Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 5.djvu/44

30 surrounded us; one side of the cavity was almost red-hot, covered with reddish stone burnt white; thick fumes arose from the crevices, and we felt the heat of the ground through our strong boot-soles. An event so accidental—for it is not known how this place became ignited—affords a great advantage for the manufacture of alum; since the alum-scales, of which the surface of the mountain consists, lie there perfectly roasted, and may be steeped in a short time and very well. The whole chasm has arisen by the calcined scales being gradually removed and used up. We clambered up out of this depth, and were on the top of the mountain. A pleasant beech-grove encircled the spot, which followed up to the chasm, and extended itself on both sides of it. Many trees were already dried up: some were withering near others, which, as yet quite fresh, felt no forebodings of that fierce heat which was approaching and threatening their roots also.

Upon this space different openings were steaming, others had already done smoking; and this fire had thus smouldered for ten years already through old broken-up pits and horizontal shafts, with which the mountain is undermined. It may, too, have penetrated to the clefts through new coal-beds: for, some hundred paces farther into the wood, they had contemplated following up manifest indications of an abundance of coal; but they had not excavated far before a strong smoke burst out against the labourers, and dispersed them. The opening was filled up again, yet we found the place still smoking as we went on our way past it to the residence of our hermit-like chemist. This is situated amid mountains and woods; the valleys there take very various and pleasing windings; the soil round about is black and of the coal kind, and strata of it frequently come in sight. A coal philosopher—philosophus ver ignem, as they said formerly—could scarcely have settled himself more suitably.