Cracow.—Casimir the Great.—Kosciusko.—Tombs of the Polish Kings.—A Polish Heroine.—Last Words of a King.—A Hero in Decay.—The Salt-mines of Cracow.—The Descent.—The Mines.—Underground Meditations.—The Farewell. Cracow is an old, curious, and interesting city, situated in a valley on the banks of the Vistula; and approaching it as I did, toward the sunset of a summer's day, the old churches and towers, the lofty castles and the large houses spread out on the immense plains, gave it an appearance of actual splendour. This faded away as I entered, but still the city inspired a feeling of respect, for it bore the impress of better days. It contains numerous churches, some of them very large, and remarkable But even in its fallen state Cracow is dear to the Pole's heart, for it was the capital of his country when Poland ranked high among nations, and down to him who last sat upon her throne, was the place of coronation and of burial for her kings. It is the residence of many of the old Polish nobility, who, with reduced fortunes, prefer this little foothold in their country, where liberty nominally lingers, to exile in foreign lands. It now contains a population of about thirty thousand, including Jews. Occasionally the seigneur is still seen, in his short cassock of blue cloth, with a red sash and a white square-topped cap; a costume admirably adapted to the tall and noble figure of the proud Pole, and the costume of the peasant of Cracow is still a striking feature in her streets. The Boulevards command an extensive view of all the surrounding country. "All the sites of my country," says a national poet, "are dear to me; but, above all, I love the environs of Cracow; there at every step I meet the recollections of our ancient glory and our once imposing grandeur." On the opposite bank of the river is a large tumulus of earth, marking the grave of Cracus, the founder of the city. A little higher up is another mound, reverenced as the sepulchre of his daughter Wenda, who was so enamoured of war that she promised to give her hand only to the lover who should conquer her in battle. Beyond this is the field of Zechino, where the brave Kosciusko, after his return from America, with a band of peasants, again struck the first blow of revolution, and, by a victory over the Russians, roused all Poland to arms. About a mile from Cracow are the ruins of the palace of Lobzow, built by Casimir the Great, for a long time the favourite royal residence, and identified with a crowd of national recollections; and, until lately, a large mound of earth in the garden was reverenced as the grave of Esther, the beautiful Jewess, the idol of "Passer-by, if you are a stranger, tremble in thinking of human destruction; but if you are a Pole, shed bitter tears; heroes have inhabited this palace.... Who can equal them?... "Casimir erected this palace: centuries have hailed him with the name of the great.... "Near his Esther, in the delightful groves of Lobzow, he thought himself happy in ceasing to be a king to become a lover. "But fate is unpitiable for kings as for us, and even beauty is subject to the common law. Esther died, and Casimir erected a tomb in the place she had loved. "Oh! if you are sensible to the grief caused by love, drop a tear at this tomb and adorn it with a crown. If Casimir was tied to humanity by some weaknesses, they are the appendage of heroes! In presence of this chateau, in finding again noble remains, sing the glory of Casimir the Great." I was not a sentimental traveller, nor sensible to the grief that is caused by love, and I could neither drop a tear at the tomb of Esther nor sing the glory of Casimir the Great; but my heart beat high as I turned to another monument in the environs of Cracow; an immense mound of earth, standing on an eminence visible from every quarter, towering almost into a mountain, and sacred to the memory of Kosciusko! I saw it from the palace of the kings and from the ramparts The morning was cold and dreary, the sky was overcast I returned to the city and entered the Cathedral Church. It stands by the side of the old palace, on the summit of the rock of Wauvel, in the centre of and commanding the city, enclosed with walls and towers, and allied in its history with the most memorable annals of Poland; the witness of the ancient glory of her kings, and their sepulchre. The rain was pattering against the windows of the old church as I strolled through the silent cloisters and among the tombs of the kings. A verger in a large cocked hat, and a group of peasants, moved, like myself, with noiseless steps, as if afraid to disturb the repose of the royal dead. Many of the kings of Poland fill but a corner of the page of history. Some of their names I had forgotten, or, perhaps, never knew until I saw them inscribed on their tombs; but every monument covered a head that had worn a crown, and some whose bones were mouldering under my feet will live till the last records of heroism perish. The oldest monument is that of Wladislaus le Bref, built of stone, without any inscription, but adorned with figures in bas-relief, which are very