Baked Chickens -- A Discussion -- Weckelsdorf -- More Rocks
-- The Stone of Tears -- Death's Alley -- Diana's Bath --
The Minster -- Gang of Coiners -- The Bohdanetskis -- Going
to Church -- Another Silesian View -- Good-bye to Bohemia
-- Schömberg -- Silesian Faces and Costume -- Picturesque
Market-place -- Ueberschar Hills -- Ullersdorf -- An amazed
Weaver -- Liebau -- Cheap Cherries -- The Prussian Simplon
-- Ornamented Houses -- Buchwald -- The Bober --
Dittersbach -- Schmiedeberg -- Rübezahl's Trick upon
Travellers -- Tourists' Rendezvous -- The Duellists'
Successors -- Erdmannsdorf -- Tyrolese Colony.
As _Grenzbäuden_ is renowned for Hungarian wine, so is Adersbach for
baked chickens, and every guest, unless he be a greenhorn, eats two
for supper. They are very relishing, and quite small enough to prevent
any breach of your moderate habit.
Visitors were numerous: some reading their guide-books, some beginning
supper, some finishing, some rounding up the evening with another
bottle--for Hungarian is to be had in Adersbach. A party near me sat
discussing with much animation the demerits of the taxes which
impoverish, and of the beggars who importune, travellers around the
City of the Rocks, and they drew an inference that the landlord's
charges would not be parsimonious. Then they wandered off into the
question of temperature--the temperature of _Schneekoppe_. Not one of
them had yet trodden old Snowhead, so they went on guessing at the
question, till I mentioned that it had been very cold up there in the
morning.
"In the morning! This morning? _Heut_, mean you?"
"Yes, this very morning; for I was up there."
"_Heut! Heut! Heut! Heut!_" ejaculated one after another, the last
apparently more surprised than the first.
"Yes, this very day."
They would not believe it. I took up a sprig of heather from the side
of my plate, which I had gathered on _Schwarzkoppe_, and showed them
that as a token; and explained that the distance was, after all, not
so very great, and might have been shortened had I descended directly
from the _Koppe_ into the _Riesengrund_, and laid my course through
the village of Dorngrund.
They believed then; but having travelled the road prescribed to me by
Father Hübner, could not imagine the distance from the mountain to be
but about twenty miles.
By rising early the next morning, when all was bright and fresh and
the dust laid by the night's rain, I got time for another stroll among
the rocks, and to walk two miles farther down the valley to
Weckelsdorf, where another part of the rocky labyrinth is explorable.
The rocks here are on a greater scale than at Adersbach, and rising on
the slope of a hill, their romantic effect is increased, as also the
difficulty of wandering among them. The proprietor, Count von
Nummerskirch, has, however, taken pains to render them accessible by
bridges, galleries, and stairs. A sitting figure, whose head-dress
resembles that of the maidens of Braunau, is named the Bride of
Braunau; near her is the Stone of Tears; the _Todtengasse_ (Death's
Alley) is never illumined by a ray of sunshine; there is the
Cathedral, and near it Diana's Bath; and at last the Minster, a
natural temple, the roof a lofty pointed arch, where, while you walk
up and down in the dim light, an organ fills the place with a burst of
sound. It is sometimes called the Mint, or Money Church, because of a
gang of coiners having once made it their head-quarters. The rocks
have been a hiding-place for others as well as rogues. During the
Hussite wars, many families found a refuge within their intricate
recesses, little liable to a surprise, at a time when entrance was
hardly possible owing to the numerous obstructions.
As at Adersbach, there is a fee to pay for unlocking a door; there is
an echo which answers the guide's voice, his pistol and horn, and has
to be paid for. Nevertheless, you will neither regret the outlay of
time and kreutzers in your visit to Weckelsdorf. If able to prolong
your stay, you may take an excursion of a few hours to the
_Heuscheuer_, and see a smaller Adersbach on its very summit--the
highest of these extraordinary rock-formations. Or there is the ruin
of Bischoffstein, within an easy walk, once the stronghold of the
Bohdanetski family, who held half a score of castles around the
neighbourhood, and made themselves obnoxious by their Protestantism
and robberies, and envied for their wealth. They suffered at times by
siege and onslaught from their neighbours, and at length their castles
were demolished, and forty-seven Bohdanetskis and adherents were
hanged by the emperor's command. The rest of the family, it is said,
took flight, and settled in England. Is Baddenskey, who sits wearily
at his loom down there in joyless Spitalfields, a descendant?
I returned to the _Felsenstadt_ for my knapsack. For supper, bed, and
breakfast the charge was equal to three and threepence, in which was
included an extra fifteen kreutzers for the bedroom, which I had
insisted on having all to myself. When guests are very numerous they
have to sleep four in a room. Take your change in Prussian money, for
"_Kaiserliches geld_," as the folk here call it--that is, imperial
money--will not be current where you stop to dine.
