Little Falls transcript. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1876-1894, 1886-01-01
IN Al SALT MINE.

s-r4s ~ SG
A Gllttering Under ground City Pillars OF
Crystal. :E.<@
Correspondents London News.
Light q few Candles was the or
der passed as we were leaving Wins
ford; and / am under the impression
that the hole down below is like any
other hole. and that the few candles
will just give us light enoush for the
space Of some three or four yards.
But we shall see. We step into our
iron bucket. The door Thereof is closed
upon us. The steel ropes are made
fast. The signal is given. There is q
hesitating, trembling motion, and we
drive swiftly into Plutonian night,
straight, sheer through q funnel $50
feet deep, and 3feet 8 inches across,
the rim of our bucket now and again
grinding. scraping, humping, screeching
against the marrow walls. After the
first few seconds have passed, one
cannot tell from ones sensations,
merely, whether one is going up or
down, or is suspended at rest. there is
only the trembling Of the invisible
steel ropes and the scraping sound on
the walls. In q minute morewe touch
the floor of the under world with the
lightness of feather. In the name Of
the fairies, and COLLINS. and gnomes,
and spirits of the earth, what have we
there? Oh! Master Robert "a few
candles" The city of Dis illuminated
this is what meets my astonished
gaze.
Open spats;, endless streets turning
and winding off in all directions, and
outlined in spots of light, and IN the
farthest distance an ornamental group
of lights, as it on wall or on some
vast supporting pillar. It is as if one
looks from some point OF vantage up
on the lights off town in a dark night,
without moon or stars. not a town
with empty space over it, but town
under q horizontal ceiling thirty-three
feet above the pavement. On this
level pavement the massed bands
of the British army may play
Strauss music. and the whole OF the
London West End spin round ON
eight fantastic toe" The first feel
ings of surprise over, l examine my
surroundings in leisurely detail. At
some distance in front of us looms
dark mass with a horizontal line of
lights half way up it. The three of us
Mr.. Verdin, the guide, and myself
approach it, each carrying a lighted
candle across the floor. which appears
to be as level as the floor in n draw
ing-room, and which is covered with
thin carpet Of salt fine as powder and
dry as finder Wherever the light falls
upon it, thedsrk object glitters as if it
were encrusted with rubies and da-
monds. It Turns out to he huge.
square pillar, extending from floor to
ceiling. Each Of its four sides measures
twelve yards, it is thirty-three feet
high, and it Is nothing but a mass of
crystals. At every twenty five yards,
north, south, east, west, stands one
OF these gigantic columns.-all OF
them, like thls one, masses CT many
tinted salt crystals, and with the dia-
mond fish darling over their sides.
The plan of thGs wonderful colonnade
is now obvious. The miners have been
cutting their way, all these many gen.
erations, through the solid rock salt,
horizontally, clearing q smooth floor
below their feet, leavi4,ga smooth cell
ing over their heads, and, at the al
ready named distance, those enor-
nous pilasters. whose function is to
prevent thu roof, that is, the $50 feet
Of the earthserust, from failing in. The
ceiling is too high to respond very lib
orally to the flicker ofour candle lights;
but in q hundred spots it wrinkles like
stars peerilag through the clouds Of
night. They look as though they had
the strength of doom, those pillars,
and were destined to the cneck thereof.