A Word with the Reader -- From Herrnhut to Dresden -- A
Gloomy City -- The Summer Theatre -- Trip to the Saxon
Switzerland -- Wehlen -- Uttewalde Grund -- The Bastei --
Hochstein -- The Devil's Kettle -- The Wolfschlucht -- The
Polenzthal -- Schandau -- The Kuhstall -- Great Winterberg
-- The Prebischthor -- Herniskretschen -- Return to Dresden
-- To Berlin -- English and German Railways -- The Royal
Marriage Question -- Speaking English -- A Dreary City --
Sunday in Berlin -- Kroll's Garden -- Magdeburg --
Wittenberg -- Hamburg -- A-top of St. Michael's -- A Walk
to Altona -- A Ride to Horn -- A North Sea Voyage -- Narrow
Escape -- Harness and Holidays.
I fear, good-natured reader, that you will find this chapter too much
like a catalogue. I am, however, admonished by the number of my pages
that a swift conclusion is desirable. Moreover, my publisher--an
amiable man in most respects--is apt to be dogmatic on questions of
paper and print, fancying that he knows best, so I have no alternative
but to humour him; and, after all, you will perhaps say that it is
well to get over the ground as fast as possible when one comes again
upon much-beaten tracks.
From Herrnhut I travelled by rail to Dresden--Pianopolis as some
residents call it. Taken as a whole, it is a singularly heavy-looking
and gloomy city: some of the principal streets reminded me of
back-streets in Oxford. I saw the picture-gallery and the great
library; and desirous to see what our forefathers used to see at the
Globe--a play acted by daylight in a roofless play-house--I went to
the summer theatre in the _Grossen Garten_. It is an agreeable pastime
in fine weather, for you can see green tree-tops all round above the
walls, and feel the breeze, and enjoy your tankard of _Waldschloess_--
that excellent Dresden beer--while looking at the performance. A
clever actress from Berlin made her first appearance; she played in
the two pieces, and by her vivacity made amends for the miserable
music, which was unworthy of Pianopolis, and of the leader's intense
laboriousness in beating time.
I should like to take you with me in my walk through the Saxon
Switzerland; but can only glance thereat for reasons already shown. If
you have read Sir John Forbes's picturesque description of that
romantic country published last year in his _Sight-Seeing in Germany_,
you will not want another. I may, however, tell you, that you may
visit all the most remarkable places in two days. Leave Dresden by
steamer at six in the morning; disembark at Wehlen, walk from thence
through the _Uttewalde Grund_ to the _Bastei_, where, from the summit
of a bastion rock springing from the Elbe, you have a magnificent
view, with enough of water in it. You will see numerous specimens of
those flat-topped hills, resembling the bases of mighty columns, such
as we saw from the _Milleschauer_, and crag on crag, ridge on ridge,
the gray stone shaded by forest for miles around. You will perceive
Adersbach on a great scale; the same sort of sandstone split up in all
directions, but the precipitous masses wide apart, isolated, and with
glens and vales between all, glad with foliage and running water,
instead of crevices and alleys.
From the _Bastei_ you plunge down the zigzags among the crags to the
_Amselgrund_, past the waterfall, and by wild ways to the
_Teufelsbruch_ and the _Hochstein_, an isolated crag, from which you
look down into the Devil's Kettle, 350 feet deep. Then down through
the _Wolfschlucht_, a crevice in the cliff, which, where you descend
by ladders, looks very much like a wolf's-gully. It brings you into
the _Polenzthal_, where on the grassy margin of a trout stream,
beneath the shade of birches, precipitous cliffs towering high aloft,
something grand and beautiful at every bend, you will believe it the
loveliest scene of all. Then up the _Brand_--another out-look, and
from thence down to Schandau, where you pass the night.
On the second day, walk up the _Kirnitschthal_ to the _Kuhstall_, a
broad arch in a honeycombed rock on the top of a hill; from thence to
the Little Winterberg and Great Winterberg, the latter more than 1700
feet high--the highest point of the district, commanding a grand
prospect over hill and hollow, crag and forest. While gazing around in
admiration, you will perhaps wish that the old name--Meissner
Highlands--had not been changed, for there is but little of the real
Switzerland in the view.
