THE SIEBEN GEBIRGEN.
The word _Sieben_ means _seven_, and _Gebirgen_ means _mountains_.[6]
Thus the _Sieben Gebirgen_ is the Seven Mountains. It is the name given
to a mountainous mass of land which rises into seven or more principal
peaks, just at the entrance of the romantic part of the Rhine. The
highest of these mountains is the celebrated Drachenfels, which has a
ruined castle on the top of it, and an inn for the accommodation of
travellers just below. The Seven Mountains and Drachenfels are on the
east bank of the river. Opposite to them on the left bank are some other
remarkable mountains, crowned also with celebrated ruins. The river
flows between these highlands as through a gateway. They form, in fact,
the commencement of the mountainous region of the Rhine, in ascending
the river from Cologne.[7]
[Footnote 6: The words are pronounced as they are spelled, except that
the _g_ in _Gebirgen_ is hard.]
[Footnote 7: The reader must be very careful to get the idea right in
his mind in respect to which way is _up_ on the Rhine. The river flows
north. Of course, in looking on the map, what is _down_ on the page is
_up_ in respect to the flow of the river.]
The large town next below where these mountains commence is Bonn, which
is, perhaps, thirty or forty miles above Cologne. The country up as far
as Bonn from Cologne is pretty level, and a railroad has been made
there. At Bonn the mountains begin, and the railroad has accordingly not
been yet carried any farther. Mr. George and Rollo went up to Bonn by
the railroad.
Mr. George wished to stop at Bonn for half a day to visit a celebrated
university that is there. The buildings of this university were formerly
a palace; but they were afterwards given up to the use of the
university, which subsequently became one of the most distinguished
seminaries of learning in Europe. Mr. George wished to visit this
university. He had letters of introduction to some of the professors. He
wished also to see the library and the cabinets of natural history that
were there. He invited Rollo to go with him, but Rollo concluded not to
go. He would have liked to have seen the library very well, and the
cabinets, but he was rather afraid of the professors.
So, while Mr. George went to visit the literary institution, Rollo
amused himself by rambling about the town, and looking at the quaint
old churches, and the houses, and the fortifications, and in strolling
along the quay, by the shore of the river, to see the steamers and tow
boats go up and down.
At length he went to the hotel. The hotel was just without the gates,
near the river. There was a garden between the hotel and the river, with
a terrace at the margin of it, overlooking the water, where there were
tables and chairs ready for any person who might choose to take coffee
or any other refreshments there. Mr. George's room was on this side of
the hotel, and being pretty high it overlooked the gardens, and the
terrace, and the river, and afforded a charming view. Up the river, on
the other side, about three or four miles off, the Sieben Gebirgen were
plainly to be seen, the summits of them tipped with ancient ruins.
After Rollo had been sitting there about half an hour, Mr. George came
home. It was then about one o'clock.
"Well, Rollo," said he, "we are going up the river. I have engaged the
landlord to send us up in a carriage to some pleasant place on the bank
of the river among the mountains, where we can spend the Sabbath."
"Why, what day is it?" asked Rollo.
"It is Saturday," replied Mr. George.
Rollo was quite surprised to find that it was Saturday. In fact, in
travelling on the Rhine, as there is so little to mark or distinguish
one day from another, we almost always soon lose our reckoning.
"What is the name of the place where we are going?" asked Rollo.
"I don't know," replied Mr. George. "I cannot understand very well. He
is going to send us somewhere. How it will turn out I cannot tell. We
must trust to the fortune of war."
Mr. George often called the luck that befell him in travelling the
fortune of war. "If we were contented," he would say, "to travel over
and over again in places that we know, then we could make some
calculations, and could know beforehand, in most cases, where we were
going and how we should come out. But in travelling in new and strange
places we cannot tell at all, especially when there is no language that
we can communicate well with the people in. So we have to trust to the
fortune of war."
Mr. George, however, determined to make one more effort to find out
where he was going; and so, when the carriage came to the door, and he
and Rollo were about to get into it, he asked the porter of the
house--who was the man that "spoke English"--what the name of the place
was where they were going to stop.
"Yes, sare," replied the man. "You will stop. You will go to Poppensdorf
and to Kreitzberg, and then you will go to Gottesberg, and then you will
go to Rolandseck, where there is a boat that will take you to
Drachenfels, or to Koenigswinter."
He said all this with so strong a German accent, and pronounced the
barbarous words with so foreign an intonation, that no trace or
impression whatever was left by them on Mr. George's ear.
