|
After the fruit comes the shell, or the clothing, and what appertains thereto. For this, the provinces yield wool, flax, and hides. Bohemian wool, especially the long wool of the district of Pilsen, is the best for making good stuffs, Silesia comes next after Bohemia in quantity and quality, then Moravia. Austria and Hungary have enough, but of poor quality. Linen manufacture is truly at home, as it were, in Silesia, Upper Austria, and parts of Inner Austria, whence many neighboring lands and some further afield used to supply themselves, and still do; and they still have ample for the Hereditary Provinces. It is obvious that the stock raising of which I spoke and the abundant game preserves must necessarily produce a superfluity of hides of all kinds (except the expensive fine furs). There are even tame “kinglets” and beaver fur. After the shell comes the husk, viz., the housing, for which earth and clay, timber and stone are required. Of these there is no shortage, in respect either of quantity or quality. I need not dwell on it. There is even excellent marble and other valuable stone for the labor of quarrying and carting them. The Caplier Castle of Milnschau in Bohemia is built on a rock of pure jasper. Finally, all the other necessaries of human existence are there; all kinds of tools and furniture and ornaments, of which many are fashioned out of the stone, earths, gold, silver, wool, linen, leather, etc., mentioned above. Others are made of the lesser metals, of which, with the exception of one not found to my knowledge elsewhere in the known world except China, not one is lacking in our Provinces. For copper and iron are present in nearly all of them. Bohemia has long supplied Schlackenwald tin, without which even English tin cannot be properly worked. And now Geyersberg is producing such quantities of it that it looks as though soon half the world could be supplied with it; it is not a hairsbreadth worse than the English. There is lead in Carinthia, near Villach, some in bohemia, sufficient in Hungary, and allegedly in Schlamming, near Admont in Upper Styria, an ore, not yet exploited, contains 60 lb. of lead to the hundredweight. Idria produces quicksilver so lavishly that if it were fully exploited and properly marketed it could supply the whole world, hence it is regarded as a jewel of the Monarchy. Under this heading come also minerals, the most important of which – sulphur, coppers and antimony – Hungary alone, not to speak of the others, produces enough to supply the world. All the others again, are present in abundance and superabundance, one here, the other there; Hungary has a practical monopoly of mountain green. In Tirol there is cadmium, out of which some brass is prepared. Where, then, a place possesses all metals and minerals, the materials for metallic coloring cannot be far away, if the trouble to look for them is taken. Of the salts, there is rock salt or salt pans enough everywhere, an abundance in Hungary; Bohemia seems like the very father of alum, since there is an incredible mountain of this near the Meissen frontier, if only a market for it could be found. Of timber, the principal constituent of all sorts of implements needed for human existence, there is in places so much, such regrettable superfluity, that he would be doing a great service who showed a way to be rid of it at a profit. There is plenty of it also for ships’ masts and hulls, not to mention other purposes. Precious stones, too, come under this heading as the chief adornments. Of these, Hungary gives us opals and jade, Bohemia the finest garnets, though small, and also lapis lazuli, diamonds, amethysts, sapphires, topazes, cornelians, aquamarine, agate, jasper, all kinds of colors, pearls – although of somewhat inferior quality – and the agreeable serpentine.
|
print version
return to list
previous document