for many years
farmed off to the Fuggers of Augsburg, but are now worked either by
government or private companies. This was one of the most interesting
spots visited by the two travellers.

Entering a spacious tunnel, completely walled with solid masonry, they
advanced into the very bosom of the mountain. Here galleries branch out
in various directions, hewn in the slate forming the matrix of the vein.
One of them leads to a vast circular hall, called the Boveda de Santa
Clara. At one time a horse gin was employed in this hall for raising
the ore, but at present this work is performed through a shaft
descending to the lowest level of the mine. Convenient steps lead down
from another gallery to the first working level, and thence the descent
is by short ladders to deeper storeys. The galleries are of a
sufficient height to allow a person to work upright. The upper ones are
dry, but the lower are humid and damp, although the water is easily
raised by hand-pumps from storey to storey into a large receiver, which
is emptied by a steam-engine. So extremely rich are the veins, that
although worked for many centuries, the mine has scarcely yet reached a
depth of 1140 feet. The present quantity raised annually amounts to
eighty-thousand hundredweight of pure mercury. The ore known as
cinnabar is of a dark-red colour, and gives a beautiful appearance to
the galleries. Sometimes when a hewer detaches a block of ore with his
pick mass of quicksilver, the size of a pigeon's egg, rolls out, and
leaping along the floor, divides into thousands of small drops. Owing
to the imperfect apparatus with which the ore is sublimated, nearly
one-half is lost. Formerly criminals only were employed in these mines.
They were conducted at sunrise from prison by a subterranean passage
into the mine, and compelled to toil on until the evening, when they
were led back again to their dungeons. In a few years the greater
number died, through inhaling the poisonous vapours of the mercury.
Reduced to despair, a century and a-half ago, they set fire to the
galleries, which, being then constructed of wood, were destroyed, and
mining operations put a stop to for many years. Only free labourers are
now employed, who are not allowed to work longer than six hours a-day.
Most of these, however, die between the ages of thirty and forty, and
those who exist longer are affected by palsy.

The quicksilver mines of Idria were discovered upwards of th