"But which is the place," asked Mr. George, speaking very deliberately
and plainly,--"which is the place where we are to be left by the
carriage to stay on Sunday? Is it Rolandseck or Koenigswinter?"
"Yes, sare," said the porter, making a very polite bow. "Yes, sare, you
will go to Rolandseck, and to Kreitzberg, and to Gottesberg, and if you
please you can stop at Poppensdorf."
"Very well," said Mr. George. "Tell him to drive on."
This is a tolerably fair specimen of the success to which travellers,
and the porters, and waiters, who "speak English," attain to, in their
attempts to understand one another. In fact, the attempts of these
domestic linguists to _speak_ English are sometimes still more
unfortunate than their attempts to understand it. One of them, in
talking to Mr. George, said "No, yes," for no, sir. Another told Rollo
that the dinner would be ready in _fiveteen_ minutes, and a very worthy
landlord, in commenting on the pleasant weather, said that the time was
very _agregable_. So a waiter said one day that the _bifstek_ was just
coming up out of the _kriken_. He meant kitchen.
The place where the porter, who engaged the carriage for Mr. George,
intended to leave him, was really Rolandseck. Rolandseck is the name of
a ruined arch, the remains of an ancient tower which may be seen in the
engraving a little farther on, upon the height of land on the left side
of the view. The lofty ruin on the right, farther in the distance, is
Drachenfels. At the foot of Drachenfels, a little farther down the
river,--and we are looking down the river in the engraving,--is a town
called Koenigswinter, which is the place that people usually set out
from to ascend the mountain, a great number of donkeys being kept there
for that purpose. Beneath the tower of Rolandseck, near the margin of
the water, is a row of three or four houses, two of which are hotels.
The land rises so suddenly from the river here, that there is barely
room for the road and the houses between the water and the hill. In
fact, the road itself is terraced up with a wall ten or fifteen feet
high towards the water, and the houses in the same manner from the road.
You enter them, indeed, from the level of the road; but you are
immediately obliged to ascend a staircase to reach the principal floor
of the house, which is ten or fifteen feet above the road, and the
gardens of the house are on terraces raised to that height by a wall.
Thus from the gardens and terraces you look down fifteen feet over a
wall to the road, and from the road you look down fifteen feet over a
wall to the water. Along the outer margin of the road is a broad stone
wall or parapet, flat at the top and about three feet high. All this you
can see represented in the engraving.
In the middle of the river, opposite to the hotels, is a very beautiful
island with a nunnery upon it. This island is called Nonnenwerth. Now,
in regard to all these castles and churches, and other sacred edifices
on the Rhine, there is almost always some old legend or romantic tale,
which has come down through succeeding generations from ancient times,
and which adds very much to the interest of the locality where the
incidents occurred. The tale in respect to Rolandseck and Nonnenwerth is
this: Roland was the nephew of the great monarch and conqueror,
Charlemagne. He became engaged to the daughter of the chieftain who
lived in Drachenfels, the ruins of which you see in the engraving
crowning the hill on the right bank of the river, some little distance
down the stream. In a battle in which he was engaged, he killed his
intended father-in-law by accident, being deceived by the darkness of
the night, and thinking that he was striking an enemy instead of a
friend. After this, he could not be married to his intended bride, the
etiquette of those days forbidding that a warrior should marry one whose
father he had slain. The maiden, in her grief and despair, betook
herself to the nunnery on the island near her father's castle, and
Roland, since he could not be permitted to visit her there, built a
tower on the nearest pinnacle of the opposite shore, in order that he
might live there, and at least comfort himself with a sight of the
building where his beloved was confined. The story is, however, that the
unhappy nun lived but a short time. Roland himself, however, continued
to live in his tower, a lonely hermit, for many years.
Another version of this legend is, that the maiden was led to go to the
convent and consecrate herself as a nun, on account of a false report
which she had heard, that Roland himself was killed in the battle, and
that when she learned that he was still alive, it was too late for her
to be released from her vows. However this may be, Roland retired to
this lofty tower, in order to be as near her as possible, and to be able
to look down upon the dwelling where she lived. How well he could do
this you can easily see by observing how finely the ruined tower on the
top of the hill commands a view of the river and of the island, as well
as of the nunnery itself, imbosomed in the trees.
A little below the ruin of Roland's Tower you see a pavilion on a point
of the rock, which, though somewhat lower in respect to elevation,
projects farther towards the stream, and consequently commands a finer
view. This pavilion has been erected very lately by a gentleman who
lives in one of the houses at the margin of the road, and who owns the
vineyards that cover the slope of the hill. The road to it leads up
among these vineyards through the gentleman's grounds, but he leaves it
open in order that visitors who ascend up to Roland's Tower may go to
the pavilion on the way, and enjoy the view.