I retraced my steps for about a mile along the road by which I came
yesterday, and at the church took a road branching off to the right.
It leads through Ober Adersbach. The villagers were going to church:
the men wearing tall polished boots and jackets, the women with their
heads ungracefully muffled in red, blue, green, or yellow kerchiefs,
and displaying broad, showy skirts and aprons, and clean white
stockings. Now and then came an exception: a man in a light-blue
jacket, and loose, baggy breeches; a woman with a stiff-starched
head-dress, not unlike those worn in Normandy.
The road continually rises, and by-and-by you cannot tell the main
track from the byeways among the cottages. Still ascending, however,
you come out a short distance farther on the brow of a precipitous
hill, where you are agreeably surprised by another Silesian
view--broad, rolling fields of good red land, bearing vetches, clover,
flax, and barley, the little town of Schömberg in their midst, and
always hills on the horizon. From the brow, a deep lane and a path
through the fir-wood on the cliffy hill-side, lead you down to the
road where finger-posts, painted black and white, indicate that we
have exchanged the Austrian eagle for the Prussian. I must have
crossed the frontier two or three times yesterday and to-day, but I
saw no custom-house anywhere, and no guards, except at _Grenzbäuden_.
Other signs showed me on nearing Schömberg that I had left Bohemia.
The men are tall, of sallow complexion, and angular face. They wear
long dark-blue coats and boots up to their knees, and stiff blue caps
with a broad crown, and they carry pink or blue umbrellas. The women
wear the same colour, and do not look attractive; and there is an
_Evangelische Kirche_, in which the preaching is of Protestant faith
and doctrine.
The town has two thousand inhabitants, some of whom dwell in houses
that are a pleasure to look upon, around the market-place. The
gables--no two alike--are painted pale green, white, gray, or yellow,
and what with the ornaments, the broken outlines, and arcades of wood
and brick, the great square makes up a better picture than is to be
seen in many a famous city. Although Sunday, the mill turned by the
Kratzbach clacks briskly; there are stalls of fruit, bread, and toys
under the arcades, and by the side of two or three wagons in the
centre a group of blue-coated men. They look sedate, and talk very
quietly, as if they felt the day were not for work.
From hence the road, planted with beeches, limes, and mountain-ash,
leads across well-cultivated fields, and between wooded slopes of the
Ueberschar hills to Ullersdorf, where _Schneekoppe_ is seen peeping
over a dark ridge on the left. I asked one of the weavers who inhabit
here if he earned two dollars a week.
"_Gott bewahr!_" he exclaimed, opening his eyes and holding up his
hands apparently in utter amazement, "that would be too gladsome
(_frolich_). No; I can be thankful for one dollar."
Content with one dollar a week, which means a perpetual diet of rye
bread and potatoes.
Liebau and Schömberg, about five miles apart, are in many respects
twin towns. If Liebau has not a strikingly picturesque market-place,
nor a reputation for _Knackwürsten_ (smoked sausage), it has a new
Protestant church, some good paintings in the Romish church, and a
_Kreuzberg_, once the resort of thousands of pilgrims. The
neighbouring _Tartarnberg_ was, according to tradition, the site of a
Tartar camp in 1241. Rusty, half-decayed horseshoes and arrow-heads
are still found at times upon it.
After dining at the _Sonne_, I bought a dessert at a stall under the
arcade: the woman gave me nearly a gallon of cherries for
three-halfpence, with which I started for Schmiedeberg, ten miles
farther. Numbers of villagers were walking on the road, all the women
bedecked with pink aprons, and looking healthy and happy. Perhaps out
of twenty or more chubby-faced children, who manifested a lively
appetite for fruit, two or three will remember that they met a strange
man who gave them a handful of cherries, and how that their mothers
became all of a sudden eloquent with thanks, and bade them kiss their
hands, and do something pretty. Unluckily, by the time I had gone two
miles there was an end of the cherries.
The road runs between the _Schmiedeberger Kamm_ and the _Landeshuter
Kamm_. The main road, which crosses the latter from Schmiedeberg to
Landeshut, is called the Prussian or Silesian Simplon, for it is the
highest macadamized road in Prussia, its summit being at an elevation
of more than 2200 feet. Extra horses are required to pass it; and the
saying goes that millions of dollars have been paid on a stone at the
top, known as the _Vorspannsteine_.
Among rural objects you see huge barns; a tiled roof resting on tall,
square pillars of brick, the intervals between which are boarded. And
here and there a farm, with all the homestead enclosed by a high
whitewashed wall, which has two arched entrances. The cottages are
low, their roofs a combination of thatch and shingle, their shutters
an exhibition of rustic art, bright red, with an ornamental wreath in
the centre of the panels; and the wooden column, on which a saint
stands by the wayside, displays a flowery spiral on a ground of lively
green. To a man who was leaning over his gate, I said that it was very
stupid to mar the effect of such artistic decorations by a slushy
midden at the front door.