Then on to the _Prebischthor_, crossing the frontier on the way into
Bohemia at a lonely spot, uninfested as yet by guards or barrier. The
_Prebischthor_ is a huge arch, more than a hundred feet high, also on
a hill-top, 1300 feet above the sea. Two mighty columns support a
massive block, a hundred feet in length, forming a marvellous specimen
of natural architecture. You can walk under and around its base, and
look at the landscape through the opening, or mount to the summit and
look down sheer eight hundred feet into the _Prebischgrund_. Here, as
everywhere else, you find an inn, good beer, and musicians, a throng
of tourists, and an album filled with names, and rhyming attempts at
wit and sentiment.
From the _Prebischthor_ you descend by the valley of the Kamnitz to
Herniskretschen, a village built on a narrow level between tall
frowning cliffs and the Elbe. I arrived here in time for the steamer
at two o'clock, by which I returned to Dresden. I had seen the Saxon
Switzerland from all the best points of view, and saw all the romantic
course of the river, except the eight miles from Tetschen to
Herniskretschen. A pleasanter two days' trip could not well be
imagined. Once at Wehlen, the places to be visited are but from three
to four miles apart; the way from one to the other is easy to find,
and there is constant diversity of scenery, to say nothing of the
talkative groups of Germans with whom you may join fellowship. But, in
truth, it is a region to loiter in, and you will wish that weeks were
yours instead of scanty days.
Soon after noon of the next day I was in Berlin. Travel the same
route, and you will no longer wonder at the rapturous excitement of
the Germans in the _Riesengebirge_. The country is one great
plain--little fields, marshes, sluggish streams, ponds covered with
water-lilies, windmills and sandy wastes sprinkled with a few trees
that look miserable at having to grow in such a dreary land. Here and
there a winding road--a mere deep-rutted track--winds across the
landscape, making it look, if possible, still more melancholy. Look
out when you will, you see the same monotonous features.
In our own happy country you would have the additional sorrow of an
uncomfortable carriage. To know what outrageous inflictions can be
perpetrated by railway monopoly, and endured by your long-suffering
countrymen, just ride for once from London to Lowestofft in an Eastern
Counties third-class carriage--you will have more than enough of North
German scenery and of English discomfort, but without the compensations
of German beer and German coffee. Or vary your experiences by a journey
to Winchester in a second-class on the South-Western line, and try to
enjoy the landscape through the wooden shutter which the Company give
you for a window. Go to Euston-square--anywhere in fact--and you find
that the passenger with most money in his pocket is the one most cared
for. Even the Great Western and South-Eastern Companies, who have
outgrown the short-sighted habit of building dungeons and calling them
carriages--even these mighty monopolists condemn their second-class
passengers to a wooden seat.
But on the line from Dresden to Berlin the third-class carriages are
far more commodious than any second-class I have ever seen in
England--except two or three at the Great Exhibition, which, perhaps,
were meant only for show. The seats are broad, hollowed, and not flat,
and with space enough between for the comfortable placing of your
legs. The roof is lofty. You can stand upright with your hat on. At
either end a broad shelf is fixed for small packages and light
luggage; and more than all, the same civility and attention are
extended by all the functionaries to third-class passengers as to the
first. We brag of our liberty, and not without reason; but let us
remember that the foreigner, though afflicted with passports, travels
at less cost and with more comfort than we do.
Here, too, my fellow-passengers made merry over the "_Palmerston
gehänget_" story; and many questions had I to answer concerning the
coming marriage of the Prussian Prince and English Princess. I gave
the same reply as to the Dresdener in the palace at Fischbach. One of
the company, who told us he was a professor of literature at Berlin,
inclined to be saucy. It was all a mistake to suppose that there was
one jot more liberty in England than in Prussia. He could speak
English, and knew all about it. Unluckily, by way of proving how well
he could speak English, he said we should arrive at "Twelve past
half;" whereupon I set the others laughing to take the conceit out of
him. He relapsed into German, and looked so unhappy, that, by way of
consolation, I told him of a countryman of his in England who went to
keep an appointment at "clock five."