It was to one of these hotels at Rolandseck that the porter at Bonn had
arranged to send Mr. George, as the pleasantest place that was near to
spend the Sabbath in. He could not have made a better selection.
The ride, too, in the carriage from Bonn up to Rolandseck, was
delightful. Nothing could be more enchanting than the scenery which was
presented to view on every hand. The carriage, like all the other
private carriages used for travellers on the Rhine, was an open
barouche, and when the top was down it afforded an entirely unobstructed
view. The day was pleasant, and yet the sun was so obscured with clouds
that it was not warm, and Rollo stood up in the carriage nearly all the
way, supporting himself there by taking hold of the back of the driver's
seat, and looking about him on every side, uttering continual
exclamations of wonder and delight. He attempted once or twice to talk
with the driver, trying him in French and English; but the driver
understood nothing but German, and so the conversation soon settled down
to an occasional _Was ist das?_ from Rollo, and a long reply to the
question from the driver, not a word of which Rollo was able to
understand.
They passed out of Bonn by means of a most singular avenue. It was
formed of a very broad space in the centre, which seemed, by its place,
to have been intended for the road way; but instead of being a road way,
it was covered with a rich growth of grass, like a mowing field. On
each side of this green were two rows of trees, which bordered a sort of
wide sidewalk, of which there were two, one on each side of the road.
These side passages were the carriage ways.
"See, uncle George," said Rollo. "The road has all grown up to grass,
and we are riding on the sidewalk."
The carriage passed on, and when it reached the end of the avenue, it
came to a beautiful and extensive edifice, standing in the midst of
groves and gardens, which was formerly a chateau, but is now used for a
museum of natural history. Here were arranged the cabinets which Mr.
George had been to see that morning. Passing this place, the carriage
gradually ascended a long hill, on the summit of which, half concealed
by groves of trees, was an ancient-looking church. Mr. George had seen
this hill before from the windows of the hotel, and knew it must be the
Kreitzberg.
"He is taking us to the Kreitzberg," said Mr. George.
"What is that famous for?" asked Rollo.
"It is an ancient church, on the top of a high hill," said Mr. George,
"where there is a flight of stairs made to imitate those that Jesus
ascended at Jerusalem, when he went to Pilate's judgment hall. Nobody
is allowed to go up or down these stairs except on their knees.
"Then, besides," continued Mr. George, looking along the page of his
guide book as he spoke, "the air is so dry up at the top of this high
hill, that the bodies of the old monks, who were buried there hundreds
of years ago, did not corrupt, but they dried up and turned into a sort
of natural mummies; and there they lie now under the church, in open
coffins, in full view."
"Let us go down and see them," said Rollo.
What Mr. George said was true; and these things are but a specimen of
the strange and curious legends and tales that are told to the
traveller, and of the extraordinary relics and wonders that are
exhibited to his view, in the old churches and monasteries, which are
almost as numerous as the castles, on the Rhine. The carriage, after
ascending a long time, stopped at a gate by the way side, whence a long,
straight road led up to the church, which stood on the very summit of
the hill. Mr. George and Rollo got out and walked up. When they drew
near to the church, they turned round to admire the splendor of the
landscape, and to see if the carriage was still waiting for them below.
They saw that the carriage still stood there, and that there was another
one there too, and that a party of ladies and gentlemen were descending
from it to come up and see the church. There was a little girl in this
party.
"I should not wonder if that was Minnie," said Rollo.
In a short time this party, with a commissioner at the head of them,
came up the walk. The girl proved to be really Minnie. She seemed very
glad to see Rollo, and she stopped to speak with him while the rest of
the party went on.
Rollo and Minnie followed closely behind. The commissioner led the way
round to the side of the church, where there were some other ancient
buildings, which were formerly a nunnery. Here they found a man who had
the care of the place. He was a sacristan.[8] He brought a great key,
and unlocked the church door, and let the party in.
[Footnote 8: A sacristan is an officer who has charge of the sacred
utensils and other property of the church, and who shows them to
visitors.]
The interior of the church was very quaint and queer,--as in truth the
interiors of all the old churches are on the banks of the Rhine,--and
was adorned with a great many curious old effigies and paintings. After
waiting a few minutes for the company to look at these, the sacristan
went to a place in the middle of the church before the altar, and
lifted up a great trap door in the floor. When the door was lifted up, a
flight of steps was seen leading down under ground.