much injured. He died in thirteen hundred and thirty-three, and chose I approached with a feeling of veneration the tomb of Casimir the Great. It is of red marble; four columns support a canopy, and the figure of the king, with a crown on his head, rests on a coffin of stone. An iron railing encloses the monument. It is nearly five hundred years since the palatins and nobles of Poland, with all the insignia of barbaric magnificence, laid him in the place where his ashes now repose. The historian writes, "Poland is indebted to Casimir for the greatest part of her churches, palaces, fortresses, and towns," adding that "he found Poland of wood and left her of marble." He patronized letters, and founded the University of Cracow; promoted industry and encouraged trade; digested the unwritten laws and usages into a regular code; established courts of justice; repressed the tyranny of the nobles, and died with the honourable title of King of the Peasants; and I did not forget, while standing over his grave, that beneath me slept the spirit that loved the groves of Lobzow and the heart that beat for Esther the Jewess. The tomb of Sigismund I. is of red marble, with a By his side lies the body of his son Sigismund II., the last of the Jagellons, at whose death began the cabals and convulsions of an elective monarchy, by which Poland lost her influence among foreign powers. His memory is rendered interesting by his romantic love for Barbe Radzewill. She appeared at his father's court, the daughter of a private citizen, celebrated in Polish history and romance as uniting to all a woman's beauty a mingled force and tenderness, energy and goodness. The prince had outlived all the ardour of youth; disappointed and listless amid pleasures, his energy of mind destroyed by his excesses, inconstant in his love, and at the summit of human prosperity, living without a wish or a hope; but he saw Barbe, and his heart beat anew with At the foot of his coffin is that of his sister and successor, Anne; and in a separate chapel is the tomb of Stephen Battory, one of the greatest of the kings of Poland, raised to the throne by his marriage with Anne. I became more and more interested in this asylum of royal dead. I read there almost the entire history of the Polish republic, and again I felt that it was but a step from the throne to the grave, for near me was the great chair in which the kings of Poland were crowned. I paused before the tomb of John Casimir; and there was something strangely interesting in the juxtaposition of these royal dead. John Casimir lies by the side of the brother whom he endeavoured to supplant in his election to the throne. His reign was a continued succession "People of Poland, "It is now two hundred and eighty years that you have been governed by my family. The reign of my ancestors is past, and mine is going to expire. Fatigued by the labours of war, the cares of the cabinet, and the weight of age; oppressed with the burdens and vicissitudes of a reign of more than twenty-one years, I, your king and father, return into your hands what the world esteems above all things, a crown, and choose for my throne six feet of earth, where I shall sleep with my fathers. When you show my tomb to your children, tell them that I was the foremost in battle and the last in retreat; that I renounced regal grandeur for the good of my country, and restored my sceptre to those who gave it me." By his side, and under a monument of black marble, lies the body of his successor, Michel Wisniowecki, an obscure and unambitious citizen, who was literally dragged to the throne, and wept when the crown was placed upon his head, and of whom Casimir remarked, when informed of his late subjects' choice, "What, have they put the crown on the head of that poor fellow?" And again I was almost startled by the strange and unnatural mingling of human ashes. By the side "One of the few, the immortal names, That were not born to die." On the lower floor of the church, by the side of Poniatowski, the Polish Bayard, is the tomb of one nobler in my eyes than all the kings of Poland or of the world. It is of red marble, ornamented with the cap and plume of the peasant of Cracow, and bears the simple inscription "T. Kosciusko." All over the church I had read elaborate panegyrics upon the tenants of the royal sepulchres, and I was struck with this simple inscription, and remembered that the white marble column reared amid the magnificent scenery of the Hudson, which I had often gazed at from the deck of a steamboat, and at whose base I had often stood, bore also in majestic simplicity the name of "Kosciusko." It was late in the afternoon, and the group of peasants, two Poles from the interior, and a party of the citizens of Cracow, among whom were several ladies, joined me at the tomb. We could not speak each other's language; we were born and lived thousands of miles apart, and we were strangers in our thoughts and feelings, in all our hopes and prospects, but we had a bond of sympathy at the grave of Kosciusko. One of the ladies spoke French, and I told them that, in my far distant country, the