At the bottom of the last ladder the stranger is received in a small cavern, walled up, perfectly close on all sides. To encrease the terror of the scene, it is usual for the guide to pretend the utmost terror on the apprehension of his lamp going out, declaring they must perish in the mazes of the mine if it did. When arrived in this dreary chamber, he puts out his light as if by accident, and after much cant, catches the stranger by the hand, and drags him through a narrow creek into the body of the mine, when there bursts at once upon his view, a world, the lustre of which is scarce to be imagined. It is a spacious plain, containing a whole people, a kind of subterraneous republic, with houses, carriages, roads, &c. This is wholly scooped out of one vast bed of salt, which is all a hard rock, as bright and glittering as crystal; and the whole space before him is formed of lofty arched vaults, supported by columns of salt, and roofed and floored with the same, so that the columns, and indeed the whole fabric, seem composed of the purest crystal. They have many public lights in this place continually burning for the general use, and the blaze of those reflected from every part of the mine, gives a more glittering prospect than any thing above ground can possibly exhibit. Were this the whole beauty of the spot, it were sufficient to attract our wonder; but this is but a small part. The salt (though generally clear and bright as crystal) is in some parts tinged with all the colours of precious stones, as blue, yellow, purple, and green; there are numerous columns wholly composed of these kinds, and they look like masses of rubies, emeralds, amethysts, and sapphires, darting a radiance which the eye can hardly bear, and which has given many people occasion to compare it to the supposed magnificence of heaven. Besides the variegated forms of these vaults, tables, arches, and columns, which are formed as they dig out the salt for the purpose of keeping up the roof, there is a vast variety of others, grotesque and finely figured, the work of nature, and these are generally of the purest and brightest salt. The roofs of the arches are in many places full of salt, hanging pendant from the top in the form of icicles, and having all the hues and colours of the rainbow; the walks are covered with various congelations of the same kind, and the very floors, when not too much trodden and battered, are covered with globules of the same sort of beautiful materials. In various parts of this spacious plain stand the huts of the miners and families, some standing single, and others in clusters like villages. They have very little communication with the world above ground, and many hundreds of people are born, and live all their lives here.