were not interminably
distant, for they were upon the other shore, and this gnome lake is but a
mere drop of water in the mountain mass, its length being three hundred
and thirty, and its breadth one hundred and sixty feet.

Our guides lighted more candles, and we began to see their rays reflected
from the water; we could hear too the dull splashing of the boat, which
we could not see, as old Charon slowly ferried to our shore. More lights
were used; they flashed and flickered from the opposite ferry station,
and we began to have an indistinct sense of a spangled dome, and of an
undulating surface of thick, black water, through which the coming boat
loomed darkly. More candles were lighted on both sides of the Konhauser
lake, a very Styx, defying all the illuminating force of candles; dead
and dark in its dim cave, even the limits of which all our lights did not
serve to define. The boat reached the place of embarcation, and we,
wandering ghosts, half walked and were half carried into its broad clumsy
hulk, and took each his allotted seat in ghostly silence. There was
something really terrible in it all; in the slow funereal pace at which
we floated across the subterranean lake; in the dead quiet among us, only
interrupted by the slow plunge of the oar into the sickly waters. In
spite of all the lights that had been kindled we were still in a thick
vapour of darkness, and could form but a dreamy notion of the beauty and
the grandeur of the crystal dome within which we men from the upper earth
were hidden from our fellows. The lights were flared aloft as we crept
sluggishly across the lake, and now and then were flashed back from a
hanging stalactite, but that was all. The misty darkness about us
brought to the fancy at the same time fearful images, and none of us were
sorry when we reached the other shore in safety. There a rich glow of
light awaited us, and there we were told a famous tale about the last
Arch-ducal visit to these salt mines, where some thousands of lighted
tapers glittered and flashed about him, and exhibited the vaulted roof
and spangled lake in all their beauty. As we were not Archdukes, we had
our Hades lighted only by a pound of short sixteens.

We left the lake behind us, and then, traversing a further distance of
seventy feet along the Wehrschachtricht, arrived at the mouth of the
Konhauser Stiege. Another rapid descent of forty-five feet at an angle
of fifty degrees, and we reached Ru