14
WILDBAD. — CHAPT. I.
raspberries, strawberries, etc., is immense, and women and children gather them most rapidly in little boxes open at the end and tbe bottom cut half through like a wide comb. In tbis way tbey liave soon lilled a basket, witbout toucbing tbe fruit with their fingers. Tlieir barvest is eitber seut to tbe neigbbouring market-towns, or spiritual liquors distilled from it, wbich the natives consider to be sovereign remcdies ägainst all tbe diseases, flesli is heir to.
Minirrg also affords no mean source of employment and profits to the inbabitants of the Black Forest, many of whom a r e engaged in working the rieb veins of valuable ores witli which tbis district is blesscd. There is every rcason to believe that tbe mines of tbe Black Forest have becn worked even in tbe remotest ages. Besidcs many prin- ted records, still extant, various otber circumstances concur, to furnish conclusive evidcnce to tbis fact. Tbus the mortar used in tbe construction of tbe Badenweiler-castle, (built at so remote a period tliat no other record of it has been handed down to our time) is mixed up with pounded frag- ments of field- and heavy-spar. Ncar tbe mines of Haus Baden, on tbe hill of Blauenhalde, enormous masses of ores and gang-stones are heaped tpgether, on wbich no traces of having been blasted, are visible, wbich certainly would be tbe case if tbey bad been brought out from tbe mines in modern times. Many pits wbich still continue to be worked, equally make it evident by tbe aspect of their older parts, tliat tbey were worked before the invention of gunpowder. There exists even a legend of an old city in the Munsterthal whose sole inbabitants are said to have been miuers. The first records concerning tbe extent of mining in tbe Black Forest, are of the thirtcenth Century. From tbe fifteentli to tbe middle of the seventeenth Century many mines were worked liere. Several villages