Volume I Part 26 (1/2)
Secrecy was the foundation on which all mysteries rested, when publicly known they ceased to be mysteries; hence a discovery of them was not only punished with death by the Athenian law; but in other countries a disgrace attended the breach of a solemn oath. The priestess in the figure before us has her finger pointing to her lips as an emblem of silence. There is a figure of Harpocrates, who was of Aegyptian origin, the same as Orus, with the lotus on his head, and with his finger pointing to his lips not pressed upon them, in Bryant's Mythol. Vol. II.
p. 398, and another female figure standing on a lotus, as if just risen from the Nile, with her finger in the same att.i.tude, these seem to have been representations or emblems of male and female priests of the secret mysteries. As these sort of emblems were frequently changed by artists for their more elegant exhibition, it is possible the foliage over the head of this figure may bear some a.n.a.logy to the lotus above mentioned.
This figure of secrecy seems to be here placed, with great ingenuity, as a caution to the initiated, who might understand the meaning of the emblems round the vase, not to divulge it. And this circ.u.mstance seems to account for there being no written explanation extant, and no tradition concerning these beautiful figures handed down to us along with them.
Another explanation of this figure at the bottom of the vase would seem to confirm the idea that the ba.s.so relievos round its sides are representations of a part of the mysteries, I mean that it is the head of ATIS. Lucian says that Atis was a young man of Phrygia, of uncommon beauty, that he dedicated a temple in Syria to Rhea, or Cybele, and first taught her mysteries to the Lydians, Phrygians, and Samothracians, which mysteries he brought from India. He was afterwards made an eunuch by Rhea, and lived like a woman, and a.s.sumed a feminine habit, and in that garb went over the world teaching her ceremonies and mysteries.
Dict. par M. Danet, art. Atis. As this figure is covered with clothes, while those on the sides of the vase are naked, and has a Phrygian cap on the head, and as the form and features are so soft, that it is difficult to say whether it be a male or female figure, there is reason to conclude, 1. that it has reference to some particular person of some particular country; 2. that this person is Atis, the first great hierophant, or teacher of mysteries, to whom M. De la Chausse says the figure itself bears a resemblance. Museo. Capitol. Tom. IV. p. 402.
In the Museum Etrusc.u.m, Vol. I. plate 96, there is the head of Atis with feminine features, clothed with a Phrygian cap, and rising from very broad foliage, placed on a kind of term supported by the paw of a lion.
Goreus in his explanation of the figure says that it is placed on a lion's foot because that animal was sacred to Cybele, and that it rises from very broad leaves because after he became an eunuch he determined to dwell in the groves. Thus the foliage, as well as the cap and feminine features, confirm the idea of this figure at the bottom of the vase representing the head of Atis the first great hierophant, and that the figures on the sides of the vase are emblems from the antient mysteries.
I beg leave to add that it does not appear to have been uncommon amongst the antients to put allegorical figures on funeral vases. In the Pamphili palace at Rome there is an elaborate representation of Life and of Death, on an antient sarcophagus. In the first Prometheus is represented making man, and Minerva is placing a b.u.t.terfly, or the soul, upon his head. In the other compartment Love extinguishes his torch in the bosom of the dying figure, and is receiving the b.u.t.terfly, or Psyche, from him, with a great number of complicated emblematic figures grouped in very bad taste. Admir. Roman. Antiq.
NOTE XXIII.--COAL
_Whence sable Coal his ma.s.sy couch extends, And stars of gold the sparkling Pyrite blends._
CANTO II. l. 349.
To elucidate the formation of coal-beds I shall here describe a fountain of fossil tar, or petroleum, discovered lately near Colebrook Dale in Shrops.h.i.+re, the particulars of which were sent me by Dr. Robert Darwin of Shrewsbury.
About a mile and a half below the celebrated iron-bridge, constructed by the late Mr. DARBY near Colebrook Dale, on the east side of the river Severn, as the workmen in October 1786 were making a subterranean ca.n.a.l into the mountain, for the more easy acquisition and conveyance of the coals which lie under it, they found an oozing of liquid bitumen, or petroleum; and as they proceeded further cut through small cavities of different sizes from which the bitumen issued. From ten to fifteen barrels of this fossil tar, each barrel containing thirty-two gallons, were at first collected in a day, which has since however gradually diminished in quant.i.ty, so that at present the product is about seven barrels in fourteen days.
