Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837 Part 2

At length, about eight o'clock, though the rain had not entirely ceased, the heavens looked so bright that we expressed an earnest desire to push forward. As no mercenary motives had operated to produce the previous opposition of our hosts, so now such opposition was at once withdrawn; and the landlord, slinging his gun and pouch over his shoulder, declared himself at our command. We took leave of the kind landlady, not without tears on her side, and quitted Gabel, in all probability, for ever.

We had been correctly warned as to the probable duration of the storm.

The rain, which fell in occasional showers when we first set out, soon ceased entirely, and we had once more a clear and cloudless sky, with a nice cool breeze just sufficiently powerful to refresh without incommoding us. Our walk, likewise, was very interesting; for, independently of the extreme beauty of the scene,--hills and dales, forests and cultivated fields, deep glens and swelling table-lands,--we pa.s.sed over ground which had witnessed some sharp fighting during the movements of the French army upon Dresden. The Allies, it appears, manoeuvred well in this quarter; for, by showing numerous skeletons of corps, they led Napoleon to imagine that a large army of Austrians, Russians, and Prussians was here; and, while he watched them carefully, they had well-nigh cut him off from his line of retreat. During these demonstrations on both sides, foraging parties had been sent out from Gabel, to sweep the neighbouring villages. These our guide had seen, and one of them he followed so as to become eye-witness to an affair which it had near a hamlet which we pa.s.sed. He described the scattering fire of the jagers, and the occasional dashes of the hussars, with great animation, though, according to his showing, this, like other rencounters of the sort, cost more powder than lives.

Having accompanied us at least two German miles,--that is, full ten miles according to our English mode of computing distances,--the landlord of the Hernhause stopped short, and prepared to take his leave. We shook hands warmly, and I thought I heard his voice quiver when, in return for a cast of flies, he thanked me. Nor must I permit it to be believed, that the regrets were all on his side. I do not know when my feelings have been more engaged among strangers, than by the unaffected kindness of the people of Gabel,--a kindness on which we had no right to calculate, however much we might be justified in looking for civility in return for our money.

Once more, then, the world was before us, and seldom has it shone out beneath the gaze of youth and inexperience more winningly than it did under the influence of that delicious day. The rain of the preceding night, and of the early part of the morning, had given to herb and tree a fresher and a fairer green. The fallows wore no longer a parched-up and dust-like hue, and the rivulets, swollen but not polluted, retained their lucid character as they rolled on their way. From brake and bush, from grove and hedge-row, thousands of unseen choristers filled the air with melody, and the very oxen and horses, as they dragged their ploughs, or toiled onwards with their wagons, seemed to acknowledge the blessed influence which other creatures felt. We sat beneath the shade of a small plantation to enjoy the scene, and then, with spirits unconsciously elevated, and hearts not, I trust, insensible to the glories of nature, and the goodness of nature's G.o.d, resumed our pilgrimage.

Our route lay, throughout the whole of this day's progress, through green fields, and over narrow footpaths. Not so much as once were we driven to the necessity of following the high road; but taking our observations carefully, and bearing with wonderful exactness from point to point, we had already arrived within an hour's walk of Liebenau, before we were aware. While compa.s.sing the s.p.a.ce that intervened between the village where our guide quitted us and this, which had been marked down as our resting-place for the night, we pa.s.sed many striking and beautiful landscapes, such as I would willingly pause to describe, were human language capable of describing them faithfully. Everywhere around us, bold conical hills stood up, not a few of which bore upon their summits the ruins of old castles, while all were more or less clothed throughout with n.o.ble forests. For the portion of Bohemia which we were now crossing, may with perfect truth be represented as a succession of glorious valleys, overshadowed by not less glorious mountains. The straths are all of them fertile to an extraordinary degree, and as I have already stated, both they and the hill-sides abound with inhabitants. Yet is the country a mountain district, in every sense of the word, though the very mountains either are by nature, or have by industry been rendered, uncommonly fertile.

The great defect in Bohemian scenery, is the absence of water. There is scarcely a lake in the whole kingdom, and, with the exception of two or three, such as the Elbe, the Iser, the Bober, &c., the rivers hardly deserve to take rank with the larger cla.s.s of our mountain streams.