name of their nation's idol was hallowed; that schoolboys had erected a monument to his memory. They knew that he had fought by the side of Washington, but they did not know that the recollection of his services was still so dearly cherished in America; and we all agreed that it was the proudest tribute that could be paid to It was nearly dark when I returned to my hotel. In the restaurant, at a small table directly opposite me, sat the celebrated Chlopicki, to whom, on the breaking out of the last revolution, Poland turned as to another Kosciusko, and who, until he faltered during the trying scenes of that revolution, would have been deemed worthy to lie by Kosciusko's side. Born of a noble family, a soldier from his birth, he served in the memorable campaigns of the great patriot, distinguished himself in the Polish legions in Italy under Dombrowski, and, as colonel of a regiment of the army of the Vistula, behaved gloriously in Prussia. In Spain he fought at Saragossa and Sagunta, and was called by Suchet le brave des braves; as general of brigade in the army of Russia, he was wounded at Valentina, near Smolensk, and was general of a division in eighteen hundred and fourteen, when Poland fell under the dominion of the autocrat. The Grand-duke Constantine censured him on parade, saying that his division was not in order; and Chlopicki, with the proud boast, "I did not gain my rank on the parade-ground, nor did I win my decorations there," asked his discharge the next day, and could never after be induced to return to the service. The day after the revolutionary blow was struck, all Poland turned to Chlopicki as the only man capable of standing at the head of the nation. The command of the army, with absolute powers, was conferred upon him by acclamation, and one of the patriot leaders concluded his address to him with these words: "Brother, take the sword of your ancestors and predecessors, Czarnecki, At the battle of Grokow he fought nominally as a private soldier, though Skryznecki and Radziwill being both deficient in military experience, the whole army looked to him for guidance. Once, when the battle was setting strong against the Poles, in a moment of desperation he put himself at the head of some disposable battalions, and turning away from an aiddecamp who came to him for orders, said, "Go and ask Radziwill; for me, I seek only death." Grievously wounded, his wounds were dressed in presence of the enemy; but at two o'clock he was borne off the field, the hopes of the soldiers died, and the army remained without any actual head. Throughout the revolution his conduct was cold, indifferent, and inexplicable; private letters from the Emperor of Russia were talked of, and even treason was whispered in connexion with his name. The Poles The next day I visited the celebrated salt-mines at Wielitska. They lie about, twelve miles from Cracow, in the province of Galicia, a part of the kingdom of Poland, which, on the unrighteous partition of that country, fell to the share of Austria. Although at so short a distance, it was necessary to go through all the passport formalities requisite on a departure for a foreign country. I took a fiacre and rode to the different bureaux of the city police, and, having procured the permission of the municipal authorities to leave the little territory of Cracow, rode next to the Austrian consul, who thereupon, and in consideration of one dollar to him in hand paid, was graciously pleased to permit me to Leaving the Vistula, I entered a pretty, undulating, and well-cultivated country, and saw at a distance a high dark line, marking the range of the Carpathian mountains. It was a long time since I had seen anything that looked like a mountain. From the Black Sea the whole of my journey had been over an immense plain, and I hailed the wild range of the Carpathian as I would the spire of a church, as an evidence of the approach to regions of civilization. In an hour and a half I arrived at the town of Wielitska, containing about three thousand inhabitants, and standing, as it were, on the roof of the immense subterraneous excavations. The houses are built of wood, and the first thing that struck me was the almost entire absence of men in the streets, the whole male population being employed in the mines, and then at work below. I rode to the office of the superintendent, and presented my letter, and was received with great civility of manner but his Polish was perfectly unintelligible. A smutty-faced operative, just out of the mines, accosted me in Latin, and I exchanged a few shots with him, but hauled off on the appearance of a man whom the superintendent When my feet left the brink of the shaft I felt, for a moment, as if suspended over the portal of a bottomless pit; and as my head descended below the surface, the rope, winding and tapering to a thread, seemed letting me down to the realms of Pluto. But in a few moments we touched bottom. From within a short distance of the surface, the shaft is cut through a solid rock of salt, and from the bottom passages almost innumerable are cut in every direction through