In the greatest fear lest, even in his present blind condition, he might recognise, and claim me as an acquaintance, I hurried from the spot with all the speed of which I was capable, and, thank Heaven, never set eyes upon him again.
I lately took a walk through the substance of a mountain, entering at the top, and coming out at the bottom, after a two or three mile journey underground. Perhaps the story of this trip is worth narrating. The mountain was part of an extensive property belonging to the Emperor of Austria, in his character of salt merchant, and contained the famous salt mine of Hallein.
The whole salt district of Upper Austria, called the Salzkammergut, forms part of a range of rocks that extends from Halle in the Tyrol, passes through Reichenthal in Bavaria, and continues by way of Hallein in Salzburg, to end at Ausse in Styria. The Austrian part of the range is now included in what is called the district of Salzburg, and that district abounds, as might be expected, in salt springs, hot and cold, which form in fact the baths of Gastein, Ischl, and some other places. The names of Salzburg (Saltborough), the capital, and of the Salzack (Saltbrook), on the left bank of which that pleasant city stands, indicate clearly enough the character of the surrounding country. Hallein is a small town eight miles to the south-east of Salzburg, and it was to the mine of Hallein, as before said, that I paid my visit.
On the way thither, we, a party of three foot-travellers, passed through much delightful rock and water scenery. From Linz, the capital of Upper Austria, we got through Wells and Laimbach to the river Traun, and trudged afoot beside its winding waters till we reached the point of its junction with the Traunsee, or Lake of Traun. At Gmunden, we stopped to look over the Imperial Salt Warehouses. The Emperor of Austria, as most people know, is the only dealer in salt and tobacco with whom his subjects are allowed to trade. His salt warehouses, therefore, must needs be extensive. They are situated at Gmunden to the left of the landing-place, from which a little steamer plies across the lake; and they are so built as to afford every facility for the unloading of boats that bring salt barrels from the mine by the highway of the Traun. The warehouses consisted simply of a large number of sheds piled with the salt in barrels, a few offices, and a low but spacious hall, filled, in a confused way, with dusty models. There were models of river-boats and salt moulds, mining tools, and tram ways, hydraulic models of all kinds, miniature furnaces, wooden troughs, and seething pans. We looked through these until the bell from the adjacent pier warned us, at five o’clock in the evening, to go on board the steamer that was quite ready to puff and splash its way across the beautiful green lake. We went under the shadow of the black and lofty Traunstien, and among pine-covered rocks, of which the reflections were mingled in the water with a ruddy glow, that streamed across a low shore from some fires towards which we were steering.