Such a defect is sorely felt by him who, looking down from the brow of a lofty hill over a wide plain, beholds perfection in every particular, except that there is no water there; and when from the narrower ravines you miss the lochs and tarns, which give to c.u.mberland and the Highlands of Scotland their peculiar character, your disappointment scarcely falls short of mortification. Perhaps, indeed, a double motive may have operated with us to produce this feeling. Our eyes pined, in the first place, for the object on which, in such situations, they had been accustomed at home to repose; and secondly, our fis.h.i.+ng-rods felt like useless burdens in our hands. But it was not destined to be so for ever, as I shall have occasion, in the course of my narrative, to show.

We had walked well and stoutly,--the sort of half-rest which we enjoyed the day before giving fresh vigour to our limbs,--so that between two and three o'clock we ventured to calculate that Liebenau could not be far distant. Hunger and thirst were, however, beginning to be rather inconveniently felt; and as our calculations might after all be erroneous, we judged it prudent to seek, in a little ale-house by the way-side, such refreshment as could be procured. Our hotel was of the very humblest description; namely, the beer-house of a small hamlet, and could furnish only brown bread, cheese, b.u.t.ter, and beer. These, in the existing state of our appet.i.tes, went down famously; and a pipe of good tobacco to wind up withal, was not out of place. Neither was even this unpretending house of call dest.i.tute to us of subjects of interest. We found when we entered the tap-room two young men asleep on the benches, and a couple of large packs lying beside them. They awoke shortly afterwards, and proved to be, as we had expected, journeymen mechanics. For in Germany a custom universally prevails, that young men, after serving their apprentices.h.i.+p to the trade which they intend to practise, go forth upon their travels, and dispose of their wares, not only in remote towns and villages of their native state, but in foreign lands. Some of these journeymen travel from Saxony, for example, as far as Hamburg and Copenhagen. Several make their way into France; and I have even heard of them penetrating both the wilds of Russia, and the cla.s.sical and fair fields of Italy. The consequence is, that they return home with minds very much enlarged, and an acquaintance, more or less accurate, not only with the systems of commerce, but with the languages of foreign countries, and that a stranger is surprised on entering a shop in Dresden or Zittau, to find that French, and perhaps Italian and English, are understood by the tradesman who keeps it.

The young men whom we found in occupation of the tap-room were by trade cutlers. Natives of some obscure town in Prussian Silesia, of which I have forgotten the name, they were wandering about through Bohemia with the intention by-and-by of proceeding into Saxony, and so round by Berlin and Potsdam to their homes. Their knapsacks, which they hastened according to established usage to unbuckle, contained a plentiful supply of knives, forks, scissors, and razors; but the poor fellows were not successful in driving a bargain, for their charges were exorbitantly high, and their goods of an indifferent quality. Even the host himself bid but one-half their demand, and neither he nor we could bring the merchants to our terms.

While we were haggling about an eighteen-penny clasp knife, the door of the tap-room opened, and there entered an old man, clothed in rags, with a wallet at his back and a long piked stick in his hand; who, uncovering his head, knelt down upon the floor, and began to pray and cross himself with surprising volubility. My young companion gave him a piece of money, which checked his devotions only for a moment; for he merely looked at it, nodded his head again, and resumed his muttering with all possible eagerness. But at the termination of, perhaps, five minutes, his prayers seemed to have been told out,--for he rose and with a loud voice p.r.o.nounced a benediction on the house and all that were in it. This done, he turned about, and walked away.

The whole affair was to us so novel in its character, that the questions which we put to the landlord were put eagerly, but our eagerness proved to be uncalled for. "Story! G.o.d bless you! I have none to tell, Sir." What we mistook for a striking incident, proved to be an everyday occurrence in Bohemia, and our imaginary palmer or devotee but a common beggar. And now, having touched on the subject, we proceeded to sound the depth of our host's information on the subject of gypsies.

Where did they horde? how were we most likely to fall in with one of their camps, and what sort of treatment might we expect to receive at their hands? It was with some difficulty that we could make the honest man comprehend the object which we had in view; and when he did catch our meaning, his reply was brief and pithy. "The people you speak of we call Torpindas. They are an idle worthless set of vagabonds. They have no camps in Bohemia of which I ever heard,--neither is Bohemia their home. They come out of Hungary, and beg their way far and near in the summer months; going about in pairs or by threes, and sleeping at nights under sheds, or on the floors of such tap-rooms as are opened to them. I advise you to have as little to say to them as possible.

