generally called
the end of the salt-mine; but we were still a long way distant from the
pure air and the sunshine. We had travelled through seven galleries of
an aggregate length of nearly two miles; we had floated across an earthy
piece of water; had followed one another down six slides, and had
penetrated to the depth of twelve hundred feet into the substance of the
mountain limestone, gypsum, and marl. Having done all this, there we
were, in the very heart of the Durrnberg, left by our guides, and
intrusted to the care of two lank lads with haggard faces. We stood
together in a spacious cavern, poorly lighted by our candles; there was a
line of tram-rail running through the middle of it, and we soon saw the
carriage that was to take us out of the mountain emerging from a dark
nook in the distance. It was a truck with seats upon it, economically
arranged after the fashion of an Irish jaunting car. The two lads were
to be our horses, and our way lay through a black hollow in one side of
the cavern, into which the tram-rail ran.

We took our seats, instructed to sit perfectly still, and to restrain our
legs and arms from any straggling. There was no room to spare in the
shaft we were about to traverse. Our car was run on to the tram-line,
and the two lads, with a sickly smile, and a broad hint at their expected
gratuity, began to pull, and promised us a rapid journey. In another
minute we were whirring down an incline with a rush and a rattle, through
the subterranean passage tunnelled into the solid limestone which runs to
the outer edge of the Durrnberg. The length of this tunnel is
considerably more than an English mile.

The reverberation and the want of light were nothing, but we were
disagreeably sensible of a cloud of fine stone dust, and knew well that
we should come out not only stone deaf, but as white as millers.
Clinging to our seats with a cowardly instinct, down we went through a
hurricane of sound and dust. At length we were sensible of a diminution
in our speed, and the confusion of noises so far ceased, that we could
hear the panting of our biped cattle. Then, straight before us, shining
in the centre of the pitchy darkness, there was a bright blue star
suddenly apparent. One of the poor lads in the whisper of exhaustion,
and between his broken pantings for breath, told us that they always know
when they have got half way by the blue star, for that is the daylight
shining in.

A little n