Berlin is a dreary, malodorous city, or rather an enormous village
beginning to try to be a city; and fortunate in being the residence of
men of taste and real artists who know what architecture and sculpture
ought to be, as demonstrated by the improvements and embellishments
around the palace and in the approach to that fine street _Unter den
Linden_. You can hire a droschky to take you anywhere within the walls
for fivepence; but be patient, for whether droschky or omnibus, the
pace is as slow as if the drivers had to work for nothing. _Pour le
roi de Prusse_, as the French say.
Many a portrait of the English Princess Royal, along with that of her
future consort, did I see in the print-sellers' windows; and on the
morrow I saw how the Berliners pass their Sunday: not with shops open
all the day as in Paris, but with much beer, music, and tobacco in the
environs. I was simple enough to walk out to the Zoological Garden--a
few pens very widely scattered in a neglected forest plantation,
containing specimens of swine, poultry, goats, and kine, all made as
much of as if they were in Little Pedlington. From thence I walked out
to Charlottenburg, notwithstanding the offensive drains which border
the road the whole distance, and saw the tasteful mausoleum in the
palace grounds, and the lazy carp in the big pond. The Opera House was
open in the evening with _Satanella_, a "fantastic ballet," in three
acts; and crowds made their way out to Kroll's Garden--the Cremorne of
Berlin--where a play was acted in the theatre, and two orchestras
outside kept up a constant succession of lively music: one striking up
as the other ended. The number of tall people among the throng was
remarkable, and not less so the rapidity with which beer and coffee,
cakes and cutlets, were consumed. The numerous troop of waiters had
not an idle moment.
I wished to see the place where the most terrible tragedy of the
Thirty Years' War had been acted--where Tilly and Pappenheim--
Bloodthirsty and Ferocious--sacked a flourishing city just as the
foremost of the Swedish horse, commanded by Gustavus the Avenger, came
within sight of its walls. So I journeyed to Magdeburg: always the
same great plain on either side; but hereabouts fertile, and among the
best of the corn-land of Europe. The early train travels quickly: it
accomplished the distance in a little more than three hours.
I went directly to the cathedral, and, after a view of its noble
interior, mounted to the gallery, which runs all round the top without
a break. I stayed up there two hours pacing slowly round, surveying
the busy town, the bustle of boats and barges on the Elbe, the
citadel, the long line of fortification, and thinking over the history
of the terrible siege. Besides the cathedral, the town contains but
little to repay an exploration, and the people generally have a shabby
look, as I proved by experiment, so I walked up the river bank to one
of the suburban pleasure-gardens till the hour of departure
approached. At five in the afternoon--away by train for Hamburg.
Always the same great plain, heaved here and there into gentle swells.
We slept at Wittenberg, and were off again the next morning long
before the dew was dry. The plain abates somewhat of its monotony in
Mecklenburg, and breaks into low hills with green valleys and pleasant
woods between; and here, instead of groschen and dollars, we found
schillings and marks--schillings worth a penny apiece. Shortly before
eleven our long journey ended.
I went to the steam-boat office; took a place for London; asked one of
the clerks which was the tallest church in Hamburg; left my knapsack
under his desk, and made my way through the maze of picturesque old
streets to St. Michael's. The tower is 460 feet in height, and you
have to mount hundreds of stairs, the last flight, quite open to the
sky, running in a spiral round the pillars of the belfry. Some weak
heads turn back here; but if you continue, the view from the little
chamber at the top will reward you. A vast panorama meets the eye.
Miles away into Hanover and Holstein, all the territory of Hamburg,
across Mecklenburg, and down the broad river well-nigh to the sea,
sixty miles distant. The city itself is an interesting sight: the
contrast between the old and new so great; the bustle on the Elbe and
in the streets; the numerous canals, basins, dams, and havens; the
planted walks, all enclosed by green and undulating environs, make up
a picture that you will be reluctant to leave. Some of the windows of
the little chamber are fitted with glass of different colours, so that
at pleasure you may look out on a fairy scene below. The charge for
the ascent is one mark.
