to the last scene of all-a tunnel three quarters of a mile long, driven through the solid rock.

We entered by a gateway, and walked some little distance to examine the interior, till we came to the spot where our carriage was awaiting us.

Now, as the tunnel was only wide enough just to allow of standing with the arms a-kimbo, and only high enough not to touch our heads, you may wonder what sort of a carriage this was. In plain words, then, it would have made but a sorry figure in our parks: the appointments were by no means elegant, nor the horses showy. Nay, they were not horses at all, but two sturdy miners, one harnessed in front and the other to push behind.

The vehicle was a plank on four wheels, on which we sat astride, putting our feet on a similar plank below. One of the guides placed himself in front, with his face to the leader, and we were arranged behind him. When on the point of starting by this strange conveyance, the gate through which we had passed was shut violently behind us, when-horror of horrors!—we heard a rushing sound; the waves beat angrily against the sides; they dashed upwards to the arched roof, and were evidently streaming towards us. What was to be done? Escape there was none, except at the further end, three long quarters of a mile off, for to attempt to regain the gate would be only to meet the stream, and if we stopped still, and the waters should reach water! there was no water; it was but the sound of the air, disturbed by the sudden closing of the entrance, although the effect in that confined space was exactly what I have attempted to describe.

us

With confidence restored we start on our drive: the road perfectly straight, and smooth too, which last was a great comfort, for if we had been jolted from our seats we should, in all probability, have been crushed against the sides of the tunnel. There were no turnpikes to stop for, and no obstacles of any sort in our way; and the pace at which we travelled would have been no disgrace to a four-footed cob warranted to carry at a good round trot. The exit appeared at last, that is to say, not before we had gone some considerable distance, and then it looked like a speck or luminous point in the dark, no bigger than the morning star when it shines alone in the sky, but lengthening and broadening by degrees, till it grew into a wide opening through which our

carriage and its living load shot out into the open air, at the foot of the Dürrenberg. We were disposed to pity the men who had had the labour of dragging and pushing us through this long cavern, when we saw by their streaming faces, how great that labour must have been; but we found that they take a pride in the speed at which they run, and we left them in a state of high contentment at the praises with which we accompanied our thanks, and some pecuniary acknowledgment for their exertions and loss of time.

A lovely day was closing as we returned from our pleasant and instructive trip, and it seemed to us as if the sun had never set with so much glory as on that August day, when we had for a time voluntarily hid ourselves from his light in the mysterious gloom of the mine.

In that mine, for six hundred years past, have human beings toiled, and still it yields a never-failing store. Tradition says that it was not unknown to the Romans, and our guide showed us an iron instrument that had been found by some miners in their excavations, and which, to his mind, was certainly a relic of the age when this part of Europe was comprehended in the Roman province of Juvavia. It appeared to have been the head of some instrument for loosening the rock, but was much eaten into by the rust of time. Whether or not it be of Roman origin others must decide, though it seems by no means improbable that it is; and if it be so, what thoughts may it not suggest.

A people that could penetrate into the bowels of the earth, and by whose slaves was left under a superincumbent mass of mountain (perhaps in an hour of sudden flight at the rumoured approach of northern barbarians,) this simple relic of departed industry;-a nation that could burrow into God's storehouse and drag from its locked chambers the treasures that He willed should be opened out by man's ingenuity;-a nation that, without the helps of modern machinery, could drive intricate passages into the everlasting hills, and minister to the wants of life in a conquered land with salt drawn from the very heart of the earth :-must have previously established a firm footing on the soil above and around.

And when subsequent industry discovers in its day such slight memorials of by-gone labour, like as the fossil footprint points to the past existence of a monster mastodon, so would this iron axe-head testify to a gigantic empire, whose

heart beat yonder on the seven hills, while with one foot it touched the soil of Britain, and with the other trampled on the East.

One curious fact remains to be noticed before we take leave of the mines at Hallein, and it is this, that owing to their geographical position, the frontier line between two countries passes through them, so that in our rambles we had, by an underground path, crossed from the empire of Austria into the kingdom of Bavaria. But here, for a wonder, the ceremony of demanding passports was dispensed with.

I believe that a tax in kind, that is, a certain proportion of the produce of the mines, is paid to Bavaria by the government of Austria for permission to work that part of them which lies beyond their own territory.

Bavaria is itself very rich in salt mines, those of Reichenhall, about eighteen miles distant, being especially famous, and having the reputation of being worked with superior skill. The greatest part of the produce there is obtained from springs which are reached at about fifty feet below the surface of the earth; and as the water has probably flowed through strata of salt-rock, similar to that which we have described, it is found in a state already partially prepared by nature for the "pans."