The mountain, into which this ca.n.a.l enters, consists of siliceous sand, in which however a few marine productions, apparently in their recent state, have been found, and are now in the possession of Mr. WILLIAM REYNOLDS of Ketly Bank. About three hundred yards from the entrance into the mountain, and about twenty-eight yards below the surface of it, the tar is found oozing from the sand-rock above into the top and sides of the ca.n.a.l.
Beneath the level of this ca.n.a.l a shaft has been sunk through a grey argillaceous substance, called in this country clunch, which is said to be a pretty certain indication of coal; beneath this lies a stratum of coal, about two or three inches thick, of an inferior kind, yielding little flame in burning, and leaving much ashes; below this is a rock of a harder texture; and beneath this are found coals of an excellent quality; for the purpose of procuring which with greater facility the ca.n.a.l, or horizontal aperture, is now making into the mountain. July, 1788.
Beneath these coals in some places is found salt water, in other parts of the adjacent country there are beds of iron-stone, which also contain some bitumen in a less fluid state, and which are about on a level with the new ca.n.a.l, into which the fossil tar oozes, as above described.
There are many interesting circ.u.mstances attending the situation and accompaniments of this fountain of fossil tar, tending to develop the manner of its production. 1. As the ca.n.a.l pa.s.sing into the mountain runs over the beds of coals, and under the reservoir of petroleum, it appears that a _natural distillation_ of this fossil in the bowels of the earth must have taken place at some early period of the world, similar to the artificial distillation of coal, which has many years been carried on in this place on a smaller scale above ground. When this reservoir of petroleum was cut into, the slowness of its exsudation into the ca.n.a.l was not only owing to its viscidity, but to the pressure of the atmosphere, or to the necessity there was that air should at the same time insinuate itself into the small cavities from which the petroleum descended. The existence of such a distillation at some antient time is confirmed by the thin stratum of coal beneath the ca.n.a.l, (which covers the hard rock,) having been deprived of its fossil oil, so as to burn without flame, and thus to have become a natural coak, or fossil charcoal, while the petroleum distilled from it is found in the cavities of the rock above it.
There are appearances in other places, which favour this idea of the natural distillation of petroleum, thus at Matlock in Derbys.h.i.+re a hard bitumen is found adhering to the spar in the clefts of the lime-rocks in the form of round drops about the size of peas; which could perhaps only be deposited there in that form by sublimation.
2. The second deduction, which offers itself, is, that these beds of coal have been _exposed to a considerable degree of heat_, since the petroleum above could not be separated, as far as we know, by any other means, and that the good quality of the coals beneath the hard rock was owing to the impermeability of this rock to the bituminous vapour, and to its pressure being too great to permit its being removed by the elasticity of that vapour. Thus from the degree of heat, the degree of pressure, and the permeability of the superinc.u.mbent strata, many of the phenomena attending coal-beds receive an easy explanation, which much accords with the ingenious theory of the earth by Dr. Hutton, Trans. of Edinb. Vol. I.
In some coal works the fusion of the strata of coal has been so slight, that there remains the appearance of ligneus fibres, and the impression of leaves, as at Bovey near Exeter, and even seeds of vegetables, of which I have had specimens from the collieries near Polesworth in Warwicks.h.i.+re. In some, where the heat was not very intense and the inc.u.mbent stratum not permeable to vapour, the fossil oil has only risen to the upper part of the coal-bed, and has rendered that much more inflammable than the lower parts of it, as in the collieries near Beaudesert, the seat of the EARL OF UXBRIDGE in Staffords.h.i.+re, where the upper stratum is a perfect cannel, or candle-coal, and the lower one of an inferior quality. Over the coal-beds near Sir H. HARPUR'S house in Derbys.h.i.+re a thin lamina of asphaltum is found in some places near the surface of the earth, which would seem to be from a distillation of petroleum from the coals below, the more fluid part of which had in process of time exhaled, or been consolidated by its absorption of air.
