plash 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.

The glow proceeded from the fires of the Imperial Saltern, erected at
Ebensee. We paid a short visit to the works, which have been erected at
great cost; and display all the most recent improvements in the art of
getting the best marketable salt from saline water. We found that the
water, heavily impregnated, is conducted from the distant mines by wooden
troughs into the drying pan. The pan is a large shallow vessel of metal,
supported by small piles of brick, and a low brick wall about three feet
high, extending round two-thirds of its circumference; leaving one-third,
as the mouth of the furnace, open to the air. Among the brick columns,
and within the wall, the fire flashed and curled under the seething pan.
Ascending next into the house over the great pan, and looking down upon
the surface and its contents through sliding doors upon the floors, we
saw the white salt crusting like a coat of snow over the boiling water,
and being raked, as it is formed, by workmen stationed at each of the
trap doors. As the water evaporated, the salt was stirred and turned
from rake to rake; and finally, when quite dry, raked into the
neighbourhood of a long-handled spade, with which one workman was
shovelling among the dried salt, and filling a long row of wooden moulds,
placed ready to his hand. These moulds are sugar-loaf shaped, and
perforated at the bottom like a sugar mould, in order that any remaining
moisture may drain out of them. The moulds will be placed finally in a
heated room before the salt will be considered dry enough for storeage as
a manufactured article.

The brine that pours with an equable flow into the seething pan at
Ebensee, is brought by wooden troughs from the salt mine at Hallein, a
distance of thirty miles in a direct line. It comes by way of mountains
and along a portion of the valley of the Traun, through which we
continued our journey the same evening from Ebensee, until the darkness
compelled us to rest for the night at a small inn on a hill side. The
next day we went through Ischl and Wolfgang, and spent three hours of
afternoon in climbing up the Scharfberg, which is more than a thousand
feet higher than S