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It represented a city surrounded by a high wall, above which could be seen the roofs and gables of many buildings, some of which were red farmhouses with turf roofs. Others were white manor houses with slate roofs. Others, again, showed massive copper-plated towers, after the manner of the Kistine Church at Falun.
However, it made an end of Linnæus at Upsala for the time. He sought a professorship at Lund, but another got it. Then he led an expedition of his former students into the Dalecarlia mountains and so he got to Falun, where Baron Reuterholm, one of Sweden's copper magnates, was seeking a guide for his two sons through the region where his mines were.
Then, after taking careful note of the location, they journeyed home. "Before parting, they all agreed that the minister should go to Falun and ask the mineralogist there what kind of ore this might be. He was to return as soon as possible, and until then they all swore by a binding oath that they would not reveal to any person the location of the ore."
"Last summer Father took us to Falun to visit the wonderful copper mines," added Gerda; "but I never want to go there again," and she shivered as she thought of the dark underground halls and chambers. "We saw a fire there, which was lighted hundreds of years ago and has never once been allowed to go out," said Birger. "The miners light their lamps and torches at the flame."
"The minister's journey to Falun took him two days. There he was compelled to wait a day for the return of the mineralogist. When he finally showed the samples of the ore, the man took them in his hand, looked at them, and then at the stranger. The minister told the story of how he had found these samples in the vicinity of his home, and asked if they might be lead. "'No, it is not lead.
From this same conductor Dessauer obtained the promise of a like commission, and he now offered me two hundred francs to provide him with a similar plot, and one congenial to his hypochondriacal temperament. To meet this wish I ransacked my brain for recollections of Hoffmann, and quickly decided to work up his Bergwerke von Falun.
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