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
s