Consolations in Travel; or, the Last Days of a PhilosopherDavy, Humphry, Sir
Philosophy
Consolations in Travel; or, the Last Days of a Philosopher
Davy, Humphry, Sir
Chemists -- Great Britain -- Biography; Davy, Humphry, Sir, 1778-1829
future destiny and utility of my life. In the middle of August we
pursued our plans of travel. We first visited those romantic lakes,
Hallsstadt, Aussee, and Toplitz See, which collect the melted snows of
the higher mountains of Styria to supply the unfailing sources of the
Traun. We visited that elevated region of the Tyrol which forms the
crest of the Pusterthal, and where the same chains of glaciers send down
streams to the Drave and the Adige, to the Black Sea and to the Adriatic.
We remained for many days in those two magnificent valleys which afford
the sources of the Save, where that glorious and abundant river rises, as
it were, in the very bosom of beauty, leaping from its subterraneous
reservoirs in the snowy mountains of Terglou and Manhardt in thundering
cataracts amongst cliffs and woods into the pure and deep cerulean lakes
of Wochain and Wurzen, and pursuing its course amidst pastoral meadows so
ornamented with plants and trees as to look the garden of Nature. The
subsoil or strata of this part of Illyria are entirely calcareous and
full of subterranean caverns, so that in every declivity large funnel-
shaped cavities, like the craters of volcanoes, may be seen, in which the
waters that fall from the atmosphere are lost: and almost every lake or
rives has a subterraneous source, and often a subterraneous exit. The
Laibach river rises twice from the limestone rock, and is twice again
swallowed up by the earth before it makes its final appearance and is
lost in the Save. The Zirknitz See or Lake is a mass of water entirely
filled and emptied by subterraneous sources, and its natural history,
though singular, has in it nothing of either prodigy, mystery, or wonder.
The Grotto of the Maddalena at Adelsberg occupied more of our attention
than the Zirknitz See. I shall give the conversation that took place in
that extraordinary cavern entire, as well as I can remember it, in the
words used by my companions.
_Eub_.--We must be many hundred feet below the surface, yet the
temperature of this cavern is fresh and agreeable.
_The Unknown_.--This cavern has the mean temperature of the atmosphere,
which is the case with all subterraneous cavities removed from the
influence of the solar light and heat; and, in so hot a day in August as
this, I know no more agreeable or salutary manner of taking a cold bath
than in descending to a part of the atmosphere out of the influence of
those causes which occasion its elevated temperature.
_Eub_.--Have you, sir, been in this country before?
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