Life of Father Ignatius of St. Paul, Passionist (The Hon. & Rev. George Spencer).Pius a Sp. Sancto (Pius a Spiritu Sancto)
Religion
Life of Father Ignatius of St. Paul, Passionist (The Hon. & Rev. George Spencer).
Pius a Sp. Sancto (Pius a Spiritu Sancto)
Passionists; Spencer, George, 1799-1864
However, the King was so
gracious and good-humoured that it all went off capitally. It was an
interesting dinner for the faces that {84} we saw. Eugene
Beauharnais, Prince Schwartzenberg, Reichenbach, engineer, Maréehal
Wrede, and about 16 more, were there. We stayed till about 6, and
then came home.
"Tuesday, Aug. 22.--To-day we again followed the motions of the
Court. Devon came over with horses from Hallein, where he had
returned last night; and so we went about comfortably.
Schwartzenberg took us to a famous machine of Mr. Reichenbach's,
without the King. This machine is employed to raise the salt water,
which is brought from the mines here, and convey it over the
mountains to Reichenhall, about 3 leagues distant, where is a
manufactory for extracting the salt. The reason of this is, that
there is not enough wood for consumption here. It is a vast
forcing-pump, which is worked by fresh water from a height of 400
feet, and raises the salt water 1,200. This water is in the
proportion of 53 to 44 heavier than fresh water. I did not
understand the whole explanation, being in German, but I admired the
machine, which works in a room so quietly as actually not to be
perceptible from the noise, except a little splashing. After this we
came to a miserable dinner at the inn, which was too full to attend
to us. At 1½, about, we started again to a romantic lake, König See,
where another scene of this royal drama was to be enacted. The King
came, with his whole party, an hour after us, and we were invited by
Loewenstein into his royal boat, which was rowed by 11 men and one
pretty damsel. "We went all down the lake, with several other boats
full following, one of which had 4 small cannons, which they
constantly discharged for the echo. The thing we came though for
was, two artificial cascades from the top of the mountains, one in
the course of a small torrent, which had been stopped above and made
into a lake, full of large pieces of timber, which were precipitated
all at once with surprising effect. The other was a dry cascade,
down which two heaps of timber were discharged, like the launching
of a ship from an inclined plane, the smallest of which, as I could
judge from below, was twice the height of a man, and four times the
length at least. The finest part of this was the prodigious {85}
splashing at the bottom, which resembled, in appearance and sound, a
line of cannonading. By way of sport, this is the most superb
child-amusement one could conceive. We rowed back in the same boat,
and disembarked about sunset. We proceeded directly to a salt-mine,
without the King, where was to be an illumination. We all were
decked out in miners' habits, and embarked, in little carts drawn by
two men, down a shaft 1,800 feet long, lighted by candles all the
way, ourselves having one each, like white penitents. At the end of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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