Afterwards, when perambulating the streets, you will discover that
Hamburg is a city not less interesting when viewed from the ground.
The narrow streets, the old architecture, the variety of costumes, the
curious ways of the traders, will arrest your attention at every step.
And you will find much to commend in the building of the new quarter,
and in the well-kept grounds and walks by the Exchange and around the
Alster.
Seeing all this, I regretted that my stay would be but for a few
hours: however, I improved those hours as diligently as possible. I
walked out to Altona, and lived for an hour under the sovereignty of
Denmark while looking at the old council-house and some other quaint
specimens of architecture. Then turning in the opposite direction I
rode out to Horn by omnibus; walked from thence across the heath and
through the groves to Wansbeck, and rode back by a different road--a
little trip in which I saw much to admire in the pretty wayside
residences of the Hamburgers, situate so pleasantly among gardens and
trees, and the inmates taking their evening meal on the grass-plot in
front.[K]
I kept up my explorations till the approach of midnight warned me that
it was time to embark. The watch at the city-gate let me out on
payment of the accustomed toll--twopence at ten o'clock, a shilling at
eleven--and I groped my way along the quay to the steamer _Countess of
Lonsdale_. When I woke the next morning the pilot was being landed at
Glückstadt; and we steamed across the North Sea with no other incident
than that of nearly running down a Flemish fishing-boat in broad
daylight; and yet we had a man on the look-out. But for the quick eye
of the captain--who was telling amusing stories about the German fleet
to a party of us lounging around him on the quarter-deck--and his
sudden "hard a-port!" the little vessel would have been cut in two. As
it was, she escaped but by a few inches.
During the lazy leisure of a day at sea, I reckoned the sum of my
journeyings and outlay. I had walked three hundred and fifty miles,
and expended--up to Hamburg--fourteen pounds. The passage to London,
with etceteras, including an unconscionable steward's-fee, amounted to
nearly three pounds more.
A voyage of forty-eight hours brought us to London; and at four in
the morning of the 1st of August we stepped on shore at St.
Katherine's Wharf. It was a lovely morning: even London looked
picturesque in the clear rosy light. The opportunity was favourable,
and I took it for an hour's study of the busiest phenomena of
Billingsgate. Then I walked awhile, and sat on a certain doorstep
reading Goldsmith's _Traveller_ till the maid came down, very early,
at a quarter-past seven. Then I exchanged thick boots and a
comfortable coat for the garb of Cockneydom. And then--sensations of
liberty tingling yet in every limb, and swarming with happy
recollections through my brain--I went and crept once more into the
old official harness.
Harness in which I earn glorious holidays.
FOOTNOTE:
[K] There is something suggestive concerning the resources of
different populations in the following table of depositors in savings
banks: In Bohemia there is 1 depositor for every 64 of the population;
in Berlin, 1 in 12; in Frankfort, 1 in 10; in Hamburg, 1 in 6; in
Leipsic, 1 in 5; in Altona, 1 in 3.
INDEX.
A.
Adersbach, 228
Agnetendorf, 213
Alt, 59
Altenburg, 16, 25
Altendorf, 23, 227
Altona, 299
Amselgrund, the, 293
Aschaffenburg, 3
Auersberg, the, 50
Aussig, 167
B.
Bamberg, 14
Bastei, the, 292
Beer, 49
Berlin, 296
Bernsdorf, 226
Berthelsdorf, 273
Bober, the, 226
Bohemia, Geology of, 147, 238
Bohemian Frontier, 55
Böhme, Jacob, 265
Bread and Semmel, 73
Breslau, 220
Buchau, 81
Buchwald, 246, 248
C.
Carlsbad, 59
Carpathians, the, 220
Costumes, 20, 41, 44
Czechs, the, 57, 98, 102, 120, 204
D.
Dittersbach, 247
Dreikreuzberg, 70
Dresden, 291
E.
Ebersdorf, 31
Eckersbach, 33
Elbe, the, 166
Elbe, Source of, 208;
fall of, 209
Elterlein, 30
Engelhaus, 76
Erdmannsdorf, 249
Erzgebirge, 17, 43, 50, 55
Eybenstock, 48
F.