Avowedly, they are mere beggars, but their hands are always prompt for picking and stealing, and they are said not to be over scrupulous in using their knives." Here, then, if our informant spoke correctly, was an end to one of the dreams which had prompted our incursion into Bohemia. But though we gave him full credit for speaking what he believed to be the truth, we took the liberty of questioning the accuracy of his information, particularly in reference to the more tremendous parts of it,--the hints touching the blood-thirsty propensities of the Torpindas. For the Austrian police is a great deal too vigilant to overlook, in any corner of the empire, the commission of murder; at least, the habitual perpetration of such a crime by any cla.s.s of persons so marked as the gypsies. Though, therefore, we began to fear that we might be pursuing a shadow, and that either there were no gypsy camps to join, or that the excitement of such an adventure would not compensate for the desagremens attending it, we did not at once lay aside our determination of making up to the first horde whom we should meet, and striving to become their guests for four-and-twenty hours, if not for longer.

We had now rested our allotted period, so we wished our companions good luck, and resuming our march arrived in Liebenau about half-past four o'clock. It is a clean, neat town; built along the side of a hill, and commanding a fine view, across the intervening valley, of a bolder range than its own; but of its means of accommodating strangers I cannot speak. For the day was yet so young, and we felt so unusually fresh and vigorous, that, after a brief consultation, it was agreed between us to push on, if possible, some five or six miles farther. We accordingly proceeded to the post-office; where, on consulting the head of the department, we learned that about two stunden,--that is, about six English miles further, on the way to Hoen Elbe, was a place called Marchovides, where we should find excellent quarters for the night.

This was precisely the sort of intelligence which we could have wished to receive, and we lost no time in acting upon it.

Would that I possessed the power of bringing before my reader's eye even a faint representation of the magnificent scenery through which this late march carried us. After climbing with infinite toil a long and steep ridge, by crossing which a prodigious detour was to be saved, we gained a point whence, on one hand, the eye could range over no inconsiderable portion of Bohemia; while on the other, the snowy peaks of the Riesengebirgen bounded the prospect, though still separated from us by a wide breadth of highlands. Close at our feet, on either side, were deep rich valleys, highly cultivated as usual, and swarming with villages; while far away lay town and tower, castle and convent, forest and green meadow, mountain and ravine, producing by their combinations as glorious and diversified a panorama as it has ever been my good fortune to behold. And yet I am not sure that even this scene, striking as it seemed to be, was not cast into the shade, when, after dragging our weary limbs across the hollow, and gaining the opposite ridge, we opened out a prospect, narrower to be sure, but far surpa.s.sing, in rugged grandeur, any on which we had as yet gazed. Another deep ravine lay beneath us, dark with the forest which covered its base; beyond which uprose a chain of jagged and pine-clad rocks, resembling in their forms the fragments of some huge castle, or rather of an enormous city of castles, shaken by an earthquake into ruins. Even now I am not satisfied that among these tall and beetling crags there were no remnants of man's handiwork; for the gloom of twilight was upon them when I saw them first, and ere I had ceased to gaze it had well nigh deepened into night.

Extreme fatigue is a serious damper to enthusiasm of any sort, and keen as our relish of nature's more colossal forms might be, I am not sure that we would not have exchanged, at that moment, the view of these wonders, with all the train of thoughts arising out of them, for the interior of a snug room in a village inn, and a mess of calves' flesh, with a bottle of wine to drink after it. Of our village inn we as yet, however, saw no symptoms; and wearily and slowly step followed step, without, as it seemed, bringing us nearer to the object of our wishes.

At last, just as darkness had fairly set in, we met, at the brow of a hill, a rustic, and received from him the gratifying intelligence that Marchovides lay about a quarter of an hour's walk distant, in the valley beyond. "And the gasthof," cried we, "what sort of a place is it? Can we get supper, and beds, and a bottle of wine?" "Oh, yes,"

replied the countryman, "it is a capital quarter. Wine, and every other thing that is good, may be had there for the asking." "This is as it should be," said we one to another, while recalling our energies for a final effort we hitched our packs higher upon our shoulders, and quickened our pace.

We had not walked far along the descent when, through the thickening gloom, numerous lights glancing from cottage windows made us aware that we were approaching Marchovides. We made for one of the first of these dwellings, inquired for the inn, had its situation accurately described to us, and hurried towards it. The first impression made upon us by this "excellent quarter," was far from favourable. It served the two-fold purpose of a mill and a gasthof; and whatever the comparative merits of the mill might be, the gasthof department was clearly not of the highest order. Before the door stood a wagon, which the wagoner was mending by the light of a lantern, while beneath the staircase a huge archway showed itself, filled--as on a nearer inspection I, to my horror, ascertained--with wagons also. "G.o.d help us," cried I, "we have travelled far to reach a sorry resting-place; for I am greatly deceived if this be not a house of call for wains, the drivers of which will probably be our companions both at bed and board." First impressions are not, however, at all times to be relied upon; so we did our best to thrust aside the unpleasant antic.i.p.ations which were beginning to crowd upon us, and recollecting that there was no other alternative than either to lodge here, or pa.s.s the night hungry and cheerless in the open air, we put a bold face on the matter, and entered.

