Note 19 — Chapter V · NORTH TIROL—UNTERINNTHAL. (LEFT INN-BANK.)

Of all the numerous excursions round Hall, the strangest and most interesting is that to Salzberg, the source of the salt, the crystallizing of which and despatching it all over Tirol, to Engadein and to Austria, forms the staple industry of Hall. It is a journey of about three hours, though not much over eight miles, but rugged and steep, and in some parts rather frightful, particularly in the returning descent, for the Salzberg lies 6,300 feet above the sea: but there is a road for an einspanner all the way; entrance is readily obtained, and the gratuities for guide, lighting up, and boat over the subterranean salt lake, exceedingly moderate. There are records extant which shew that there were salt-works in operation in the neighbourhood of Hall early in the eighth century, but these would appear to have been fed by a salt spring which flowed at the foot of the mountain. In the year 1275, however, Niklas von Rohrbach, who seems to be always styled der fromme Ritter (the pious knight), frequently when on his hunting expeditions in the Hallthal, observed how the cattle and wild game loved to lick certain cliffs of the valley; this led him to test the flavour, and finding it rich in salt, he followed up the track till he came to the Salzberg itself, where he prudently conjectured there was an endless supply to be obtained.19 Ever since this time the salt has been worked pretty much in the same way, namely, by hewing, later by blasting, vast chambers in the rock, which are then filled with water and closed up: at the end of some ten or twelve months, when the water is supposed to be thoroughly impregnated, it is run off through a series of conduits to Hall, where it is evaporated, a hundred pounds of brine yielding about a third the weight of salt. A considerable number of these chambers, an acre or two in extent, have been excavated in the course of time, and you are told that it would take more than a week to walk through all the passages connecting them. ‘Cars filled with rubbish pass you as you thread them,’ says an observant writer, ‘with frightful rapidity; you step aside into a niche, and the young miners seated in the front look like gnomes directing infernal chariots. The crystallizations in some of these chambers lighted up by the torches of a party of visitors have a magical effect, and recall the gilded fret-work of some Moorish palaces. There is a tradition that Hofer and Speckbacher, who never, before their illustrious campaigns, had wandered so far as these few miles from their respective homes, took advantage of the lull succeeding their first triumph at Berg Isel, to come over and visit the strange labyrinths of the Salzberg. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the effect which such a scene might produce on minds so imaginative, and at the same time so unsophisticated. It is not difficult to believe that they regarded such a journey like a visit to the abode of the departed great, or that in presence of the oppressive grandeurs of nature they should have matured their spirit for the defence of their country which was to confound the strategy of practised generals.