Fischbach, 250
Flinsberg, 261
Frankfort, 1
G.
Gabel, 192
Geese, 86
Gersdorf, 172
Glass-workers, 179, 192
Glückstadt, 300
Görlitz, 265
Greifenberg, 264
Grenzbäuden, 223
Grünheid, 196
H.
Hamburg, 298
Hanau, 3
Hartenstein, ruin, 88
Hayda, 192
Herniskretschen, 294
Herrnhut, 269
Heuscheuer, the, 220
Hildburghausens, 25
Hirschberg, 262
Hirschenstand, 56
Hirschsprung, the, 73
Hohenstaufens, 25
Hohensteiner Bad, 41
Holstein, 299
Horn, 299
Horosedl, 99
Hradschin, the, 126, 130
I.
Iser, the, 203
Isergebirge, the, 220, 261
J.
Jeschken, the, 196
Jews, 107, 131
Johannisbad, 261
Judenstadt, 132
K.
Kirnitschthal, the, 293
Knieholz, 208
Krkonosch Berg, 208
Kruschowitz, 102
Kunzendorf, 226
Kunz von Kauffungen, 28, 37
Kynast, the, 260
L.
Landskrone, the, 265
Lauban, 264
Liebau, 245
Liebkowitz, 89
Liebwerda, 261
Lobositz, 158
Loebau, 268
Lohr, 4
Lubenz, 89
Luther, 24, 27, 39
M.
Mädelstein, 215
Magdeburg, 297
Markersdorf, 171
Mecklenburg, 298
Meistersdorf, 172
Milleschauer, the, 158
Mineral Springs, 40, 41, 62, 258, 261
Mittagstein, 216
Mittelgebirge, the, 158
Morchenstern, 196
Mulde, the, 33
Music, 47, 153, 155, 167, 235
N.
Neudeck, 58
Neudorf, 196
Neustädl, 47
Neu Straschitz, 102
Newspapers, 51
Niederkainsdorf, 40
O.
Oberhaselau, 42
Oberkainsdorf, 40
P.
Planitz, 40
Polenzthal, the, 293
Prague, 114
Prebischthor, the, 293
Princes' Oaks, 17
Prinzenhöhle, 23
Prinzenraub, 18, 28, 35
Przichowitz, 198
R.
Railways, 295
Raudnitz, 158
Reichenberg, 194
Reinowitz, 196
Rentsch, 102
Riesengebirge, 213
Rochlitz, 205
Rock-labyrinth, 229
Rübezahl, 207
S.
Saal, the, 4
Saxon Switzerland, 292
Schandau, 293
Schatzlar, 226
Schlag, 196
Schmiedeberg, 247
Schneeberg, 45
Schneegruben, 211
Schneekoppe, 215
Schömberg, 243
Schools, 53, 170, 172
Schreckenstein, the, 167
Schwanhildis, Princess, 39
Schwarzkoppe, 223
Simplon, the, of Prussia, 246
Spessart, Forest of, 4
Spiller, 263
Spindlerbaude, 215
Sprudel, the, 66
Spürlingstein, the, 168
Steinschönau, 191
Stein Wine, 5
Stephanshöh, 201
St. Killian, 13
Stohnsdorf, 254
Synagogue, the, 136
T.
Tandelmarkt, the, 131
Tannwald, 197
Taunus Mountains, 3
Tetschen, 169
Theresienstadt, 158
Triller, the, 32, 34, 37
U.
Ueberschar Hills, 244
Ullersdorf, 244
Ulrichsthal, 173
Uttewalde Grund, 292
W.
Wansbeck, 299
Warmbrunn, 256
Weckelsdorf, 241
Wehlen, 292
Weisskirchen, 193
Wends, the, 19, 22, 39
White Hill, the, 111
Wildenthal, 49
Wilhelmsbad, 3
Willenz, 90
Winterberg, Great and Little, 293
Wittenberg, 298
Würzburg, 4
Z.
Zillerthal, 253
Zwickau, 33
THE END.
C. WHITING, BEAUFORT HOUSE, STRAND.