We had calculated justly, for things were not quite so bad as the apparition of the wagons had led us to antic.i.p.ate. The saloon, on the threshold of which we stood, contained of living creatures only one man, somewhat pa.s.sed the middle of life, who seemed to be in the act of making his toilette; an old woman busily engaged with her needle, three wenches, who moved hither and thither, now poking about the stove, now arranging dirty linen, apparently for the wash-tub, and one or two children. Tables and benches there were, as usual; also water-buckets, a few chairs, and a tub or two, while a line drawn the whole length of the apartment, about a foot and a half from the roof, supported, in graceful disarray, a profusion of coats, trousers, ap.r.o.ns, petticoats, and stockings. To complete the picture, there were no candles burning, not even a rosin taper; but here and there a piece of blazing bog-pine, either stuck in some cranny, or borne about in the hands of a domestic, cast over the scene a dark red light. I dare say we should have been delighted with all this, had we been a.s.sured of obtaining an apartment, into which, when tired of the sublime and beautiful, it might be competent for us to retire; but being quite uncertain on that head, our first measure was to question the sempstress touching both her ability and inclination to accommodate us. Never surely was the spirit of patient industry more strikingly ill.u.s.trated than in the personage whom we now addressed. Her needle did not cease to hold its course one moment; scarcely, indeed, would she lift her eyes above her spectacles; while, in a tone by no means conciliating, she informed us, that she had no chamber, no flesh of any kind, no eggs, no white bread, nor any other article which, in the vanity of our souls, we had rashly named.

"Why they told me these were excellent quarters!" said I, horrified out of the exercise of my usual tactics.

"So they are!" was the answer; "this is a capital quarter."

"But you have no beds nor bed-rooms!"

"Oh yes, we have!"

"Won't you give us one, then?"

"No, I won't!"

"Why, my dear creature? Depend upon it, we will not run away with them."

"Very likely; but we have none to give you all the same."

This was a poser, and my companion and I looked at one another with rueful countenances; At length I resumed:--

"Your house seems to be a large one; how comes it that you have no sleeping accommodation for your guests?"

"This is a large apartment," interposed the half-clad man from his distant table; "we can accommodate plenty of guests that are not too grand for us, here."

"Oho!" exclaimed I, "you can make up beds for us on the floor. That will do well enough; and now for supper."

The facility with which I slid into their peculiar views of comfortable sleeping accommodations seemed to have a very salutary effect upon the tempers of our hosts; for the half-clad man turned out to be the husband of the sewing woman, as well as a person of considerable importance in his own neighbourhood. The old lady discovered that there _were_ some eggs in the cupboard after all, and that certain slices of bacon remained from a stock which had been laid in some time previously.

Moreover, the cellar contained some wine; neither very strong nor very high flavoured, certainly, but sound and wholesome, as we discovered on trial, and more acceptable to our palates than beer. To work, therefore, the dame and her maidens went, and in half an hour we saw before us, on a nice clean cloth, and by the flame of a farthing rushlight, half a dozen eggs, sundry lumps of pork, some rye-bread and b.u.t.ter, and a flask of white wine. They did not continue long in the order of their integrity. The eggs disappeared in a twinkling. Several fierce inroads were made into the bread and b.u.t.ter, and even the bacon suffered considerably. As to the wine, it pa.s.sed away like water spilled upon the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But there was another enemy pressing us sore, over and above hunger. We had walked upwards of thirty English miles, and my companion especially could scarcely keep his eyes open,--a circ.u.mstance which was not slow in attracting the attention of our now obliging hostess, and for which she hastened to provide. Some trusses of good clean straw were brought into the room and spread upon the floor. Over these was laid a sort of mattress, and the youngster, dressed as he was, cast his knapsack down for a pillow, and threw himself on the couch thus prepared for him. In five minutes he was just as happy as if he had rested on his own bed at Schandau.