"We don't think so: we are used to it," was his answer.
Now and then you meet a little low wagon, the tilt-hoops painted blue,
and the harness glittering with numerous rings and small round plates
of brass. In the village of Buchwald the mill was at work, and the men
were busy at the grindstone grinding their scythe-blades in readiness
for the morrow. Here we come upon the Bober, grown to a lively stream,
running along the edge of the far-spreading meadows on the left.
About half a mile farther a wagon-track slants off to the right,
making a short cut over the _Kamm_ to Schmiedeberg. It leads you by
pleasant ways along hill-sides, across fields and meadows, into lonely
vales and solitary lanes, that end on shaggy heather slopes. To me the
walk was delightful, for uninterrupted sunshine, a merry breeze, and
rural peace, favourable to the luxury of idle thought, lent a charm to
pretty scenery.
From Dittersbach the road ascends the _Passberg_, which, on the
farther side, sends down a steep descent to Schmiedeberg. The town
lies in a deep valley, and is so long from one extremity of its
scattered outskirts to the other that you will be nearly an hour in
walking through it, while, for the most part, it is little more than
one street in width. It has an ancient look, and, owing to the many
gardens and bleaching-grounds among the houses, combines country with
town. The _Rathhaus_ is a fine specimen of tasteful architecture.
From working in iron, the Schmiedebergers have turned to the making of
shawls and plush, and the entertainment of holiday travellers. The
iron trade began in an adventure on the _Riesengebirge_. Two men were
crossing the mountains, when one, whose shoes were thickly nailed,
found himself suddenly held fast on the stony path, unable to advance
or return. He shook with terror. What else could it be than a spell
thrown over him by _Rübezahl_? At length, by the other's assistance,
he broke the spell; and the two having brought away with them the
stone of detention, it was recognised as magnetic iron stone; and
already, in the twelfth century, iron works were established, around
which Schmiedeberg grew into a town. It now numbers four thousand
inhabitants.
Hither come tourists from far to see the mountains; and during your
half hour's rest at the _Schwarzes Ross_, you will be amused by
witnessing the eager manifestations of the newly-arrived, their
exuberant gestures while bargaining with a guide, and the liberal
way--the bargain once made--in which they load him with rugs, cloaks,
coats, caps, bonnets, bags, bundles, umbrellas, parasols, and other
travelling gear, until he carries a mountain on his own shoulders.
Besides the trip to _Schneekoppe_, some mount to the great beech-tree
and the _Friesenstein_, on the _Landeshuter Kamm_; or visit the
laboratories at Krummhübel, where liqueurs, oils, and essences, are
distilled and prepared from native plants: chemical operations first
set on foot in 1700 by a few students of medicine who fled from Prague
to escape the consequences of a duel. And some go beyond Krummhübel to
look at Wolfshau, a place in the entrance of the _Melzergrund_, so
shut in by wooded hills that it never sees the sun during December.
And some to the village of Steinseifen, where, among iron-workers and
herbalists, dwell skilful wood-carvers; one of whom for a small fee
exhibits a large model of the _Riesengebirge_--a specimen of his own
handiwork.
On the left, as you leave Schmiedeberg, is the Ruheberg, a small
castle standing in a bosky park belonging to a Polish prince, where
the townsfolk find pleasant walks. Two miles farther, and the leafy
slopes of Buchwald appear on the right, embowering another castle, and
a park laid out in the English style, and with such advantages of
position, among which are fifty-four ponds, that it has become an
elysium for the neighbourhood.
Once clear of the town, and the mountain-range opens on the
left--rounded heights, ridges, scars, and peaks stretching away for
miles on either side of the _Koppe_. Another hour, and turning from
the main road which runs on to Hirschberg, you see houses scattered
about the plain, built in the Alpine style, with outside stair and
galleries, and broad eaves. We are in the village of Erdmannsdorf--the
asylum granted by the King of Prussia to about a hundred Tyrolese
families, who, in 1838, had to quit their native country for
conscience' sake. They were Protestants hated by their bigoted
neighbours, and disliked by the priests; and so became exiles. Nowhere
else in Prussia could they have seen mountains at all approaching in
grandeur those which look down on their native valley, and yet they
must at first have deeply mourned the difference.
Remembering my former year's experiences, I wished to find myself once
more among the Tyrolese. True enough, there they were in their
picturesque costume, in striking contrast with the Silesians; but
there was a degenerate look about the _Wirthshaus_, as if they had
forgotten their original cleanliness, which repelled me, and I went on
to the _Schweizerhaus_, a large inn near the royal _Schloss_. As
usual, it was overfull, so great is the throng of visitors, and I had
to try in another direction, which brought me to the _Gasthof und
Gerichtskretscham_, where the landlord promised me a bed if I would
not mind sleeping in the billiard-room.