In other coal-works the upper part of the stratum is of a worse kind than the lower one, as at Alfreton and Denbigh in Derbys.h.i.+re, owing to the superc.u.mbent stratum having permitted the exhalation of a great part of the petroleum; whilst at Widdrington in Northumberland there is first a seam of coal about six inches thick of no value, which lies under about four fathom of clay, beneath this is a white freestone, then a hard stone, which the workmen there call a whin, then two fathoms of clay, then another white stone, and under that a vein of coals three feet nine inches thick, of a similar nature to the Newcastle coal. Phil.
Trans. Abridg. Vol. VI. plate II. p. 192. The similitude between the circ.u.mstances of this colliery, and of the coal beneath the fountain of tar above described, renders it highly probable that this upper thin seam of coal has suffered a similar distillation, and that the inflammable part of it had either been received into the clay above in the form of sulphur, which when burnt in the open air would produce alum; or had been dissipated for want of a receiver, where it could be condensed. The former opinion is perhaps in this case more probable as in some other coal-beds, of which I have procured accounts, the surface of the coal beneath clunch or clay is of an inferior quality, as at West Hallum in Nottinghams.h.i.+re. The clunch probably from hence acquires its inflammable part, which on calcination becomes vitriolic acid. I gathered pieces of clunch converted partially into alum at a colliery near Bilston, where the ground was still on fire a few years ago.
The heat, which has thus pervaded the beds of mora.s.s, seems to have been the effect of the fermentation of their vegetable materials; as new hay sometimes takes fire even in such very small ma.s.ses from the sugar it contains, and seems hence not to have been attended with any expulsion of lava, like the deeper craters of volcanos situated in beds of granite.
3. The marine sh.e.l.ls found in the loose sand-rock above this reservoir of petroleum, and the coal-beds beneath it, together with the existence of sea-salt beneath these coals, prove that these coal beds have been _at the bottom of the sea_, during some remote period of time, and were afterwards raised into their present situation by subterraneous expansions of vapour. This doctrine is further supported by the marks of violence, which some coal-beds received at the time they were raised out of the sea, as in the collieries at Mendip in Somersets.h.i.+re. In these there are seven strata of coals, equitant upon each other, with beds of clay and stone intervening; amongst which clay are found sh.e.l.ls and fern branches. In one part of this hill the strata are disjoined, and a quant.i.ty of heterogeneous substances fill up the chasm which disjoins them, on one side of this chasm the seven strata of coal are seen corresponding in respect to their reciprocal thickness and goodness with the seven strata on the other side of the cavity, except that they have been elevated several yards higher. Phil. Trans. No. 360. abridg. Vol.
V. p. 237.
The cracks in the coal-bed near Ticknall in Derbys.h.i.+re, and in the sand- stone rock over it, in both of which specimens of lead-ore and spar are found, confirm this opinion of their having been forcibly raised up by subterraneous fires. Over the colliery at Brown-hills near Lichfield, there is a stratum of gravel on the surface of the ground; which may be adduced as another proof to shew that those coals had some time been beneath the sea, or the bed of a river. Nevertheless, these arguments only apply to the collieries above mentioned, which are few compared with those which bear no marks of having been immersed in the sea.
On the other hand the production of coals from mora.s.ses, as described in note XX. is evinced from the vegetable matters frequently found in them, and in the strata over them; as fern-leaves in nodules of iron-ore, and from the bog-sh.e.l.ls or fresh water muscles sometimes found over them, of both which I have what I believe to be specimens; and is further proved from some parts of these beds being only in part transformed to coal; and the other part still retaining not only the form, but some of the properties of wood; specimens of which are not unfrequent in the cabinets of the curious, procured from Loch Neigh in Ireland, from Bovey near Exeter, and other places; and from a famous cavern called the Temple of the Devil, near the town of Altorf in Franconia, at the foot of a mountain covered with pine and savine, in which are found large coals resembling trees of ebony; which are so far mineralized as to be heavy and compact; and so to effloresce with pyrites in some parts as to crumble to pieces; yet from other parts white ashes are produced on calcination, from which _fixed alcali_ is procured; which evinces their vegetable origin. (Dict. Raisonne, art. Charbon.) To these may be added another argument from the oil which is distilled from coals, and which is a.n.a.logous to vegetable oil, and does not exist in any bodies truly mineral. Keir's Chemical Dictionary, art. Bitumen.