Meanwhile sundry persons, all of them young men, entered the tap-room, and visions of wagoners snoring on the floor beside me began again to haunt my imagination; when, to my great relief, I ascertained that these were "the miller's men," who, having eaten their supper with the female members of the family, would withdraw to their nests in the c.o.c.k-loft. And truly this affair of the domestics' supper was curious enough. Heaven knows what the mess might be, which, being brought piping hot from the oven, was planted down in a brown stew-pan, right in the centre of one of the tables; but the appet.i.tes of the twelve persons who forthwith gathered round it, spoon in hand, appeared excellent. It was quite edifying to behold the order, and silence, and regularity with which, one after another, they shovelled their respective portions into their mouths; and how patiently they endured the intense heat, which, judging from the hissing of the stew, must have accompanied each ladleful. Finally, the dish being emptied, they rose with one accord, and departed, the young men to their mattresses, or, it may be, to their occupations about the mill,--the young women to fulfil what remained of their daily tasks.

While this was going on, the landlord and I were keeping up an animated conversation, of which I remember nothing more than that it turned chiefly upon the state of his own family and affairs, and tended to impress me with becoming notions of his dignity. Indeed, I may state, once for all, that the landlord of a German inn, whether it be an hotel in a capital, or like this at Marchovides, a beer-shop in a remote village, is in his own eyes a person of very considerable importance.

While his wife, poor soul, performs all the menial offices about you, which the domestics either cannot, or are not expected to perform, the host himself is content to keep you in talk, which he not unfrequently accomplishes by sitting down beside you, and helping you to discuss your wine or beer. Nor does it inflict the slightest wound upon your dignity, whatever your station in life may be, to fall in with his humours. If you cut him short, you may miss the opportunity of learning something which you could have wished to learn, and you are sure to suffer from the diminished attention which is shown to you ever after.

If you indulge him, you may be bored for a while, it is true; but you have the satisfaction of reflecting, that you neither wounded a private man's feelings, nor offered wanton outrage to the customs of a community.

Like my boy I was by this time getting tired and sleepy; and I cast sundry wishful glances towards the heap of straw. The landlord understood my situation, and hastened to a.s.sure me that we should have the whole of the chamber to ourselves, and that if I would lie down, the place should be cleared for us in a quarter of an hour. "For, to tell you the truth," cried he, "we all sleep, my wife, and I, and the children, and these wenches, in a little chamber beyond; the whole house, large as you justly observed that it was, being occupied, either as store-rooms for flour, or with the machinery of the mill." I begged my friend not to put his household to the smallest inconvenience on my account, and lying down beside my companion, closed my eyes.

I soon found, however, that sleep was out of the question. The temperature of the apartment could not be less than a hundred degrees, and there were so many dim lights and strange figures pa.s.sing to and fro, that all my efforts to abstract myself from them proved fruitless.

I therefore opened my eyes again, and lay to observe the issue. In a short time landlord, landlady, and children withdrew. Then followed a sort of clearing-up of odds and ends by the maidens, and last of all a was.h.i.+ng of feet and legs. This latter operation amused me exceedingly, and I could not resist the inclination which I felt of complimenting the la.s.ses on their fair proportions. But they did not on that account lower their drapery a jot. On the contrary they laughed heartily, and chatted to me all the time their ablutions went forward, and wished me a sound sleep as soon as they were finished. As they carried with them the last of the torches, their wish was, in some measure, accomplished; for my eyes, after repeated efforts, closed of their own accord, and were not opened again, except during feverish and brief intervals, till five o'clock next morning.

CHAPTER V.

MARCH RENEWED. SCENERY MORE AND MORE GRAND. A POPULATION OF WEAVERS.

HOCHSTADT. THE ISER. MAGNIFICENT RIVER, AND CAPITAL TROUTING.

STARKENBACH. EXTREME KINDNESS OF THE INHABITANTS. CARRIED TO THE CHANCELLOR'S HOUSE. FISH THE ISER AGAIN. THE EFFECT OF MY SPORT ON A RELIGIOUS PROCESSION. SUPPER AT THE HIGH BAILIFF'S. GAME AT CHESS. TAKE LEAVE OF OUR KIND HOSTS WITH MUTUAL REGRET.

Our toilet this morning was very speedily completed. A dip of the whole head into a basin of water, and a hasty and imperfect rinse of the hands; these, with the application of tooth-brush, hair-brush, and razor, to their respective departments, put us in marching order; and coffee being served without delay, by six we were _en route_. Hoen Elbe, not far from the fountain of the mighty Elbe, was our proposed point. But

The best laid schemes of mice and men, Gang aft awry,

and Hoen Elbe we were destined never to behold.

