Browne, Edward: A Brief Account Of Some Travels In divers Parts of Europe, Viz. [Sp.1:] Hungaria, Servia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Thessaly, [Sp.2:] Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, and Friuli: Through a great part of Germany, And The Low-Countries ... ; With some Observations on the Gold, Silver ... in those Parts ; As also, The Description of many Antiquities, Habits, Fortifications and Remarkable Places (London: Tooke, 1685)

A Journey srom Komarss to the Mine-Toms in Hungary.

the bottom of each passage, it can no ways deviate, but keeps alwayes
in the middle ; and by this means a little Boy will run full speed with
three or four hundred pound weight of Ore or Earth before him,'
wherever you command him, without any lights through those dih
mal dark passages of the Mine : and it was very new to me to hear the
tattling they make in the Mine* and the alteration of the sound as
they are nearer or further from us; and to see them come wiph that
swiftness out of the Rocks, overturn their little Charriot, where they
are to leave their Ore, then turn again and enter those dark Caves with
such a force and swiftness.
Not much unlike this is another inflrument they have to bring the
Ore. from the mouth of the Mine, or from the Hills down to the
Buchworke, where they pound it and walh it; but inflead os a tongue
it hath eight wheels or four rowlers and four wheels, and the way is
made with Firr in such manner and at such a diflance that the row-
lers rowl upon the wood of the Firr-trees. And these rowlers and
wheels are so contrived, that these Chesss can never overturn nor go
out of the way* and a child draws them, and sometimes a dog serves
the turn. To one Buchworke alone, they carry every week three or
four hundred of these Chefls full, and each Chefl holds four hundred
pound weight.
There were two very bad flrong damps in this Mine when I was
there, and divers others that had not the like force to sussocate in so
(mall a time. One of these Damps was in a Schacht Puteus or Pit* and
the other in a Stall, or right-on pallage,• no Lamps would burn in either
of them, yet the Miners would venture into them for some short space
of time: and we let one man down into that Damp which was in the
Pit five or six times; but pulled him up again as soon as ever we saw
his Lamp go out; this place is most poysonous when the water is higR
the vapour then arising more stronglyyhe other Damp in the Cuniculus
they hope to remedy, by perssation, and making or digging another
paslage into it.
I was informed that there had been twenty eight men killed at one
time, by Damps in four Cuniculi, seven in each ; and in the sinking
of Leopold's Pit, they were much troubled with Damps, which they
remedied in this manner.
They fixed to the side of the Schacht or Pit a Tube from the top to
the bottom; and that not proving suflicient they forced down a broad
ssat board which covered or slopped the Pit, or couched very near
the sides of it on all sides, but where the Tube was: and so forced
out all the Air in the Pit through the Tube; which work they were
forced often to repeat. And now they having divers other passages
into it, the Air is good and suflicient, and I was drawn up through it
without the least trouble in breathing.
Alter mans Fore-stall, a Cuniculus five hundred fathoms long, Was
burned in the year 1642,. by the carelesness of a boy wiping the
snuff of a Lamp upon the wood; and fifty men (mothered in it •
they were all taken out except one, who was afterwards found to be
dissolved by the ssiarp waters of the Mine, nothing escaping either of
ssesh or bones, but only some of his cloths.
There is Vitriol in this Mine, white, red, blue and green ; and also
Vitriolat waters. There is a substance found, which flicks to the
Gold