The details of its further preparation, however procured, whether from the sea, or from mines like those at Hallein, or those in Bavaria or Poland, or at Nantwich in Cheshire, (which are considered as productive as any in the world,) are so similar that they do not require a separate notice. There are some variations in the mode of purifying, and some contrivances for saving labour and fuel, which differ in different parts, but they are too minute for us to enter into here. And I would only observe that as in the foreign mines, wood is the only fuel used, and that necessarily in large quantities, even forests are in course of time consumed, and the expense of boiling the brine on the spot in consequence greatly increased. In such cases, the wooden aqueducts are resorted to to convey it to a distance where there may still be a good supply, and these are seen, as we have already said, as common objects in the view, extending if necessary over not less than forty or fifty miles. The wealth of the country we have been glancing at is derived principally from such sources: the hills are seasoned with salt: the streams are impregnated with it—but not all of

them: it is not literally "water, water everywhere; nor any drop to drink." On the contrary, there is in general a good supply of fresh water, and the Austrian Tyrol is much visited by strangers, both on account of the beauty of its scenery, and the salubrity of the air. Ischl, not far off, is the favourite summer resort of the present imperial family, and among its other advantages affords salt-water bathing, which is, in the opinion of many, as conducive to health as the sea.

N.

ON ENGLISH NAMES OF PLACES.

IN endeavouring to ascertain the meaning of those words, monosyllables or otherwise, which occur most frequently in English names of places, we may first observe that very few traces remain of the original appellations either of the places, or people of Britain, beyond the confines of Wales and Cornwall. Of English counties, Kent, Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall, the Isles of Wight and Man (called by the Romans Vectis and Mona) still attest the sway of the old Belgae and Cymri. But the other counties, in themselves a vast majority, bear essentially Saxon names. Holland, or the Low or Hollow-land, usually called the Netherlands, has a counterpart in the fen-division of Lincolnshire, called Holland. Ostend, on the Belgian coast, is reflected, as it were, across the sea in the village of Ostend (East End), in Essex. Witsan Bay, on the French coast, has a counterpart and namesake in Whitsan (White-sand) Bay on the Cornwall coast, near Rame. In the days of the Heptarchy, Northumberland was the county north of the Humber, or Yorkshire; the name has now shrunk up to the most northern county of England. What is now Northumberland was once Bernicia. Middlesex was once one of the outlying divisions of the middle Saxons, or the Mercians, i.e. the people of the Mark, March, or Land.* Sussex was but the third part of the old kingdom of the South Saxons; Essex marks the chief locality of the East Saxons; while Norfolk and Suffolk formed the upper and lower division of what * So Denmark means the country, or land of the Danes; Markgraf, the officer of a district, or Margraviate; "The Marshes,' the English borders of ancient N. Wales, or Gwynneth.

T

was once called East Anglia, with its Northern and Southern folk, or people. The descendants of these East Anglians still hold a little apart from their neighbours, and the common people often draw a line of demarcation between themselves and those who come out of the "Shears," or Shires, the divisions, or sections, (from the verb "to shear,") under Alfred, of the rest of Angleland, or England, in 882. Wessex, the scene of so many fierce encounters between Saxons and British, and Saxons and Danes (witness Sarum, and Ashdown, and Southampton), has left no trace of itself in the shires that now compose it, unlike every other denomination of the bold marauders from the opposite shores.

The Saxons were, indeed, a very mixed race, like their future conquerors, the Normans, or "North Men," who, under Rollo, or Hrolf, wrested Normandy from the weak hands of Charles the Simple. Denmark, Sleswig, Holstein, the Anglians at the mouth of the Elbe, Friesland (the abode of the old Frisii), Holland, Belgium, and gradually the northern coast of France, all in turns or together, sent their quota to man the ships of the Vikings who coveted the fertile land of Britain. The Cymri have not forgotten this, and still call English and Englishmen Sassenach; and their descendants, the Bretons of France, are as uncompromising when they call England "Brô Saoz," the Land of the Saxon. The "Saxon" traveller in Wales often finds to his cost that the Welshman still conceals his knowledge of our language under the curt reply of "Dim Sassenaig," or "No English," quite as often as he proclaims his ignorance of our speech. In Brittany the peasant is as loath to speak French, although much French has crept into his ancient tongue (see De Courcy's "Le Breton,” p. 26). "Parfois les habitants de la ville s'épuisent en pénibles efforts pour entretenir avec lui (the peasant) une conversation en breton; il les laissera faire, et se gardera bien de les tirer d'embarras, en avouant tout simplement qu'il sait le français presqu'aussi bien qu'eux-mêmes." The Highlanders, although of a different race, being Gäel, or Gauls, still retain the same phrase of Sassenach, and practically repeal the union; and in Ireland the same custom has been much revived, particularly by the late "agitator," Daniel O'Connell. But so firmly rooted was the Saxon sway, although so gradually insinuated, that almost all traces of