and the value of the metals, of coal and salt, came to be more and more appreciated, nothing could be more natural than the desire of no longer relying upon the discoveries of chance or upon the mines bequeathed by former ages, but of sounding the mysterious recesses of the earth, and forcing her, by dint of patient exploration, to reveal the riches she conceals under her surface. ”

“ Darwin, ‘are sufficient to destroy the prosperity of any country. If beneath England the now inert subterranean forces should exert those powers which most assuredly in former geological ages they have exerted, how completely would the entire condition of the land be changed! What would become of the lofty houses, thickly packed cities, great manufactories, the beautiful public and private edifices? If the new period of disturbance were first to commence by some great earthquake in the dead of the night, how terrific would be the carnage! ”

“ It was a shrivelled mummy, completely dressed, the hat lying close to the head, the shoes separated from the feet, and a rosary in its hand. From the dress Faujas conjectured it to be the body of a workman, and perhaps more than half a century might have passed since the poor man died in the quarry which had probably given him bread for many a year. The dry air, and the total absence of insects in these subterranean vaults, explained the mummy-like preservation of the corpse. ”