the same bed. We were furnished with guides, who went before us bearing torches, and I followed through the whole labyrinth of passages, forming the largest excavations in Europe, peopled with upward of two thousand souls, and giving a complete idea of a subterraneous world. These mines are known to have been worked upward of six hundred years, being mentioned in the Polish annals as early as twelve hundred and thirty-seven, under Boleslaus the Chaste, and then not as a new discovery, but how much earlier they had existed cannot now be Salt-mines of Wielitska. Salt-mines of Wielitska. There are four different stories or ranges of apartments; the whole length of the excavations is more than six thousand feet, or three quarters of an hour's walk, and the greatest breadth more than two thousand feet; and there are so many turnings and windings that my guide told me, though I hardly think it possible, that the whole length of all the passages cut through this bed of salt amounts to more than three hundred miles. Many of the chambers are of immense size. Some are supported by timber, others by vast pillars of salt; several are without any support in the middle, and of vast dimensions, perhaps eighty feet high, and so long and broad as almost to appear a boundless subterraneous cavern. In one of the largest is a lake covering nearly the whole area. When the King of Saxony visited this From this we entered an immense cavern, in which several hundred men were working with pickaxes and hatchets, cutting out large blocks of salt, and trimming them to suit the size of barrels. With their black faces begrimed with dust and smoke, they looked by the light of the scattered torches like the journeymen of Beelzebub, the prince of darkness, preparing for some great blow-up, or like the spirits of the damned condemned to toil without end. My guide called up a party, who disengaged with their pickaxes a large block of salt from its native bed, and in a few minutes cut and trimmed it to fit the barrels in which they are packed. All doubts as to their being creatures of our upper world were removed by the eagerness with which they accepted the money I gave them; and it will be satisfactory to the advocates of that currency to know that paper money passes readily in these lower regions. There are more than a thousand chambers or halls, most of which have been abandoned and shut up. In Following my guide through all the different passages and chambers, and constantly meeting miners and seeing squads of men at work, I descended by regular stairs cut in the salt, but in some places worn away and replaced by wood or stone, to the lowest gallery, which is nearly a thousand feet below the surface of the earth. I was then a rather veteran traveller, but up to this time it had been my business to move quietly on the surface of the earth, or, when infected with the soaring spirit of other travellers, to climb to the top of some lofty tower or loftier cathedral; and I had fulfilled one of the duties of a visiter to the eternal city by perching myself within the great ball of St. Peter's; but here I was far deeper under the earth than I had ever been above it; and at the greatest depth from which the human voice ever rose, I sat down on a lump of salt and soliloquized, "Through what varieties of untried being, Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!" It was late in the afternoon when I was hoisted up the shaft. These mines do not need the embellishment of fiction. They are, indeed, a wonderful spectacle, and I am satisfied that no traveller ever visited them without recurring to it as a day of extraordinary interest. I wrote my name in the book of visiters, where I saw those of two American friends who had preceded me about a month, mounted my barouche, and about an hour after dark reached the bank of the Vistula. My passport was again examined by a soldier and my carriage searched by a custom-house officer; I crossed the bridge, dined with my worthy host of the Hotel de la Rose Blanche, and, while listening to a touching story of the Polish revolution, fell asleep in my chair. And here, on the banks of the Vistula, I take my leave of the reader. I have carried him over seas and rivers, mountains and plains, through royal palaces and peasants' huts, and in return for his kindness in accompanying me to the end, I promise that I will not again burden him with my Incidents of Travel. THE END. 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List of Corrections:p. 13: "Voznezeuski" was changed to "Vosnezeuski." p. 21: "the last time in the calÈche" was changed to "the last time in the calÊche." p. 71: "merchandize" was changed to "merchandise" as elsewhere in the book. p. 129: "sailed down the Dneiper from Kief" was changed to "sailed down the Dnieper from Kief." p. 137: "of a lilach colour" was changed to "of a lilac colour." p. 202: "Diebisch directed the strength" was changed to "Diebitsch directed the strength." Errata:The summary in the table of contents is not always consistent with the summary at the beginning of each chapter. The original has been retained. |