Our road to-day led over a succession of hills, each of which introduced us to scenery more wild and rugged than before; for each new step was now bringing us nearer and nearer to the loftiest of the Riesengebirg range. Still the population appeared not to diminish. The villages, if poorer and meaner, were not less frequent than ever, and each individual cottage seemed to swarm with inmates. We were, however, greatly struck with the squalid and unhealthy appearance of these poor people. Unlike our own mountaineers, the inhabitants of the Bohemian hills seem to be a race every way inferior to the occupants of the plain. The men are short, thin, and apparently feeble, with pale cheeks and sickly complexions. The women, over and above these disadvantages, are almost all goitred, and the children look like creatures born in sin and brought up to misery. Probably all this is owing as much to the sort of life which these highlanders lead, as to the severity of their climate. They are all either weavers, or spinners and teazers of flax, except the very few whose services are required in the cultivation of a barren soil. Now, were you to shut up even a hardy Argyles.h.i.+re shepherd, in a heated chamber, where he should be condemned to breathe all day long foul air, abundantly mixed with minute portions of flax and wool, you would probably find, at the end of the year, that he was not what he used to be ere he took to spinning. I think, then, that I am right in concluding that the mountaineers of Bohemia would be like the mountaineers of Scotland, were they similarly employed; and I am quite sure that a more revolting spectacle is not to be seen anywhere than that which a mountain district presents, of which the inhabitants are chiefly weavers.

It is not, however, entirely to their devotion to sedentary pursuits that we are justified in attributing the squalid and unhealthy appearance of these highlanders. They are all manufacturers on their own account. They do not work for any master, nor receive, as a necessary consequence, regular wages; but they card the flax, spin the thread, weave the web, and carry it to market, all at their own risk, and in obedience to the spirit of speculation. If the articles take, then are they well off for a season; if the contrary result ensue, they must carry it home again, and sad, indeed, is their condition. I need scarcely add, that it was by these mountaineers, and their rivals on the Prussian side of the Riesengebirg range, that the most valuable of the German cotton and linen goods used to be produced; and that, till within the last quarter of a century, even our own manufacturers were quite unable to compete with them. The case is now, however, widely different, and they feel and mourn the result bitterly. Nor is it surprising that there should be gendered among them a strong prejudice against the English people. They carry this so far, in many instances, as to believe that the Bohemian and Silesian marks are forged by the manufacturers of Manchester and Glasgow; and that their goods are thrown back upon their hands because an inferior article is palmed off at the great fairs, and sold as if fabricated by themselves.

When people lose their way in other countries, it is for the lack of roads. In Bohemia, the multiplicity of roads is quite perplexing. I am sure that we went this day a full league, if not more, out of our way, from repeatedly following the wrong path, and being as often compelled to retrace our steps. Once, after climbing to the ridge of a lofty mountain, we learned, to our horror, that the road which we ought to have pursued, ran in the very bottom of the glen which we had quitted; and twice the good people's directions were given in a language so barbarous, that we could make nothing of them. But after a good deal of fatigue, and no trifling share of enjoyment, we reached, at twelve o'clock, the town of Hochstadt, the place at which, as it was represented to be only three hours' march from Hoen Elbe, we had resolved to dine. We had timed our arrival admirably; for twelve o'clock is, in Germany, the common hour of dinner; and of the fare which was served up in the neat little inn towards which our steps were turned, we had no right to complain.

Hochstadt, so named from the elevated nature of its situation, stands on the summit of a mountain, and is raised probably not less than three thousand feet above the level of the sea. It commands a magnificent mountain view, with a much larger scattering both of vegetation and culture, than we had any right to expect. Bleak it doubtless must be, in winter, for just across the valley which dips down from it on the west, are hills whose tops retain their snowy coverings till August; while eastward is an immense plain, undulating here and there, but scarcely broken by the wooded cones that are scattered over it. But in the month of June, when we beheld it, the landscape is exceedingly interesting, and the promise of an abundant harvest was bright. There was nothing, however, either in the town or its vicinity, to detain us longer than the s.p.a.ce of time that might be necessary to appease our hunger and rest our limbs: so, between one and two, we paid our bill, took our host's directions, and departed. He told us that if we walked well, we might reach the Iser in an hour and a half, after which we could not be more than an hour and a half removed from Hoen Elbe.