"Where are they going now?" said Minnie.
"I suppose they are going down to see the monks," said Rollo.
The party went down the stairs, Rollo and Minnie following them. The
sacristan had two candles in his hands. As soon as he got to the bottom
of the stairs, he passed along a narrow passage way between two rows of
open coffins, placed close together side by side, and in each coffin was
a dead man, his flesh dried to a mummy, his clothes all in tatters, and
his face, though shrivelled and dried up, still preserving enough of the
human expression to make the spectacle perfectly horrid. When Rollo and
Minnie reached the place near enough to see what was there, the
sacristan was moving his candles about over the coffins, one in each
hand, so as to show the bodies plainly. At the first glance which Minnie
obtained of this shocking sight, she uttered a scream, and ran up the
stairs again as fast as she could go.
Rollo followed her, but somewhat more slowly. When he came out into the
church, he caught a glimpse of Minnie's dress, as she was just making
her escape from the door. Rollo would have followed her, but he was
afraid of losing his uncle George.
When the party, at length, came up from their visit to the dead monks,
they went to see the sacred staircase. Rollo went with them. The
staircase seemed to be at the main entrance to the church: the party had
gone round to a door in the side where they came in.
The sacred stairs occupied the centre of the hall in which they were
placed. There were on the sides two plain and common flights of stairs,
for people to go up and down in the usual way. The sacred stairs in the
centre could only be ascended and descended on the knees.
The side stairs were separated from the central flight by a solid
balustrade or wall, not very high, so that people who came to see the
sacred steps could stand on the side steps and look over. The flight of
sacred steps was very wide, and was built of a richly variegated marble,
of brown, red, and yellow colors, intermingled together in the stone;
and some of the stains were said to have been produced by the blood of
Christ. Here and there, too, on the different steps of the staircase,
were to be seen little brass plates let into the stone, beneath which
were small caskets containing sacred relics of various kinds, such as
small pieces of wood of the true cross, and fragments of the bones of
saints and apostles. Neither Mr. George nor Rollo took much interest in
this exhibition; and so, giving the sacristan a small piece of money,
they went back to their carriage. As Rollo got into the carriage that he
had come in, he saw that Minnie was seated in hers, and she nodded her
head when Rollo's carriage moved away, to bid him good by.
Mr. George and Rollo passed one or two other very picturesque and
venerable looking ruins on the way up the river, but they did not stop
to go and explore any of them. In one place, too, they rode along a sort
of terrace, where the view over the river, and over the fields and
vineyards beyond, was perfectly enchanting. Mr. George said he had never
before seen so beautiful a view. It was at a place where the road had
been walled up high along the side of a hill, at some distance from the
river, so that the view from the carriage, as it moved rapidly along,
extended over the whole valley. The fields and vineyards, the groves and
orchards, the broad river, the zigzag paths leading up the mountain
sides, the steamers and canal boats gliding up and down over the surface
of the water, and the mountains beyond, with the rocky summit of
Drachenfels, crowned with its castle, towering among them, combined to
make the whole picture appear like a scene of enchantment.
The poet Byron described this view in three stanzas, which have been
read and admired wherever the English language is spoken, and have made
the name of Drachenfels more familiar to English and American ears than
the name of almost any other castle on the Rhine.
DRACHENFELS.
The castled crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,
Whose breast of waters broadly swells
Between the banks which bear the vine;
And hills all rich with blossomed trees,
And fields which promise corn and wine,
And scattered cities crowning these,
Whose far white walls along them shine,
Have strewed a scene which I should see
With double joy wert _thou_ with me.
And peasant girls with deep blue eyes,
And hands which offer early flowers,
Walk smiling o'er this paradise;
Above, the frequent feudal towers
Through green fields lift their walls of gray;
And many a rock which steeply lowers,
And noble arch in proud decay,
Look o'er this vale of vintage bowers;
But one thing want these banks of Rhine--
Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine!
The river nobly foams and flows,
The charm of this enchanted ground,
And all its thousand turns disclose
Some fresher beauty varying round:
The haughtiest breast its wish might bound
Through life to dwell delighted here;
Nor could on earth a spot be found
To nature and to me so dear,
Could thy dear eyes in following mine
Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine.
In due time, Mr. George and Rollo arrived at Rolandseck, where they were
received very politely by the landlord of the inn, and introduced to a
very pleasant room, the windows of which commanded a fine view both of
Drachenfels and of the river.
[Illustration]